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It may be unsettling for some to learn that an employer under some circumstances may lawfully discriminate against an applicant or existing employee due to their disability.  However, to do so the employer must show that even with a reasonable accommodation the employee’s disability precludes their ability to perform their job safely. When an employer takes the position in a case that a worker’s disability precludes their ability to safely perform their job it is asserting a safety-hazard affirmative defense. Under New Jersey’s Law Against Discrimination (LAD), “‘an employer found to have reasonably arrived at an opinion that a job applicant [or existing employee] cannot do the job, either because the applicant [or existing employee] is unqualified or because of a given handicap, cannot be found liable for discrimination against that applicant [or existing employee].’” Jansen v. Food Circus Supermarkets, Inc., 110 N.J. 363, 374 (1988) (quoting Andersen v. Exxon Co., 89 N.J. 483, 497 (1982)). However, “[i]n a physical handicap case, the basic task is not discerning the reason for the discrimination, since that is generally conceded, but rather examining the reasonableness of the decision under the facts.” Andersen, 89 N.J. at 493. It is the employer’s burden to prove that its opinion was reasonably founded.” Id. at 500.

The employer’s burden of proof of establishing a safety-hazard defense is a high one because “[t]he import of the [LAD] is that the handicapped should enjoy equal access to employment, subject only to limits that they cannot overcome.” Jansen, 110 N.J. at 374. Therefore, it must be “clearly shown that a person’s disability would prevent such person from performing a particular job”, otherwise the employer’s decision remains “an unlawful employment practice to deny to an otherwise qualified person with a disability the opportunity to obtain or maintain employment …” N.J.S.A. 10:5-29.1 (emphasis added).

Jansen v. Food Circus Supermarkets, Inc., is the seminal case on the use of the safety-hazard affirmative defense in a disability discrimination case.  In Jansen, the plaintiff was employed by a supermarket as a meat cutter and suffered from a mild form of epilepsy that caused partial, complex seizures associated with loss or impairment of consciousness. Id. at 368. The plaintiff Jansen was not diagnosed as an epileptic until approximately three and one-half (3 ½) years after he began his employment with the defendant as a meat cutter. Id. at 368-69.  Six years later, while Jansen was cutting steaks with [6]  a large steak knife, he suffered a seizure in which he stopped and stood staring, with the knife in his hand.  When Jansen did not respond to inquiries from his supervisor, the supervisor removed the knife from his hand. Id. at 369. Thereafter, while sitting with “an open hand and a clenched fist and hitting his hand over and over again” Jansen stated to a co-employee that “I guess I am going to lose my job … I  [7]  think I am going to go trapping in Oregon. But before I go I am going to take six people with me”. Id. at 370.

The use of social media is ubiquitous in our society.  One of the most common forms of social media is maintaining a personal profile account or page on Facebook.  The Facebook profile is a place where a person can connect with friends, post newsfeeds, thoughts, and photos.  If you share information or photos on your Facebook page, such information and photos become public and can be accessed by others unless you create privacy settings limiting who can see your posts. When you are a litigant in a lawsuit you must be careful as to the kinds of information and photos you post on your Facebook page as the other parties in the case and their attorneys may be able to gain access to this public information and use it against you. This is what happened to Christian Angeles whose postings of photos on his Facebook page showing him posing at a gym in workout garb and on a jet ski wearing a short wetsuit caused his multi-million-dollar jury verdict to be thrown out.  Angeles v. Nieves, 2018 N.J. Super. Unpub. LEXIS 1554 * (App. Div. decided June 28, 2018)

