Watermelon Slur Grounds for Discharge?

¶ … Watermelon Slur Grounds for Discharge? The article was published in Diversity, Inc., on February 2010 as part of their Employment Law section.

The article summarizes a number of different current cases and issues in employment law that pertain to diversity. The title case was of a white transit authority police officer who suggested to his black co-workers that they bring watermelon to work. The court dismissed his case, because there was a whole range of evidence against him and the slur was only the final straw. Several other cases are outlined in this article as well. These include a case about a teacher being discriminated against for being Polish. Another case upheld the decision to transfer a medical resident with Asperger's Disorder. A case was upheld as a boss had tried to use a lack of knowledge of FMLA as a key to his defense. Another case held that absence for dependency treatment is allowable, but absence to due intoxication is not. The quick snapshots from these cases highlight issues that may be of importance to HR practitioners.

This information is beneficial to practitioners because they always must know the current case law regarding discrimination. The reason is simple -- today's case law becomes tomorrow's precedents. As a result, companies need to know what sort of cases have come to the court system, and how those cases were ruled. This knowledge will help the company to structure its own human resources policies. For example, it is clear from this article that executives with the power to fire people should either become better acquainted with FMLA, or there should be a check in the system that forces such a manager to go through an HRM professional before the firing is conducted. Another practical application of this knowledge comes from a couple of different cases, where a company won a case because it had documented past indiscretions of the worker and another company lost because it did not have a well-documented history of poor performance. In the latter case, the company's contention that the firing was for poor performance was viewed by the court as a pretext for dismissal, and the employee won her case.