Earlier this week Iowa District Court Judge Robert Blink granted judgment for the State of Iowa in a high profile class action race discrimination lawsuit.   (Pippen v. State of Iowa, link here). The plaintiffs alleged that 37 departments in the State’s executive branch maintained hiring and promotion practices that had an adverse

We have written many times here about an employer’s obligation to reasonably accommodate an employee’s sincerely held religious beliefs, so as not to unlawfully discriminate on the basis of their religion. Indeed, according to EEOC statistics, claims of religious discrimination by employees are increasing at a higher rate than most other forms of discrimination.

Much

Last week a federal judge in the Southern District of New York Judge dismissed the EEOC’s long running sex and pregnancy discrimination lawsuit against financial media company Bloomberg, LP.    EEOC claimed Bloomberg engaged in a “pattern and practice” of discrimination against pregnant women and mothers returning from maternity leave by reducing their pay, demoting them in title,

In a unanimous decision yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court expanded the universe of employees who might be protected from retaliation under Title VII and other federal employment laws.

A retaliation claim is based upon an employer’s adverse action taken in response to an employee’s “protected activity”. Typically, protected activity includes things such as making a complaint

A jury in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Iowa recently returned a verdict in excess of $50,000 to a female plaintiff alleging sex discrimination based upon gender stereotypes.   The plaintiff, who was a night auditor at a hotel, claimed she was terminated because she was more masculine than a typical female employee. She

On February 9, 2010, U.S. District Judge Linda Reade ordered the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (link courtesy of Ross Runkel) to pay Cedar Rapids based CRST Van Expedited $4.5 million in attorney’s fees and costs it incurred to defend itself against a meritless sexual harassment lawsuit.

The action started in 2005 when a CRST employee

On January 21, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit issued a decision that is likely to expand the frontiers of sex discrimination litigation in this circuit (which covers Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, and North and South Dakota).   In Lewis v. Heartland Inns of America, a female plaintiff who had masculine