On December 6, 2018, the New Jersey Supreme Court refused to hear and thereby upheld the decision of the Appellate Division in Angeles which tossed out a three-million-dollar verdict (remitted by the trial court to $1.1 Million) obtained by Mr. Angeles following a trial in a motor vehicle personal injury case.  Mr. Angeles testified at trial that while he was operating his motor vehicle in an intersection his vehicle was negligently struck by a motor vehicle operated by defendant Nieves.   As a result of the motor vehicle accident, Mr. Angeles claimed he was caused to suffer low back disc injuries which significantly limited his ability to perform various daily activities of living.   During the trial the defense attorney attempted to cross-examine Mr. Angeles with the use of screenshots taken from Mr. Angeles’ Facebook profile depicting him at a gym posing in a “sleeveless shirt and sweatpants at a gym near exercise equipment, with a photo caption ‘In order to maintain the artistic action figure’”, and as well a screenshot of Mr. Angeles in a short wet suit sitting on a Waverunner with the caption “In water hesitating.”  Id. at *6-*7.  However, the trial judge refused to allow the defense attorney to cross-examine using the screenshots concluding that use of the photos would have been unduly prejudicial to Mr. Angeles’ claims. *7.   After the jury rendered its verdict of $3 Million dollars the judge on defendant’s motion reduced the verdict to $1.1million but denied defendant ‘s post-verdict motion for a new trial finding the screenshots potential for prejudicing the jury’s view of Mr. Angeles claims far outweighed their “limited probative value.”  *7.

In reversing the trial court’s denial of defendant’s motion for a new trial, the appellate court found, among others, that the post-accident screenshot photos depicting Mr. Angeles engaged in apparent strenuous activity would have “substantial probative value.”  *9.   As the appellate court viewed it:

Forced arbitration is bad for employees. It is bad because it requires employees to waive their right to sue in court and in doing so denies employees the opportunity to have legal disputes with their employer resolved by a jury. This means that laws prohibiting workplace discrimination and retaliation are not enforceable in a court of law where forced arbitration exists. Rather, forced arbitration requires employees to submit their disputes to a privately-retained arbitrator, a person who often earns their living in whole or in part from handling claims brought against employers. This means that employers are their repeat customers. Furthermore, arbitrators aren’t required to take the law and legal precedent into account in making their decisions. There is no appeal or public review of decisions to ensure the arbitrator made a correct decision. Moreover, employers like arbitration because arbitrators tend to either rule in their favor or render awards favoring employees at monetary values typically much lower than an employee is likely obtain from a jury.

Although our New Jersey Supreme Court has declared that courts must treat and enforce arbitration agreements like all other contracts, to be enforceable it must be shown that the employee who entered into an arbitration agreement understood they were agreeing to waive their statutory right to sue for discrimination and retaliation in court of law. Atalese v. United States Legal Services Group, L.P., 219 N.J. 430, 441 (2011). Because arbitration results in a waiver of the right of an employee to pursue their claims in court, “courts take particular care in assuring the knowing assent of both parties to arbitrate, and a clear mutual understanding of the ramifications of that assent.” Atalese, 219 N.J. at 442-43. The Appellate Division of the New Jersey Superior Court recently rejected the validity of an arbitration agreement in Flanzman v. Jenny Craig, Inc., 2018 N.J. Super. LEXIS 156 * (App. Div. decided Nov. 13, 2018), because the employee there did not understand she was waiving her right to a jury trial by signing the agreement.

At the time her employment was terminated, the Plaintiff in Flanzman was 82 years old and had worked for Jenny Craig as a weight loss consultant for some 26 years. Jenny Craig gradually reduced the Plaintiff’s work hours to only three hours per week eventually resulting in her job termination. The Plaintiff filed a lawsuit alleging, among others, age discrimination. Jenny Craig responded by filing a motion to compel arbitration relying on an arbitration agreement allegedly signed by the Plaintiff in 2011, twenty years after she was hired. The appeal required the Appellate Division to decide whether to invalidate the arbitration agreement because it failed to identify any arbitration forum and any process for conducting the arbitration. As the appellate court explained:

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy recently signed into law Bill A-3871 which immediately takes effect and amends N.J.S.A. 43:21-5 by removing the “simple misconduct” and “severe misconduct” standards for unemployment insurance benefits disqualification and instead replaces them with a more straightforward and manageable “misconduct” standard. Previously, a finding of severe misconduct would result in work totally forfeiting their rights to unemployment insurance benefits. Misconduct is now defined as follows:

“Misconduct” means conduct which is improper, intentional, connected with the individual’s work, within the individual’s control, not a good faith error of judgment or discretion, and is either a deliberate refusal, without good cause, to comply with the employer’s lawful and reasonable rules made known to the employee or a deliberate disregard of standards of behavior the employer has a reasonable right to expect, including reasonable safety standards and reasonable standards for a workplace free of drug and substance abuse.

