In a unanimous opinion, the New Jersey Supreme Court recently held that a non-disparagement provision in a settlement agreement that prevented a former employee from revealing details about allegations of sexual harassment, sex discrimination and retaliation was against public policy and cannot be enforced. The plaintiff, a former police sergeant, appealed…
On June 29, 2023, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Groff v. DeJoy, clarifying employers’ obligations to accommodate employees’ religious practices under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The Court reinterpreted the meaning of “undue hardship” and held that Title VII requires an employer who denies an employee’s…
In an example of how informal management can come back to haunt employers, a U.S. District Court judge recently ruled that a former Starbucks regional manager had sufficiently demonstrated that a jury could determine that the justification Starbucks provided in terminating her was pretext for unlawful discrimination. Plaintiff Shannon Phillips,…
In response to an increasingly older workforce and higher ages in which employees are choosing to retire, on October 4, 2021, Governor Murphy signed a bill expanding the scope of the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (“LAD”) by eliminating certain decades old provisions that permitted employers to make age-based decisions…