Arbaugh v. Y & H Corp., 546 U.S. 500 (2006), is a United States Supreme Court decision involving Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which provides a private cause of action to victims of employment discrimination. The Court ruled that Title VII's "employee-numerosity requirement," which limits potential defendants to those maintaining at least fifteen employees, is not a limit on a court's jurisdiction to hear Title VII claims. The requirement is instead a substantive element of a Title VII claim, which means that a defendant must raise the issue prior to verdict or the requirement will be waived.
The Center on the Administration of Criminal Law is a think-tank dedicated to the promotion of good government and prosecution practices in criminal matters. Its work has been the subject of a feature story in the Associated Press.
Ontario v. Quon, 560 U.S. 746 (2010), is a United States Supreme Court case concerning the extent to which the right to privacy applies to electronic communications in a government workplace. It was an appeal by the city of Ontario, California, from a Ninth Circuit decision holding that it had violated the Fourth Amendment rights of two of its police officers when it disciplined them following an audit of pager text messages that discovered many of those messages were personal in nature, some sexually explicit. The Court unanimously held that the audit was work-related and thus did not violate the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable search and seizure.
Religion and business have throughout history interacted in ways that relate to and affected one another, as well as influenced sociocultural evolution, political geographies, and labour laws. As businesses expand globally they seek new markets which leads to expanding their corporation's norms and rules to encompass the new locations norms which most often involve religious rules and terms.
The ministerial exception, sometimes known as the "ecclesiastical exception," is a legal doctrine in the United States barring the application of anti-discrimination laws to religious institutions' employment relationships with its "ministers." As explained by the Supreme Court in the landmark 2012 case Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. E.E.O.C., the exception is drawn from the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and seeks to both (1) safeguard religious groups' "freedom. .. to select their own ministers," a principle rooted in the Free Exercise Clause, and (2) prevent "government involvement in [] ecclesiastical decisions," a prohibition stemming from the Establishment Clause. When applied, the exception operates to give religious institutions an affirmative defense when sued for discrimination by employees who qualify as "ministers;" for example, female priests cannot sue the Catholic church to force their hiring. However, exactly which types of employees should qualify as a "ministers," and thus how broadly the exception should apply, was the subject of recent litigation before the Supreme Court.
Estate of Thornton v. Caldor, Inc., 472 U.S. 703 (1985), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that a state statute providing employees with an absolute right not to work on their chosen Sabbath violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
Heffernan v. City of Paterson, 578 U.S. ___ (2016), was a United States Supreme Court case in 2016 concerning the First Amendment rights of public employees. By a 6–2 margin, the Court held that a public employee's constitutional rights might be violated when an employer, believing that the employee was engaging in what would be protected speech, disciplines them because of that belief, even if the employee did not exercise such a constitutional right.
The Supreme Court of the United States handed down nine per curiam opinions during its 2016 term, which began October 3, 2016 and concluded October 1, 2017.
Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, 584 U.S. ___ (2018), was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States on how two federal laws, the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), relate to whether employment contracts can legally bar employees from collective arbitration. The Supreme Court had consolidated three cases, Epic Systems Corp. v Lewis, Ernst & Young LLP v. Morris (16-300), and National Labor Relations Board v. Murphy Oil USA, Inc. (16-307). In a 5–4 decision issued in May 2018, the Court ruled that arbitration agreements requiring individual arbitration and prohibiting class action lawsuits are enforceable under the FAA, regardless of allowances set out within the NLRA.
Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31, No. 16-1466, 585 U.S. ___ (2018), abbreviated Janus v. AFSCME, is a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court on US labor law, concerning the power of labor unions to collect fees from non-union members. Under the Taft–Hartley Act of 1947, which applies to the private sector, union security agreements can be allowed by state law. The Supreme Court ruled that such union fees in the public sector violate the First Amendment right to free speech, overruling the 1977 decision in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education that had previously allowed such fees.
Altitude Express, Inc. v. Zarda, 590 U.S. ___ (2020), is a landmark United States Supreme Court civil rights case which ruled that under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 employees could not be discriminated against on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
Sharp v. Murphy, 591 U.S. ___ (2020), was a Supreme Court of the United States case of whether Congress disestablished the Muscogee (Creek) Nation reservation. After holding the case from the 2018 term, the case was decided on July 9, 2020, in a per curiam decision following McGirt v. Oklahoma that, for the purposes of the Major Crimes Act, the reservations were never disestablished and remain Native American country.
R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 590 U.S. ___ (2020), is a landmark United States Supreme Court case which ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects transgender people from employment discrimination.
Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt, 587 U.S. ___ (2019), was a United States Supreme Court case that determined that unless they consent, states have sovereign immunity from private suits filed against them in the courts of another state. The 5–4 decision overturned precedent set in a 1979 Supreme Court case, Nevada v. Hall. This was the third time that the litigants had presented their case to the Court, as the Court had already ruled on the issue in 2003 and 2016.
Bostock v. Clayton County, 590 U.S. 644 (2020), is a landmark United States Supreme Court civil rights decision in which the Court held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects employees against discrimination because of sexuality or gender identity.
Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, 594 U.S. ___ (2021), was a United States Supreme Court case involving eminent domain and labor relations. In its decision, the Court held that a regulation made pursuant to the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act that required agricultural employers to allow labor organizers to regularly access their property for the purposes of union recruitment constituted a per se taking under the Fifth Amendment. Consequently, the regulation may not be enforced unless “just compensation” is provided to the employers.
The Supreme Court of the United States handed down eight per curiam opinions during its 2021 term, which began October 4, 2021 and concluded October 2, 2022.
Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board is a United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit case about the changes to Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology's admissions policy which were made in 2020. The Coalition for TJ, a local single-issue advocacy group, alleges that the changes that Fairfax County Public Schools made to the school's admission policy unfairly discriminate against Asian Americans. After the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled in favor of the Coalition for TJ in February 2022, FCPS appealed the ruling to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which reversed the district court in May 2023.
National Pork Producers Council v. Ross, 598 U.S. 356 (2023), was a United States Supreme Court case related to the Dormant Commerce Clause.
Groff v. DeJoy, 600 U.S. 447 (2023), was a United States Supreme Court case regarding religious liberty and employment accommodations under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Prior, Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Hardison (1977) had established that an employer could deny an employee religious exemptions from work if they could show "undue hardship" in making the accommodation, a vague phrase at the center of Groff. The case was decided unanimously for Groff by the Court. While generally upholding Trans World, the court clarified that increased costs that are more than 'de minimis' are not sufficient to demonstrate 'undue hardship', and that the onus is on the employer to demonstrate that granting the exemption would incur "substantial increased costs" compared to the normal costs of business.
