We’re coming in late with this Workplace Week in Review but only because there was so much news to sift through!

First, Happy Martin Luther King Day.  I hope everyone is at home, resting and reflecting on Dr. King’s teachings.  One of my favorites, which I try to remember during trying times, is in the image above.

If you read any news …

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Happy New Year!  All of us at at the Firm took a couple of weeks off to enjoy our families and the holiday season.   We hope you did as well.

This first week of the year was looking a little light in workplace news until the end of the week when two interesting pieces of news dropped.

First, on Thursday the …

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It’s beginning to look a lot like…..bad decisions

After three years, office holiday parties are back! In general, the office holiday party season is (NOT) the most wonderful time of the year for employment lawyers. A few years ago I wrote a cautionary blog about the ways in which office holiday parties can go awry.  In it, I included some real-life examples of …

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We at Case + Sedey love employment law, mainly because we love helping employees but also because the news that comes out of the workplace is always interesting and, oftentimes, hilariously unbelievable.  In a new (hopefully) weekly installment of the Workplace Week in Review we will highlight the best of that news.  This week, we learned how *not* to manage employees, …

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Despite what many employees think, you may not record workplace conversations.

Illinois is one of only eleven states that require two-party consent to the recording of a private conversation.  In the rest of the 39 states, only one party’s consent is needed.  And, despite what many think, workplace conversations are often “private conversations” for purposes of the law.

I wrote about the …

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 Is it High Time to Protect Cannabis Users?

On March 3rd, 2022, the Illinois House approved a bill containing workplace protections for employees who are legal cannabis consumers. This bill aims to ensure that workers are not fired for legally using cannabis during off hours.

Many employers still choose to drug test employees.  Since Illinois legalized recreational marijuana use, employees have been …

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Biden to Sign Law Ending Mandatory Arbitration of Sexual Harassment Cases

Congress recently passed the “Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act of 2021” (H.R. 4445).  This bill received increasingly rare bipartisan support and we expect President Biden to sign it into law any day.

Let’s take a quick look at what this law does and what it means …

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Despite Supreme Court’s ruling, employers may still develop their own vaccine mandates.

On January 13, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked OSHA from enforcing its COVID-19 vaccine and testing mandate for employers with 100 or more workers.  Read below to see what this means for employers and employees.

The ETS initially required employers with 100 or more employees to develop mandatory vaccination …

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Federal Court Decides Covid-19 is Not a “Transitory and Minor” Disability Exempted from ADA protections
What happens if fired for testing positive for COVID

First, trust that you are not alone in worrying about this.  Employment lawyers have been wondering the same thing.  Since the expiration of the FFCRA last December, there has been nothing explicitly prohibiting termination of a Covid positive …

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Chicago Passes COVID-19 Anti-Retaliation Ordinance

When COVID first hit, the federal government passed the Families First Coronavirus Relief Act (“FFCRA”). The FFCRA provided all kinds of protections for employees, including paid and protected leave for those diagnosed, quarantining and/or caring for someone diagnosed or quarantining for COVID. Unfortunately, the FFCRA expired in December of 2020 and Congress did not bother to …

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