Category Archives: Employment Law

Over the weekend, the New York Times published a chilling article about employer reliance on credit reports, The Long Shadow of Bad Credit in a Job Search. The main character was a poor guy who couldn’t find work as a shoe salesman after he couldn’t pay medical bills incurred for an injury he suffered after getting laid off (and losing his insurance).

The article points out that employers are actually a bit less likely to check credit reports on applicants than they have been in the past. While previous surveys (conducted by our friends at SHRM) have found that about 60% of employers check credit reports on applicants, that number is now down to about 50%. At the same time, however, many people have seen their good credit ratings go down the tubes in the last five years. So fewer employers are checking, but they may be dinging a higher percentage of candidates for poor credit.

Why do employers check credit reports, anyway? For certain positions, a credit report might reveal pertinent information. You may not want an employee who never pays bills on time to manage a department budget, prepare economic forecasts, or have free access to a company credit card. In many situations, however, poor credit reveals no more than bad luck: high medical bills, divorce, and job loss account for many financial woes. Although there are certainly some people who run up huge debts on luxury items, never planning to pay for them, there are many whose debts are based on sadder — and more mundane –circumstances.

Rejecting these applicants for jobs puts them in a Catch-22: They lost a job, which hurt their credit, which will prevent them from getting a job, and so on. In recognition of this, states are starting to step in and prohibit employers from using credit reports in making hiring and other job decisions. Nine states have passed these laws so far, and more are considering similar legislation. You can find our articles on these laws in State Laws on Employer Use of Credit Reports; for more information on the rules for using applicant credit reports in hiring, including notice and consent requirements, see Can Prospective Employers Check Your Credit Report?

The unemployment rate is gradually declining, but my own personal barometer — based on the admittedly unscientific measurement of questions people ask me because they know I’m an employment lawyer — shows that interest in unemployment remains high. Employers and employees want to know the same thing: What reasons for leaving a job disqualify someone from getting benefits?

Here in California, the rules about eligibility for unemployment are among the most generous in the country. An employee who quits a job for good cause can still get benefits. Good cause includes not only job-related reasons (such as dangerous working conditions or harassment) but also circumstances wholly apart from work. For example, if you quit your job because you need to relocate with your spouse, escape domestic violence, or care for an ailing family member, you will likely be eligible for unemployment benefits.

Employees who are fired can get benefits unless the termination was based on misconduct. If that sounds like a low standard, that’s only because you haven’t heard how California defines the term. An employee has committed misconduct only if all of the following are true:

• The employee owed a material duty to the employer, such as showing up for work.
• The employee substantially breached that duty: A minor or one-time transgression isn’t enough to meet this requirement.
• The employee showed a wanton or willful disregard for that duty. In other words, the employee wasn’t just careless or thoughtless but, instead, intentionally violated the duty or showed a reckless disregard for the consequences of your breach of the duty. Inefficiency, inability to perform the job, or good faith errors in judgment don’t meet this standard and won’t render someone ineligible for benefits.
• The employee’s breach tends to materially harm the employer’s business interests.

That third factor is the key that unlocks benefits for many fired employees. Poor performance, mistakes, and even incompetence are not supposed to be enough to deny benefits: The intention requirement in the standard means the employee must have been making a choice, either to engage in wrongdoing or to perform poorly. An employee who really can’t do the job is supposed to get benefits. (For comprehensive — and comprehensible — information on unemployment in California, check out the Unemployment Insurance page at the website of the always awesome Employment Law Center.)

Some of the questions I’ve been asked lately (on the employer side) kind of remind me of that old Mad Magazine cartoon, “Unclear on the Concept.” Here are a couple of examples:

Can we ask employees to waive the right to collect unemployment in a severance agreement? Only if you don’t mind breaking the law. In California, unemployment benefits may not be waived. A contractual agreement by an employee to give up the right to apply for or collect unemployment is void and invalid. What’s more, severance pay ordinarily doesn’t count as “wages,” and so doesn’t reduce the amount of benefits a former employee can collect. (If severance is paid out over time as if it were wages, the employee may have to delay collecting benefits.)

