When Should Records Be Sealed in Employment Discrimination Cases?

Sealed_record Thanks to friend of the blog, Jack Sargent, for pointing me to this fascinating dispute before the U.S Supreme Court now concerning the sealing of a record in an employment discrimination case.

From the reporters committee for freedom of the press blog:

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press today filed a brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review a decision that allowed all records in a federal employment discrimination case to be hidden from the public. The Reporters Committee filed the brief on behalf of itself and 29 other leading media organizations.

The friend-of-the-court brief was filed in support of The Legal Intelligencer, which petitioned the Supreme Court for review after the Third Circuit Court of Appeals rejected its request to intervene in Doe v. C.A.R.S. Protection Plus Inc. The newspaper sought to unseal the docket and record in Doe, a case in which the plaintiff claimed she was wrongly fired because she had an abortion.

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The Impact of the Economic Collapse on U.S. Employee Benefits

Medical_symbol2 One of the less followed stories during the economic collapse is its potential impact on the employee benefits of employees in the United States.  Not only will workers lose a substantial part of their pensions because of the falling price of securities in their 401(k) accounts, but there might even be a bigger problem discussed in this article from Columbus Business First:

As a national debate over the future of the nation’s health-care system swirls, a new report from a liberal think tank indicates fewer working-age Americans, including Ohioans, are being covered under employer-sponsored health plans.

A briefing paper from the Washington, D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute, titled The Erosion of Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance, shows employer coverage for workers and their families dropped for the seventh consecutive year. About 63 percent of Americans, or 164.5 million, under age 65 were covered in 2007, about 3 million workers fewer than in 2000, during which about 68 percent were covered.

Employer-sponsored insurance coverage for working-age Ohioans fell at a similar rate over the decade. Last year, 6.8 million Ohioans, or nearly 69 percent, were covered by their employers, down more than 400,000 from 7.2 million, or 74 percent, six years earlier.

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To Shave or Not to Shave: That is the Question in This Workplace RFRA Case

Beard In the last two weeks or so, my employment discrimination law class has been studying disparate impact litigation.  One of the more challenging cases that we study is the Fitzpatrick case from the 11th Circuit concerning the no-beard policy of a fire department.

The policy is supported by the need to have a good seal between a firefighter’s respirator and his face.  The policy was claimed to have a disparate impact on black firefighters with a skin condition making in difficult for them to shave.  The 11th Circuit, in 1993, found that although there might be a disparate impact, the fire department was able to show that the practice was consistent with business necessity because of safety concerns the fire department had regarding use of these respirators by firefighters even with so-called shadow beards.

Fast-forward fifteen years and now comes a similar case in the D.C. Circuit concerning the no-beard policy of the fire department. Instead of race discrimination, this suit alleges that a clean-shaven face for safety personnel violates some employees’ religious freedoms under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA).  As such, the Title VII framework does not apply and instead the court must balance the exercise of religious liberties with competing government interests. This type of balancing test reminds me much more of a public employee case involving free speech rights.

In any event, the BLT blog has the details:

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