Atlanta Employment Lawyer Blog

In Landis v. Pinnacle Eye Care, LLC, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals recently held that an agreement to arbitrate claims is enforceable under the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994 (USERRA). Although the Sixth Circuit does not have jurisdiction over the courts of Georgia, and a lower-level federal court in Georgia has held to the contrary, the Eleventh Circuit has not yet weighed in on the issue, so the case may be relevant if the issue reaches the Eleventh Circuit.

In the case, Dr. Timothy Landis signed an employment agreement in which he agreed to resolve all disputes related to the agreement through arbitration. During his employment, he was called to military duty in Afghanistan as a member of the Indiana National Guard. Although he contended that the parties had amended the employment agreement prior to his departure for Afghanistan, there was no formal amendment to the agreement. On his return from active duty, the employer refused to honor the alleged revised agreement, demoted Landis, and threatened to fire him if he had any future involvement in the military.

In response, Landis filed an employment discrimination claim under the USERRA, claiming that his employer had discriminated against him based on his military service. The lower court granted the employer’s motion to stay the case and ordered that it be arbitrated based on the arbitration clause contained in the employment agreement, holding that the USERRA did not preempt the arbitration clause.

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Posted In: Discrimination

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If you’ve recently lost your job, you’re not alone. Recent statistics from the Department of Labor on the level of weekly unemployment compensation claims reveal that the job market is a basket case these days, and that unemployment levels are soaring.

On August 7, the Labor Department announced that new applications for unemployment claims rose to 455,000—the highest level since March 2002. Although the number of new claims announced on August 21 fell to 432,000, claims have been above 400,000 for some time now, a level that most economists consider to be an indicator of recession.

If you’re one of the thousands of Americans who have recently lost their jobs, you don’t have to be just a statistic. Contact one of our employment attorneys to see if we can help you.

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Posted In: General

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The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a wonderful law; unfortunately, it has not proven to be easy for employees to win cases under the ADA. A recent bill introduced in the Senate to amend the ADA, if passed, may make it easier for disabled employees to prevail in disability cases.

Senate Bill 3406, entitled the ADA Amendments Act of 2008, would make it easier for an employee to claim a covered disability in a number of ways. It would expand the law’s current definition of “major life activity” to include a “major bodily function” so that if an individual has a serious medical condition that does not directly affect a major life activity, the individual would still be covered by the ADA. Additionally, the bill would make it easier to establish a “regarded as” disability. Under the proposed law, an employee claiming a regarded as disability would only need to show that he or she was regarded as having an impairment—not that the impairment was perceived to be a substantially limiting one. The proposed law would also prevent courts from taking into consideration an individual’s use of medicines and other mitigating measures in the determination of whether or not the individual is disabled.

The bill was sponsored by Senators Tom Harken (D-Iowa) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). Although the bill was just introduced, and President Bush opposed an earlier, similar piece of legislation that had sought to eliminate the “major life activity” requirement completely from the ADA, the bill has broad-based, bipartisan support and is being co-sponsored by 63 other senators. We’ll keep you posted.

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Posted In: Disability Discrimination

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The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) maintains and periodically updates a Compliance Manual, an internal guide for EEOC enforcement personnel that contains the EEOC’s interpretation of Title VII and the other discrimination laws it enforces. Although the Compliance Manual does not have the force of law, it is a very helpful resource for employees and employers as it explains the EEOC’s approach to enforcing the discrimination laws. It also contains recommendations for employees on how to identify discrimination in the workplace and address it, as well as best practices to help employers to prevent discrimination.

The EEOC recently issued an updated section of the Compliance Manual on religious discrimination. According to the EEOC’s press release accompanying the new section, it issued the new section “in response to an increase in charges of religious discrimination, increased religious diversity in the United States, and requests for guidance from stakeholders and agency personnel investigating and litigating claims of religious discrimination.”

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Posted In: Religious Discrimination

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