Can we ask employees to agree that failing to meet our performance standards constitutes a voluntary quit? Same answer. It really doesn’t matter what you require employees to agree to: Employees are entitled to benefits when they lose their jobs unless they commit misconduct, as defined above, or quit without good cause, also as defined above. The EDD doesn’t care how you redefine these terms in a performance improvement plan or employment contract. If an employee is terminated because of poor performance, that is not a voluntary quit. In fact, employers who try this strategy might be facing more problems than an increase in unemployment claims: Requiring employees to sign a contract that you know you can’t enforce could arguably constitute an unfair business practice, which takes an employer into territory where huge damages can be awarded.

To return to the title of this post, it is almost never in the employer’s interest to try to contest benefits this aggressively. Fighting an employee’s claim on dodgy grounds will turn the employees you still have against you: They will find out about it, and they will not be feeling the love. It will take time and money to appeal employee claims. And you will make a bitter enemy of the employee you fired, one who has every incentive to file a lawsuit against your company. By all means, challenge claims by bad apples who are trying to game the system, who truly committed misconduct, who quit for no good reason, who stopped even trying to do their jobs months before you fired them. But otherwise, it’s generally best to let the system do what it’s supposed to do: provide some help to those who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own, until they can find new work.

Last week, the Supreme Court decided a case about collective actions under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Collective actions are similar to class actions, in that they give an employee the right to file a lawsuit on behalf of a group of employees who have the same basic claim against the employer. The Court’s decision took a strange turn, resulting in a victory for the employer that skirted a primary issue in the case.

Here’s what happened: Laura Symczyk filed a collective action against her employer, Genesis Healthcare, claiming that it had an unfair policy of docking employees for a 30-minute meal break every shift, whether or not the employee had to work during that time. (If an employee must work through a meal, the employee is entitled to be paid; nobody disputes this basic assertion underlying the employee’s case.) Symczyk was the only named employee in the case, but anticipated that others would join in once the collective action was conditionally certified: that is, once the court found that the group of employees were similarly situated to Symczyk because they were subject to the same policy or practice.

Before Symczyk tried to certify the collective action, Genesis offered to settle her claim. Genesis said it would pay her $7,500, plus fees and costs. Symczyk didn’t respond, and Genesis withdrew the offer.

This settlement offer was made under Rule 68 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Under Rule 68, if one party doesn’t accept a settlement offer, that party will be responsible for all of its lawsuit costs after the date the offer was made, unless that party gets a judgment that’s better than the settlement offer. The purpose of this Rule is to give both sides a strong incentive to settle: The defendant has good reason to offer a generous settlement, both to get out of the lawsuit and to make it more likely that the plaintiff won’t do better at trial. The plaintiff has a good reason to accept, both because the offer is likely to be generous and because the plaintiff may have to foot a large litigation bill if the judgment isn’t better than the settlement.

With me so far? Because here’s where things get weird. The trial court threw out the lawsuit, finding that Symczyk no longer had an active dispute against the company because she had been offered all of the relief to which she was entitled. Because Symczyk no longer had a claim, she couldn’t represent other employees, and so the whole case got tossed.

The problem is that Symczyk didn’t accept the settlement offer; she turned it down. She didn’t get any money in settlement and, because the court tossed her case, she won’t get any money at trial. This should not be possible: Plaintiffs who turn down a Rule 64 settlement offer have a right to take their chances in court. The plaintiffs may win or they may lose, but they buy the opportunity to take their best shot by forgoing the settlement. It isn’t fair to throw a case out when the plaintiffs have neither settlement nor judgment in hand. Nonetheless, one federal judiciary circuit has interpreted Rule 64 to allow this type of penalty, presumably in an effort to put a stop to unnecessary litigation.

But the Court skipped right past this issue to decide that, if Symczyk’s case was properly dismissed, then she can no longer represent the group. Employee attorneys take issue with this, arguing that employees should have a chance to replace the named plaintiff-employee when this happens and continue with the lawsuit. Otherwise, defendant-employers could “pick off” the named employee (by making a Rule 68 offer) and get any collective action filed against it thrown out of court.

This is an interesting argument, but not the one the Court should have decided. In almost any federal court, Symczyk’s case would not have been dismissed and she would still be capable of representing the group. By leaving this fundamental issue undecided, the Court hasn’t clarified things very much for those on either side of an FLSA collective action.

