Workforce Bulletin

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit recently weighed in on the circuit-splitting debate over the proper causation standard for Family and Medical Leave Act (“FMLA”) retaliation claims. In a win for employers, the Eleventh Circuit held that the proper standard is the heightened “but-for” causation standard, rather than the “motivating factor” causation standard, leading it to affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of defendant Walgreen Co. (“Walgreens”) against plaintiff Doris Lapham (“Lapham”) on her FMLA ...

On September 25, 2023, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit clarified what a whistleblower plaintiff must allege to demonstrate they had a “reasonable belief” that their employer violated the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (“SOX”). In Ronnie v. Office Depot, LLC, the Eleventh Circuit adopted an employer-friendly “totality of the circumstances” standard for evaluating whether a plaintiff’s belief was “reasonable.” Ronnie is a win for employers in the Eleventh Circuit because it makes clear that, to establish that they engaged in protected ...

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), employers do not have to excuse an employee from performing an essential function of a job as a reasonable accommodation. Several courts have found that a job duty is an essential function where an employee performs it up to twenty percent of the time, particularly where the job description suggests that an employee must be able to perform it.  The Eleventh Circuit has recently gone in a different direction.  In Brown v. Advanced Concept Innovations, Inc., the Eleventh Circuit held that such a function was not essential, and thus, an employer violated Florida’s anti-discrimination law (which courts interpret consistently with the ADA) by failing to excuse an employee from performing it. While Brown may arguably be an outlier, it reinforces the importance of maintaining accurate and up-to-date job descriptions.

It is no secret that businesses have long been awaiting a court decision that would help stem the surging tide of website accessibility cases – over a thousand of which have been filed in the Southern District of New York over the last two years.  While the S.D.N.Y.’s recent decision dismissing a website accessibility complaint in Himelda Mendez v. Apple, Inc., 18-cv-07550 (LAP) (S.D.N.Y. March 28, 2019) may not have gone as far as businesses would have hoped, it is nonetheless an important victory.  Ideally, by requiring greater effort from the plaintiff’s bar to successfully ...