The new law makes clear that the burden of establishing misconduct before the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workplace Development, Division of Unemployment Insurance (the “Division”) is on the employer who must do so by providing the Division with “written documentation demonstrating that the employee’s action constitute misconduct …”

Trump’s judicial nominee to fill the open seat on the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is District of Colombia Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Brett Kavanaugh. This should be of great concern to workers throughout the country especially after the Court’s 5-4 decision in Janus v. AFSCME, Council 31, which stripped away decades of settled law when it ruled government workers can’t be forced to contribute to labor unions to help pay for the costs of representing them. Richard Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO, observed, “Kavanaugh routinely rules against working families” and denies “employees’ relief from discrimination in the workplace.” In 2012, a Washington Post columnist described Kavanaugh as “nothing more than a partisan shock trooper in a black robe waging an ideological battle against government regulation.” A look at Judge Kavanaugh’s judicial record suggests that if confirmed by the Senate, he would be far more conservative than Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the seat he would replace. This means that should Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination be approved by the Senate, he would likely push SCOTUS further in the direction of favoring Big Business over the rights of workers to unionize, and to have a safe workplace free of harassment, discrimination, and retaliation.

American Fed. Of Gov’t Employees, AFL-CIO v. Gates, 486 F.3d 1316 (D.C. Cir. 2007), Kavanaugh authored the majority opinion that reversed the lower court’s partial blocking of Department of Defense (DOD) regulations, which had found that many of the Pentagon’s regulations would “entirely eviscerate collective bargaining.”

Agri Processor Co. v. N.L.R.B., 514 F.3d 1 (D.C. Cir. 2008) Kavanaugh dissented from a decision that ordered a company to bargain with a union, reasoning that the employees were ineligible to vote as undocumented immigrants.

The LGBTQ community has been scoring civil rights victories nationwide over the past few years, including the seminal Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 135 (2015) decision that legalized gay marriage, and the repeal of the controversial HB-2 bill in North Carolina, commonly referred to as the “Bathroom Bill”, requiring all citizens to use the bathrooms designated for the gender assigned at birth. The latest victory comes from New Jersey, where Governor Phil Murphy signed into law 3 bills expanding rights for the New Jersey transgender community.

The first two bills (2018 Bill Text NJ S.B. 478 & 2018 Bill Text NJ S.B. 493) allow for gender assignment to be changed on birth certificates without proof of gender reassignment surgery.  For individuals who wish to change their gender on their birth certificate, the law now requires,

(1) a certified copy of an order from a court of competent jurisdiction which indicates that the name of the person has been changed, if the person has changed his or her name; and (2) a [medical certificate from] form provided by the State registrar and completed by the [person’s licensed [physician] health care provider] person, or the person’s guardian, which [indicates] [the sex of the person has been changed by surgical procedure] [that the person has undergone clinically appropriate treatment for the purpose of gender transition, based on contemporary medical standards, or that the person has an intersex condition.]

The LGBTQ community’s long battle to legalize same-sex marriages finally ended on June 26, 2015 when the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) delivered its opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 135 (2015). This seminal decision resulted in same-sex couples planning wedding ceremonies and receptions. In turn, Obergefell raised the issue of whether a cake baker could refuse to create a cake for a same-sex wedding based on the baker’s religious beliefs. Although this issue was recently addressed by SCOTUS in Masterpiece Cake Shop, LTD. v. Colorado Civil Rights Comm’n, 2018 U.S. LEXIS 3386 (2018) (Masterpiece), it was left largely unsettled.

In Masterpiece, SCOTUS ruled in favor of Jack Phillips (Phillips), a Christian cake shop owner in Colorado who refused to create a wedding cake for a same-sex couple in 2012 because he claimed to do so violated his religious beliefs. This case presented two significant constitutional concerns to the Court, specifically, whether Phillips constitutional rights to freedom of speech and free exercise of religions would be infringed if forced to contract with and create wedding cakes for same-sex couples. While the Court did give passing consideration to these issues, it focused its analytical attentions to its view that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission’s (the “Commission”) handling of the Phillips’ case was biased because of the Commission’s belief that religion had historically played a role in fostering discriminatory behavior referencing religion’s role in slavery and the Holocaust. In doing so, SCOTUS reversed the Colorado Court of Appeals’ affirmation of the Commission’s decision in favor of the same-sex couple who wanted Philips to bake a wedding cake for them.