It was bound to happen: All those Harlem Shake videos on YouTube have finally gotten the attention of the lawyers. According to Law.com, the Federal Aviation Association is investigating safety concerns over a Shake incident by passengers on a Frontier Airlines flight. (You will perhaps not be surprised to learn that the group was led by members of Colorado College’s Ultimate Frisbee team.) Safety concerns were also cited in the firing of a group of Australian miners for their on-the-job Shake performance. (See more in the Law.com article, When the Harlem Shake Bumps Against Workplace Policy.)

The article didn’t even scratch the surface of employees recently fired for participating in dance crazes, including an Oxford Librarian fired for allowing the filming of a Harlem Shake video at the University, and the Gagnam Style 14, a group of young lifeguards in Southern California who were fired, then rehired, after posting their homage video. Ride those horsies straight to the unemployment line, kids! Even Conan O’Brien has gotten into the act, firing an Indian chief, an astronaut, a giant banana, and someone dressed as a pillow, just as they start gettin’ their Shake on. (Okay, so this last one seems to be a parody.)

Some employment lawyers have taken this opportunity to talk about the infiltration of social media into the workplace, draining company resources and lowering employee productivity. I suppose that’s fair enough, and there may be true safety concerns when employees are getting their groove on down a mine shaft. On the other hand, some of these videos look to be real morale boosters. They can even be useful to employers: A local rescue group for older dogs (Muttville) has posted theirs — which includes people dressed as dogs and actual dogs — as a promotional video. At least we can be glad it isn’t thirty years ago, when the Streak was popular! Oh wait, it still is for this fired guy.

In last week’s State of the Union address, President Obama spoke of many things. Not shoes and ships and sealing wax, but immigration reform, proposals to stop gun violence, climate change, and energy policy. The proposal that seemed to get the most press afterwards, however, was his call to raise the minimum wage to $9 (from the current rate of $7.25 an hour) and tie further increases to the cost of living.

Perhaps one reason this got the most press is that it’s so concise. Unlike, for example, immigration reform or steps to halt climate change, raising the minimum wage is simple and straightforward. The details of the proposal are clear. No comprehensive plan is necessary, and there aren’t a lot of moving parts. Of course, that doesn’t mean the proposal is without controversy. The Chamber of Commerce has long opposed increases in the minimum wage, and other business groups have come out against any increases.

What would be the practical effect of the President’s proposal? Currently, 19 states and the District of Columbia require employers to pay a higher minimum wage than the federal rate of $7.25 an hour. As of today, however, only one state — Washington — has a minimum wage of at least $9. As a practical matter, this means wages would go up in virtually every state if the rate were raised all at once. (Except in cities that have their own higher minimum wages. In San Francisco, for example, employers must pay at least $10.55 an hour; where I work, in Berkeley, vendors with the city must pay at least $13.03 an hour with medical benefits, or $15.20 an hour without.)

On February 6, 2013, the Department of Labor issued its final regulations implementing statutory amendments to the FMLA. These regulations incorporate the amendments Congress passed in 2010. Among other things, the 2010 amendments:

• tweaked the way eligibility and hours are calculated for flight crews
• expanded the right to take qualifying exigency leave to cover not only employees with family members in the National Guard and Reserves, but also employees with family members in the regular armed forces, and
• expanded the right to take military caregiver leave to cover not only employees with family members who were seriously injured while on active military duty, but also employees with family members who exacerbated a preexisting injury while on active duty and employees with family members who are veterans suffering from a serious injury incurred while on active duty.

About a year ago, the Department of Labor issued proposed regulations implementing these provisions and seeking input from the public on a few key issues, including how to implement the leave provision to care for a veteran. Rather than issuing proposed regulations on this topic, the Department decided to hold off until it had received comments and issued its final regulations. As a result, the Department delayed the effective date of this provision. Until it issued final regulations defining the key terms (including who qualifies as a veteran and what constitutes a serious injury for a veteran), the Department took the position that employers were not legally required to provide this type of FMLA leave.

That has now changed. As of the effective date of the final regulations (March 8, 2013), employers are now required to provide FMLA leave to employees who need time off to care for a family member who is a veteran and suffered a serious injury while on active duty.

