Recently in Employment Law Category

They may be the Department of Labor, but they have no authority over H-2B labor. Temporary foreign workers are governed by the H-2A (agricultural) and H-2B (non-agricultural) programs. While both programs were originally administered by the Attorney General, the authority was later transferred to the Department of Homeland Security. In 1986, Congress split the agricultural workers into the separate H2-A program and granted the DOL rulemaking authority over those workers alone.

Simple enough, right? DHS governs H-2B, DOL governs H-2A.

Except, it apparently wasn’t that simple for the DOL, which issued rules for the H-2B program in 2011. The 11th Circuit today called that rule-making program ultra vires, which in the arena of administrative law, is fightin’ words.

This may seem obvious, but if you are receiving academic credit for an unpaid internship, you probably will not succeed in bringing a Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) claim. However, seeing as unpaid internships and externships are a hot topic right now, it’s worth perusing this unpublished Eleventh Circuit decision, Kaplan v. Code Blue Billing, Inc.

The ungrateful (kidding) student-intern plaintiffs were enrolled in MedVance Institute’s Medical Billing and Coding Specialist program. One of the graduation requirements was to complete externship work, which the plaintiff did with the multiple defendants.

The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals is sending us into the new year with Pascal quotes and contradictions.

This week, the appellate court concluded that an employer’s contradictory statements were enough to support a pretext argument. Judge Adalberto Jordan wrote, “It may be that a ‘contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth’ … But under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, a contradiction of the employer’s proffered reason for the termination of an employee is sometimes enough, when combined with other evidence, to allow a jury to find that the firing was the result of unlawful discrimination.”

The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) this week in a dispute involving nursing home union designations, reports Legal Newsline.

Lakeland Healthcare Associates, LLC appealed a NLRB decision finding Lakeland in violation of sections 8(a)(5) and (1) of the National Labor Relations Act for its refusal to bargain with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Local 1625. While Lakeland admitted that it refused to bargain with the Union, it argued that its refusal did not violate the Act because the Union was improperly certified in the underlying representation proceedings.

There must be something in the fluoride in Alabama, because there are a lot of dental litigants in the Heart of Dixie.

We don't cover all of the dental lawsuits that make their way to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, but what we've learned from the cases we've covered is that quasi-governmental health agencies get sovereign immunity.

The Alabama Board of Dental Examiners is entitled to qualified immunity according to a recent Alabama Supreme Court decision. That means that the Eleventh Circuit’s ruling last August — holding that the Board shouldn’t receive sovereign immunity — created a bit of awkwardness between the federal appellate court and the state’s highest court.

But everything’s better now. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals vacated its prior finding in Versiglio v. Board of Dental Examiners of Alabama last week, and entered a new opinion.

So how did we get here, and what does it all mean?

An Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled this week that banana peels on an employee's truck can form the basis of an employment discrimination lawsuit.

Cue Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl," because this case is about to get bananas. (B-A-N-A-N-A-S.)

The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week that a Florida teacher who was fired after admitting that she became pregnant out of wedlock can bring a pregnancy discrimination claim against her former employer.

Fourth grade teacher Jaretta Hamilton was fired shortly after she told her boss at Southland Christian School that she planned to take maternity leave. While being pregnant was not cause for termination at the school, Southland Principal John Ennis, said that he dismissed Hamilton because "she had sinned by engaging in premarital sex, and "there are consequences for disobeying the word of God."

Fourth grade teacher Jaretta Hamilton was fired after she told her boss at Southland Christian School that she planned to take maternity leave. While being pregnant was not cause for termination at the school, evidently, fornication was.

It doesn’t take a math teacher to calculate that Hamilton, who was due in October, must have conceived in January. That was a problem because Hamilton married in February. When asked when she conceived, Hamilton conceded that she became pregnant three weeks prior to her wedding, reports ABC News.

State governments can be sued for Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) violations, according to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Atlanta-based appellate court ruled last week that sovereign immunity does not insulate a state from USERRA liability.