This month in New York, a class action lawsuit was filed against Novartis, a large pharmaceutical company. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit allege a pattern or practice of sex discrimination against women who worked for the Alcon division of the company. They claim that women in the Alcon division received…
Last month, a sex discrimination trial began in which Ellen Pao, a former junior partner at venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, has alleged that Kleiner Perkins refused to promote her and forced her out because of her sex. The trial will include evidence of lurid sexism but,…
This week, the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals held that a former employee of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA (“IVCF”) could not sue it for sex discrimination because of the religious natures of IVCF’s business and her job. The former employee, Alyce Conlon, alleged that IVCF fired her because it did…
A group of former McDonald’s employees have sued the McDonald’s corporation and the franchises where they worked for race and sex discrimination. The employees who filed the lawsuit worked for McDonald’s restaurants in Boston and Clarksville, Virginia. Their allegations of discrimination include claims that the restaurants believed that their employees…
A new study from the Economic Policy Institute shows that women who work in the food service industry earn significantly less than men. The pay disparities are most pronounced in some of the restaurant jobs that pay the most—first line supervisors, bartenders, and managers. Male managers, for instance, earn a…
Fifty years ago, in July 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. Through this landmark piece of legislation, the federal government sought, among other things, to dismantle abhorrent “Jim Crow” laws in the South which rendered African Americans second class citizens. A strong minority…
The U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over Maine, other New England states, and Puerto Rico, today reversed the decision of a Puerto Rico court and held that a sex discrimination lawsuit against a Puerto Rico fire department may proceed. Waleska Garayalde-Rijos, the plaintiff in the case,…
Last month, in Shazor v. Professional Transit Management, Ltd., the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over Ohio and other states in the Midwest, held that a jury could reasonably conclude that Professional Transit Management (PTM) illegally fired its former CEO, Marilyn Shazor, because she was an…
Earlier this month, the Labor and Workforce Development Committee of the Massachusetts House voted in favor of a bill that would prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of height and weight. The bill would add height and weight to the list of characteristics that employers already may not use to…
New Jersey recently enacted a new law which would make it illegal for an employer to retaliate against an employee who asked co-workers about their job titles, occupational categories, and rates of pay for purposes of determining if pay discrimination had occurred. Maine already has a similar law (26 M.R.S.A.…