The final regulations have changed military family leave in a few important ways:

• Veterans defined. One of the reasons why Congress amended the FMLA was to allow time off for employees to care for family members who had served in the military and later manifested serious health problems, notably PTSD. The final regulations define “serious injury,” and make clear that injuries are covered whether they manifest before or after the veteran leaves the military. The veteran must have been in the military in the five years before the employee first takes FMLA leave. However, the time between the Congressional amendments (October 28, 2009) and the effective date of the final regulations (March 8, 2013) doesn’t count against this five-year limit. The Department excluded this time because employers weren’t required to give leave to care for an injured veteran during this period. 
• Qualifying exigencies expanded. As required by Congress, the final rule expands qualifying exigency leave to cover not only family members who are members of the National Guard and Reserves, but also family members who are in the regular armed forces and are deployed to a foreign country. This type of leave is intended to allow employers to handle practical matters arising from a family member’s deployment. The final regulations make a few changes to this type of leave. For example, employees may take up to 15 days off for a family member’s rest and recuperation leave (the previous limit was five days). The final regulations also add a new type of qualifying exigency leave, to allow employees to take time off to make arrangements for a military family member’s parent who is incapable of self-care. For example, the employee might need to hire a caretaker for the parent, tour care facilities, and so on.

The Department of Labor has issued a helpful FAQ set on the final regulations.

Here’s hoping your holidays are happier than Melissa Nelson’s. Nelson was working as a dental assistant when her boss, James Knight, fired her because she posed a threat to his marriage. Knight, whose wife also worked in the dental office, apparently found Nelson so irresistible that he just couldn’t work with her any longer. In other words, she was fired, Knight admitted, for being too darn hot. Nelson, who is married with children, had worked in the office for nine years before being sent packing.

Last week, the Iowa Supreme Court put a lump of coal in Nelson’s stocking when it found that she had no claim against Knight for sex discrimination. The court found that Nelson wasn’t fired because she was a woman, but because Knight found her so attractive. Even though that attraction presumably wouldn’t have existed had Nelson been male, the court found that this decision wasn’t ultimately based on gender, but on personal feelings. The court found it persuasive, for example, that Knight had hired another woman to take Nelson’s place.

Generally speaking, courts in employment cases have found that attraction isn’t about gender per se, but about chemistry. After all, the boss who favors his paramour isn’t treating all women the same; by definition, he is favoring one woman at the expense of others (and men, too). A male boss with an attraction problem discriminates, legally, only when he treats women similarly. In the case of favoritism, a boss who made sex the price of favorable treatment — and made the “product” available to anyone willing to pay — would cross the line. In this case, the court stated that it might have ruled differently if Knight fired a number of women because he was attracted to all of them.

But on reading the court’s opinion, it’s hard to avoid feeling that they have missed much of the point. This case is so chock full of gender stereotyping, it feels like we’ve traveled back in time to the days when women were first entering the workforce. For example:

• Knight’s argument is that Nelson’s very presence in his office was the problem — not his inability to control himself. Even in his own telling, Knight’s problem was that he feared he would be unable to stop himself from trying to have an affair with Nelson. This hearkens back to . . . well, to the Garden, really. Women are sexual, corrupting, the source of temptation. It’s not what women do or how they act; it’s just what they are. That’s how this case became about the hot employee and not about the boss with the active imagination. (Speaking of the Garden, Nelson had the pleasure of being fired by the tag team of Knight and his pastor, who sat silently while Knight read a prepared statement informing Nelson that their “relationship had become a detriment to Knight’s family.” )
• Despite Knight’s efforts to paint himself as a family man trying to protect the sanctity of his marriage, the evidence tells a different story. In fact, this could easily have been a sexual harassment case. Knight admitted telling Nelson that if she saw a bulge in his pants, she could conclude that her clothing –scrubs, according to her! — was too tight. He also told her it was a good thing he only found her tops too tight, because if she also wore tight pants, he would “get it coming and going.” Knight said that Nelson told him she and her husband had infrequent sex; his response was that this would be like having a Lamborghini — her — in the garage and never driving it. He also texted her a question about her orgasms. Strangely, few of these facts have made it into news reports about the case, nor did they figure in the court’s analysis. Somehow, this case still seems to be about the old-fashioned family man, possibly misguided but trying to do the right thing. And not about the icky horn-dog boss.
• Speaking of stereotypes, you have got to feel a bit sorry for Knight’s wife, who not only had to witness all of this at work but whose jealousy was blamed for the firing. In fact, the Iowa Supreme Court framed the central question of the case like this: “Can a male employer terminate a female employee because the employer’s wife, due to no fault of the employee, is concerned about the nature of the relationship between the employer and the employee?” Oh the jealous wife, ruining everyone’s workplace fun, frowning on comments about bulging pants and orgasms. What a killjoy.
• For me, the strangest fact of the case comes with even more stereotypes. After firing Nelson, Knight — again, with his pastor — had a meeting with Nelson’s husband. Knight reassured him that his wife had not done anything wrong or inappropriate, but had to be fired because Knight was afraid he would one day try to have an affair with her. In other words, I just fired your wife because I really want to have sex with her, but I want you to know it’s not her fault. And I’m so glad we could talk out your wife’s firing, man to man.