In rendering its decision in favor of baker Phillips SCOTUS found significant: a) Phillips’ refusal to bake the couple their cake occurred in 2012, before Obergefell was decided, and before the state of Colorado recognized same-sex marriage; b) the Commission in 2012 had a practice of finding no violations of the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act in cases where the bakers had refused to create cakes with derogatory messages that demeaned same-sex couples; and c) Commissioners presiding over the case below called Phillips’ religious justification for discrimination a despicable piece of rhetoric and compared his argument to those that Nazis made to justify the Holocaust. This showed the Court that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission violated the free exercise clause of the first amendment which required the Commission to approach Phillips’ beliefs with neutrality and tolerance.

The issue of whether an employee has suffered a requisite “adverse employment action” under our state’s whistleblower law when transferred out of his longstanding job into another after he blows the whistle on his employer’s violations of law or public policy, was recently addressed by the New Jersey Appellate Division in Jeffrey Scozzafava v. Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office, 2018 N.J. Super. LEXIS 1125, (App. Div. decided May 14, 2018). There, the appellate court significantly expanded employee protections within the meaning of New Jersey’s Conscientious Employee Protection Act (CEPA) by providing clarity on the issue of lateral transfers.

In Scozzafava, the Appellate Division reversed a trial court’s decision dismissing Detective Jeffrey Scozzafava’s complaint against his employer. The Court held that Detective Scozzafava’s transfer from his long-time service in the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office’s forensic unit to the Office’s fugitive squad, constituted an adverse employment action by the employer stemming from Scozzafava’s whistle-blowing conduct of filing complaints against the forensic unit and supervisor for improper and deficient evidence collection and casework.

To establish a New Jersey whistleblower claim, a plaintiff must satisfy four elements:

Having a new baby is an exciting time of life but can bring many anxieties regarding the logistics of coming back to work after delivery. New mothers coming back to work after giving birth are faced with a multitude of questions, concerns, and uncertainties, including how they will continue breastfeeding their infant. Although a very personal parenting and health decision, the medical benefits of breastfeeding have been shown to cause fewer illnesses in children, reduced risk of asthma or allergies.  After new moms decide they want to continue the breastfeeding relationship with their babies after going back to work, they may wonder what their rights are to do so in the workplace.

For employees considered “nonexempt” under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”), meaning they are entitled to earn overtime pay, federal law requires a break time for mothers to express milk, and a location shielded from view other than a bathroom. Since the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) was signed into law on March 23, 2010, section 7 of the FLSA was amended to require employers provide reasonable break time for an employee to express breast milk for one year after childbirth.  See 29 C.F.R. 207(r).  This law is also known as the “Break Time for Nursing Mothers Law.” Employers are also required to provide a place other than a bathroom that is shielded from view and free from intrusion from coworkers and the public.  All employers are subject to the FLSA break requirement unless the employer can show that (1) they have 50 or fewer employees, and (2) compliance would pose an undue hardship.

In New Jersey breastfeeding is a protected act under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (“LAD”) (N.J.S.A. 10:5-2 et. seq.). On January 8, 2018, the LAD was amended to include all breastfeeding mothers (with no one-year time limitation as in the FLSA).  It is now illegal for employers to refuse to hire, take adverse employment action and discriminate against an employee because of breastfeeding. Employers must also make available to the employee reasonable accommodations including reasonable break time each day and a suitable private location other than a toilet stall, in close proximity to the work area to allow the employee to express milk. N.J.S.A. 10:5-2(s). There is an exception if the employer can demonstrate that providing the accommodation would be an undue hardship on their business operations. Courts will examine the overall size of the business, number of employees, number and type of facilities, budget, type of operations, structure of workforce, cost of the accommodation needed, and the essential requirements of the job.  Id.

On May 2, 2018, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed into law the Paid Sick Leave Act requiring all public and private employers in the State of New Jersey, regardless of their size, to offer paid sick leave. The law is scheduled to go into effect on October 29, 2018.

Under the Paid Sick Leave Act, an employee shall be permitted to paid sick leave as follows:

(a) Diagnosis, care, treatment, recovery and/or preventive care for the employee’s own mental or physical illness or injury or the employee’s family member’s mental or physical illness or injury;