Last week, a U.S. District Court in Massachusetts rejected New England Investment and Retirement Group’s (NEINV) argument that it could lawfully fire an employee who reported to NEINV’s compliance officer that NEINV was violating securities laws. Specifically, the whistleblower, a financial planner who worked in NEINV’s North Andover, Mass. office,…
Earlier this month, California passed a law which will prohibit employers from discriminating against employees who were victims of domestic violence. A domestic violence victim named Carie Charlesworth championed this legislation after her employer fired her because her abusive ex-husband showed up at her workplace. Charlesworth worked at a school…
Last month, the U.S. Department of Labor announced new regulations that will require employers to pay home care workers the minimum wage and overtime pay. Home care workers provide essential home care assistance to elderly people and people with illnesses, injuries or disabilities. In 2007, Maine passed a law which…
Earlier this year, the Maine Human Rights Commission determined that Greyhound Lines, the bus company, violated the Maine Human Rights Act (MHRA) when it failed to provide reasonable accommodations to a passenger who needed those accommodations because she had health issues, including morbid obesity. It found that the passenger’s health…
Yesterday, New York City’s City Council passed a law that would prohibit employers from discriminating against pregnant employees just because they need a reasonable accommodation to continue working during their pregnancy. This is an important advance for pregnant employees because, apart from the accommodations that they routinely provide to non-pregnant…
The party in control of the Quebec provincial government, Parti Quebecois, is trying to pass a law which would prohibit public employees from wearing religious headwear such as hijabs, turbans, and yarmulkes. Parti Quebecois is a political party that wants Quebec to separate from Canada and become its own sovereign…
The U.S. District Court in Massachusetts recently ruled in favor of John H. Ray III, a former associate of the law firm Ropes & Gray, on his retaliation claims against the law firm. After Ray filed a charge against the firm with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) alleging…
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.…
An investigator with the Maine Human Rights Commission (MHRC) has reportedly found that Kennebec Valley Community Action Program (KVCAP) discriminated against a hearing impaired employee, violating the disability discrimination provisions of the Maine Human Rights Act (MHRA). The hearing impaired employee, Agnes Farnsworth, provided transportation to KVCAP clients, who were…
BJ’s Wholesale Club and the representatives of a class of BJ’s Wholesale employees reportedly informed a federal court in Massachusetts earlier this month that they had reached a settlement agreement on the employees’ claims that BJ’s failed to pay them overtime. The class of BJ’s employees included loss prevention managers,…