About a month ago, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued enforcement guidance on the use of arrest and conviction records in employment decisions. The EEOC has long warned employers that blanket policies of excluding anyone with an arrest or conviction could lead to discrimination claims, given the much higher arrest and conviction rates of African American and Latino men. This guidance clarifies the rules for employers, giving examples of the kinds of policies and decisions that might violate Title VII and providing a framework for employers who take criminal records into account in hiring, retention, or promotions.

The guidance points out that consideration of criminal records could lead to disparate treatment or disparate impact claims. In a disparate treatment case, the employee would have to show that the employer treated people in different protected classes (for example, those of different races) differently in considering criminal records. If an employer ran a criminal background check only on non-White applicants, excused minor offenses by White applicants while excluding Latino applicants for the same types of records, or assumed that an African American with a youthful drug offense posed a safety risk while a White applicant with a similar offense did not, that employer is treating applicants differently based on their race or national origin.

The trickier situation involves disparate impact claims, in which the employer’s apparently neutral policy has a disproportionately negative effect on people in a particular protected class. Because arrest and conviction rates vary so much by race and national origin, a blanket policy of excluding all applicants with a criminal record could easily result in a disparate impact against African American and Latino men. This is the reasoning behind the ongoing “ban the box” campaign, to get rid of the check box on employment applications asking whether applicants have ever been arrested or convicted of a crime. A company that routinely disqualifies any applicant with a criminal record from further consideration for any job could well be courting a discrimination claim.

Of course, this doesn’t mean employers don’t have good reason to screen out applicants with a record of particular offenses for particular jobs. No one wants a convicted sex offender working in a classroom or someone who just finished serving a felony sentence for identity theft handling confidential customer information. The EEOC provides a three factor test, which employers can use to ensure that any criminal record exclusion accurately distinguishes between those who pose an unacceptable risk and those who do not. The employer must assess:

• the nature and gravity of the criminal offense or conduct
• how much time hass passed since the offense or sentence, and
• the nature of the job (including where it is performed, how much supervision and interaction with others the employee will have, and so on).

Even if this test indicates that the applicant may pose a risk, the employer should allow the applicant an opportunity to provide mitigating information demonstrating that he or she shouldn’t be excluded based on the offense. For example, the applicant might show that the criminal record is simply inaccurate. Or, the applicant might provide facts about what really happened, previous work history, rehabilitation efforts, and so on, in an effort to demonstrate that the record shouldn’t disqualify the applicant from the position.

Becoming the first state in what looks like a trend, Maryland has enacted a law, Senate Bill 433, that prohibits employers from requesting or requiring that employees or applicants hand over their passwords to social media accounts and other personal online accounts. The California legislature is currently considering a similar law, as are a handful of others. And the federal government isn’t far behind: Senators Schumer and Blumenthal have asked the Department of Justice and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to investigate whether asking employees or applicants for their passwords violates current federal law.

It’s fitting that Maryland was first in line: It was the case of Robert Collins, who was asked to provide his Facebook password during a recertification interview for his job at the Maryland Department of Corrections, that first publicized this issue. (Here’s my previous post about his case.)

No matter how people feel about whether employers should consider public posts in making job decisions, most everyone agrees that information an employee takes steps to shield should remain private. As Senator Schumer put it, requiring applicants to hand over their Facebook passwords is akin to asking applicants “for their house keys or to read their diaries.”

Not to be left behind, Facebook has also weighed in on the issue by making it a violation of the site’s code of conduct to “share or solicit a Facebook password.” In a statement by Erin Egan, the site’s Chief Privacy Officer, Facebook says that it has “worked really hard to give you the tools to control who sees your information”; she also warns employers that they could expose themselves to “unanticipated legal liability” by demanding user passwords.

