Oklahoma remains one of about only a dozen states that recognize common-law marriages. Despite the legislature's sporadic attempts to effectively abolish such marriages, the Oklahoma Supreme Court has recently determined...
Employment Law Letter
PNC Bank and its parent company were hit with two class action suits for unpaid time in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and state laws in 2019. In late January 2020, they agreed to settle the combined...
Karim Salehpoor was an engineering professor at New Mexico Institute of Mining & Technology (NM Tech). Salehpoor taught under a series of annual employment contracts. As the 2011-12 academic year came to an end, he was...
Q We are moving into a new office space with two buildings joined in the middle by a breezeway. Will we need to post workers' compensation and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) notices in both...
Some tout the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in hiring as a means of quickly and efficiently screening job applicants and, perhaps more important, removing human bias from hiring. But others point to AI doing just...
A Pew Research Center study found the average hourly wage for females increased 45 percent between 1980 and 2018, while the average hourly wage for males increased only 14 percent, resulting in an overall decrease in the...
Figuring out when a joint-employment arrangement exists can be like traveling a dusty, winding road. When will the dust settle, and where will the road go? Those questions haven't been completely answered. One answer...
When an employee responded to a suspension notice by sending an e-mail stating simply, “I sue,” his employer fired him. Unsurprisingly, he sued, and an appeals court found his termination was retaliatory. Facts Nityanand...
A continuing theme of the Trump administration has been to reduce the burden of regulations on American businesses. One of the earliest indications of the seriousness of that pledge was the administration's unprecedented...
Thinking about employment discrimination claims, business owners might assume that if an individual were to file one, they would be served with a lawsuit. It might surprise small business owners checking their mail, then...
In a 2-1 decision on December 18, 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit declared the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) individual health insurance mandate unconstitutional as a result of Congress's elimination of...
On January 27, 2020, Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Three days later, the state joined with Illinois and Nevada to file a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of...
Healthcare providers, especially hospitals and clinics, routinely deal with people who are injured, but when is a patient's injury reportable? It depends on the circumstances. For example, if a person shows up at the...
About a year ago, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit reminded employers that employees must have a covered "disability" to be protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This year, the 1st...
For many employers, asking whether a job applicant or employee has a disability is a recipe for a discrimination lawsuit. For those of you who are HR professionals for government contractors, however, "don't ask" is not...