Over the last few years, state laws allowing discrimination against LGBTQ people have sprouted up like toxic mushrooms after a foul storm. Legislatures in all but three states have at least considered anti-LGBTQ bills since 2020. Almost 240 were proposed in the first three months of 2022 alone, up from about 200 for all of 2021. In 2018, there were fewer than 50. The proposed laws would exclude LGBTQ issues from school curricula, allow … [Read more...]
Federal Laws that Prohibit Employment Discrimination
Federal employment discrimination laws, and related retaliation laws, date back to the post-Civil War Reconstruction period. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 was the first federal law to prohibit race discrimination in employment. Five years later, the government passed the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 to enforce the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment and provide redress for discriminatory action taken by the government, but few people brought claims … [Read more...]
EEOC Releases New Resources About Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Workplace Rights
We’ve found that many people facing discrimination in the workplace read about and research their rights before determining if they want to speak with an attorney. In addition to the Schaefer Halleen website, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) is a good resource for this type of groundwork. The EEOC is a federal agency that administers and enforces civil rights laws and guidelines against workplace discrimination. In … [Read more...]
LGBTQ and Religious Freedom in the Workplace
Just over a year ago, on June 15, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision making it unequivocally clear that under federal law employers cannot discriminate based on the sexual orientation or transgender status of an employee or prospective employee. It is impossible, Justice Gorsuch wrote in Bostock v. Clayton County, “to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that … [Read more...]
What Changes Should We Expect in Employment Law Under the Biden Administration?
As we near the end of President Biden’s first 100 days in office, there have already been a number of policy changes that impact employees, including the extension of unemployment benefits under the recent $1.9 trillion stimulus package and the proposed withdrawal of the previous administration’s rule broadening the definition of independent contractors under the Fair Labor Standards Act. In the coming months and years, expect to see more changes … [Read more...]
