NT Lakis lawyers have filed a “friend-of-the-court” brief with the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in an important case involving the interplay between the duty of an employer under federal law not to discriminate versus not to interfere with an employee’s labor law rights.
Our brief in Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. v. NLRB, Nos. 16-2721 & 16-2944 (8th Cir.), urges the appeals court to reverse a ruling by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that ordered an employer to reinstate — with full back pay — a worker who was discharged for hurling racially offensive epithets at African-American workers crossing a picket line. In the Board’s view, the worker’s actions amounted to conduct protected under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), and in essence overrode the duty of the employer not to discriminate.
We argue that permitting certain employees to evade punishment for unlawful harassing behavior simply because it may have coincided with pro-union activity undermines employer efforts to promote workplace civility and proactively prevent EEO violations. It also risks sending the message to other employees that the employer does not take its EEO compliance obligations seriously.
A copy of our brief in Cooper Tire is available here.
Members of the Equal Employment Advisory Council (EEAC) can read more here.