Workforce Bulletin

Writing for a unanimous Court, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson states that Title VII does not require a plaintiff who is a member of a “majority” group to present “additional background circumstances” as the lower court had held.

In Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, petitioner Marlean Ames (“Ames”), a heterosexual woman, claimed that her employer, the Ohio Department of Youth Services, had passed her over for a promotion in favor of a less qualified gay woman. Soon after that, Ames claimed, the Department of Youth Services demoted Ames (and cut her pay) so that a gay man could fill the position rendered vacant by her demotion.

Ames brought suit under Title VII claiming that the Ohio Department of Youth Services had discriminated against her because of her sexual orientation. The District Court granted the Ohio Department of Youth Services summary judgment on the grounds that Ames failed to make a prima facie case of discrimination because “she had not presented evidence of [sufficient] background circumstances.” The lower court had found that, as a member of the “majority group,” i.e., heterosexuals, Ames needed to present evidence of “background circumstances” (referred to by the Court as the “background circumstances rule”) to establish that the defendant was the rare employer that would discriminate against the “majority” group.

Can an employer be held liable under the False Claims Act (“FCA”) for retaliation if it takes some adverse action against a former employee? Until recently, only one federal appellate court had addressed the issue, holding that the FCA does not cover post-employment retaliation.[1] However, on April 1, 2021, the Sixth Circuit reached the opposite conclusion in United States ex rel. Felten v. William Beaumont Hospital, creating a circuit split and different rules for employers in different jurisdictions.

Background

In 2010, David Felten filed an action on behalf of the United ...

In Viet v. Le, No. 18-6191, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit provided insight into the kind of evidence employees must present in order to create a jury question over whether they worked unpaid overtime in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”).

In the case, plaintiff Quoc Viet purchased used copiers in the United States and shipped them to Vietnam for resale by the defendants Victor Le and Copier Victor, Inc.  Copier Victor classified Viet, who worked from his home and a nearby warehouse, as an independent contractor.  Le paid Viet a fixed rate for each copier ...

Resolving a split between circuits, this week the United States Supreme Court, in CNH Industrial v. Reese rejected what has come to be known as the Yard-Man standard, and reaffirmed that collective bargaining agreements must be interpreted according ordinary contract principles.  Although the Supreme Court has long held ordinary cannons of contract construction apply to collective bargaining agreements, some federal courts developed a specialized set of inferences, known as the Yard-Man inferences, which allowed them to read beyond the actual contract terms, to reach what ...

In its May 28th, 2015 decision in Rhinehimer v. U.S. Bancorp Investments, Inc. (pdf), the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that an employee who reports alleged unlawful conduct has engaged in protected activity for the purposes of a retaliation claim under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (“SOX”), 18 U.S.C. § 1514A, as long as he or she has an objectively reasonable belief that the activity reported is prohibited under SOX.  The Sixth Circuit has joined the Second and Third Circuit Courts of Appeal in rejecting the previously adopted standard that an employee’s conduct must ...

In Jones-Turner v. Yellow Enterprise Systems, LLC, the Sixth Circuit recently upheld summary judgment in favor of an ambulance company in a collective action filed by three EMTs, finding that the plaintiffs’ meal and rest breaks were not compensable under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) and Kentucky law.  The Court analyzed whether the ambulance company’s policy of having “on-call” lunch periods required EMTs to be compensated for that time.

According to the “on-call” lunch period policy, EMTs in the field were not allotted a specific time period for lunch ...

By Margaret C. Thering and Eric J. Conn

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit closed out 2012 with a decision that dealt a blow to employers defending against alleged violations of OSHA standards.  Specifically, in a December 5, 2012 decision in a case on appeal from the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, the Sixth Circuit upheld an OSHA citation that alleged that an employer failed to properly barricade the swing radius of a crane.  See All Erection & Crane Rental Corp. v. Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, No. 11-4242 (6th Cir. Dec. 5, 2012).