As more states consider and pass these bills, employees and applicants would be wise to take advantage of the protection by scrubbing their public online identity and shielding their private information behind a password. Apparently, however, that’s easier said than done. A recent study (reported on ZDNet) revealed that users find Facebook’s privacy policies incomprehensible — in fact, harder to understand than government notices, credit card agreements, and even bank rewards program documents. (The good news for Facebook: Users found Google’s privacy policies even more difficult to understand.) Perhaps that explains why 13 million Facebook users, according to a recent Consumer Reports projection, either aren’t aware of Facebook’s privacy settings or haven’t tried to use them.

In a landmark decision, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has ruled that Title VII’s prohibition on sex discrimination is broad enough to encompass discrimination based on gender identity and transgender status. The Commission held that Mia Macy, the complainant, was entitled to have her discrimination claims investigated by the federal agency that denied her a job, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (still referred to as the ATF, despite that final E).

According to the EEOC’s decision, Macy was living as a man and working as a police detective in Phoenix, Arizona, when she heard that the ATF has an open position at its crime laboratory in Walnut Creek, California. Macy was planning to move to the San Francisco Bay Area, and contacted the agency about the position in late 2010 or early 2011. Macy was told twice that the job was hers pending completion of a background check. Macy was also told that she would be working as an outside contractor through a company called Aspen of DC. In March of 2011, Macy contacted Aspen and asked them to inform the Walnut Creek lab that she was transitioning from male to female. Five days later, Aspen informed Macy that it had passed the information on. Five days after that, Macy was told that the job was no longer available due to budget cuts.

Finding the timing of the decision questionable, Macy contacted an EEO counselor at the ATF to ask about the situation. (This is how federal agencies handle discrimination issues: The employee or applicant must first complain to the very agency he or she believes committed discrimination. The agency then decides how to handle the charge; typically, the agency investigates and makes a decision, which the employee can appeal to the EEOC.) Macy was then told that the position had actually been filled by someone else who was farther along in the background investigation process. Finding this even more questionable, Macy filed a discrimination complaint with the ATF, stating that she was discriminated against based on sex, sex stereotyping, and gender identity.

The ATF said it would process her claim of sex discrimination, but would defer her claim of gender identity discrimination to a separate procedure, as that claim was not cognizable under Title VII. Macy appealed, claiming that by dividing her complaint up like this, the ATF was effectively denying her basic allegation that she was not hired because she revealed her transgender status. And, the EEOC agreed, finding that claims of discrimination based on gender identity and transgender status are claims of sex discrimination, and fall under Title VII’s prohibitions. The Commission pointed out what previous cases made clear: Discrimination based on sex includes discrimination based on gender — and gender encompasses not just a person’s biological sex at birth, but also “the cultural and social aspects associated with masculinity and femininity.”

The Supreme Court had already held that refusing to promote a woman because she did not act or dress in stereotypically feminine ways was a form of sex discrimination. In Macy’s case, the Commission held that discrimination based on gender identity or gender nonconformity was, inescapably, a form of gender discrimination: The employer is making a decision based on perceptions of how a person who is “male” or “female” should look, dress, and act. In an interesting comparison, the EEOC pointed out that Title VII’s prohibition on religious discrimination would protect an employee whose employer fired her because she converted from one religion to another. Even if the employer claimed to be biased only against “converts,” this would still constitute religious discrimination — and it would not create a “new” protected class. The Commission sent the case back to the ATF for proper processing as a cognizable complaint.

As the Commission’s decision notes, other courts have reached similar conclusions, so in some ways this case is merely the next step in that evolution of the law. At the same time, this is a huge development — and a huge victory for the LGBT community. The EEOC is the enforcer of the nation’s civil rights, and its decisions are tremendously influential. What makes this case even more interesting is that the sex stereotyping claim is potentially quite strong (I say potentially because the only known fact at this point is the timing of the decision which, while suspicious, isn’t dispositive). Macy’s skills and experience were all in traditionally male endeavors. She was a police detective, applied for a job as a ballistics technician, and according to news reports, is also a veteran. As the EEOC pointed out, the gender identity claim may not even be necessary for her to win. If the ATF simply wanted to hire a man for the job, and disqualified her once she transitioned to living as a woman, it’s a plain old sex discrimination case.