Lamberton Law Blog

Stay up to date on current developments in employment law and at the Lamberton Law Firm

Employment Law

On the offense with the employer's sexual harassment investigation

Most sexual harassment and racial harassment cases have a front-end and back-end. The front-end consists of the underlying acts of sexual harassment (or racial harassment) against the employee, for which the employee complained. The back-end consists of the employer's investigation of and...

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Attack on unions creates two Americas - one rich, one struggling

The level of inequality — which fell during the New Deal but has risen dramatically since the late 1970s — corresponds to the rise and fall of Unions in the United States. Take a look at this graph showing union membership and the income share claimed by the richest 10 percent of Americans...

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The infamous bloc of five

This is the radical bloc of the United States Supreme Court - five men with life tenure, united in their right wing religious and political views - disdainful of precedent, disdainful of regulation and disdainful of all whose beliefs differ from their own. These are the men who gutted the...

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Racism outrages jury, judge not so much

Racist jokes supported a verdict against the employer in a race-based hostile work environment claim under Section 1981, along with an award of compensatory and punitive damages, but judge knew better than jury what the damages should have been. A tale of Fulmore v M & M Transport Services, Inc...

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Toomey filibusters Womens' Paycheck Fairness Act

To the Women of the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania: My name is Patrick Toomey and I am your United States Senator from the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party. Here I am in my best charcoal gray and red tie. I am pointing because I am a serious man, and behind me is...

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Democrats seek to reverse anti-worker Supreme Court ruling

Why do the five ultra-conservative members of the Supreme Court - Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas and Alito - seek to undermine the United States' Civil Rights Laws at every opportunity? Because those laws conflict with their right wing ideologies. And once again, Congress is being called on to...

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EEOC sues CVS for overbroad severance agreements

The EEOC [1] has launched a massive lawsuit against CVS Caremark, the nation's second largest drugstore chain, for requiring employees to sign overbroad, misleading severance agreements that interfere with the rights to file charges of discrimination and participate in proceedings to enforce the...

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Hat's off to Hon. Mark R. Hornak, U.S. District Court Judge

From the very first sentence of the Hon. Mark R. Hornak's opinion in McClung et al. v. Songer Steel Services, Inc., No. 12-341, 2014 WL 793133 (W.D.Pa.), the reader knew they were in for a special treat: "In this race discrimination suit, claims based solely on permissible inferences square off...

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Stealing wages from the working poor

Philadelphia sports bar and restaurant chain Chickie's & Pete's has signed a consent judgment agreeing to pay current and former employees more than $6.8 million in back wages and damages for improperly taking tips from servers and violating federal minimum wage, overtime and record-keeping...

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Broadening the Bench

When it changed its rules last November, the Senate ushered in a new era of opportunity for judicial nominations. Now that only a simple majority is required to break filibusters on district and circuit court nominations, the time is ripe to fill a growing a number of judicial vacancies with...

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Gender pay gap persits

When the Equal Pay Act became law in 1963, women were earning 59 cents on the dollar compared to men. Today, while women hold nearly half of all jobs, and generate a significant portion of the income that sustains their families, they still face a gap in pay compared to men's wages for similar...

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Reprimand only for politically biased, racist, sexist federal judge

A judicial oversight body which found hundreds of biased, racist and sexist emails authored by a sitting United States District Court Judge would have let the judge remain on the court and continue to hear cases, despite his admitted political bias, racist and sexist views. Montana's chief...

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Raising minimum wage helps economy

One popular myth is that raising the minimum wage hurts the economy. Seventy-five years of empirical data has busted that myth wide open. Since 1938, the minimum wage has been raised several times yet the economy has grown and grown. Raising the minimum wage creates purchasing power for wage...

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Employer preemption of protected activities

Employees have a right to oppose discrimination and unlawful wage practices in the workplace, to assist others in enforcing their rights to overtime pay, to the minimum wage and to freedom from discrimination, and to participate in any manner proceedings, hearings or investigations under the...

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Senator Warren says no more employer abuse of credit reports

In posts earlier this year - Now Hiring (unless you have poor credit) and More on Employer's Use of Credit Reports - we called attention to employers who abuse credit reports to disqualify applicants and employees from employment. Senator Elizabeth Warren has now introduced legislation to...

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