This week in suits by suits:

• Two former interns amended their class action lawsuit against Fox Entertainment, arguing that Fox's unpaid internship program violated minimum wage and overtime laws by effectively using unpaid interns to replace regular employees.  The lawsuit alleges that unpaid interns were used as "a crucial labor force on its productions," serving as production assistants, bookkeepers, secretaries, and janitors.
• Deborah Sturgeon and ten other named plaintiffs filed a class action against AT&T, arguing that AT&T's lunch break policies for technicians -- which allegedly prohibit technicians eating in their vehicles from playing music, using the vehicle's heating or air conditioning, and from reading or otherwise using the balance of their lunch hour for personal activities -- effectively amount to requiring those employees to work through lunch without pay.
• California Attorney General Kamala Harris filed a civil suit against Help Hospitalized Veterans (HHV), a charitable organization based in California that provides hospitalized veterans with therapeutic arts & crafts activities.  The Attorney General's lawsuit alleges that certain officers and directors of HHV breached their fiduciary duties by wasting charitable assets on excessive compensation and retirement payments to its officers, golf memberships, and a condominium, and also alleges improper accounting and self-dealing in connection with HHV's fundraising efforts.  The suit seeks the removal of the named officers and directors, restitution, civil penalties, and punitive damages.  In 2008, HHV's then-president, Roger Chapin, was required to testify before Congress regarding similar allegations.
• In perhaps the strangest item on this list, U.S. District Court Judge J. Paul Oetken denied a terminated employee's motion for summary judgment on her breach of contract claims against her former employer, Watson Enterprises, Inc. (WEI), a Mercedes-Benz dealership in Greenwich, Connecticut, as well as dismissed the employer's counterclaims for unjust enrichment and civil theft.  Judge Oetken allowed both parties to proceed to trial on the central allegation -- whether the employee was "worthless" and hired solely because she was the mistress of one of WEI's former partners.  Salacious details (safe for work) from the record are excerpted by Courthouse News Service.
• A federal jury in Washington D.C. awarded $3.5 million to a lifeguard who was sexually harassed by her supervisor at the Takoma Aquatic Center, a public swimming pool in Takoma Park, Maryland.
• U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema required a plaintiff alleging discrimination in her termination by her employer, Navy Federal Credit Union, to pay nearly $34,000 in legal fees incurred as defense costs after Judge Brinkema advised the plaintiff at a pretrial conference that her lawsuit could not survive summary judgment.  The plaintiff proceeded anyway, and the Court ordered her to pay defense costs associated with defending the motion.

• The Inbox

We continue our examination of the many things today's CEOs need to keep in mind -- things they may not have taught in business school.  Today, it's the sometimes hot-button issue of the role of religion in the workplace, this time with a look at a recently-filed lawsuit that’s drawn considerable public attention.  (See also here and here.)

Now, most businesses have some sort of dress code, including Zuckerman Spaeder.  When a company’s employees routinely interact with customers and the public – say, a retail store or restaurant – many employers go beyond a simple dress code in an effort to establish a company-wide uniform “look.”  Perhaps no place on earth goes quite as far as Disneyland, where employees are considered “cast members” and – even when not dressed as a giant cartoon mouse – are asked to reflect certain “themes” throughout the park.

So what happens when one of those “cast members,” a young Muslim woman working as a hostess at a Disney café, requests the right to wear a hijab, the traditional Muslim headscarf?

• Religious Discrimination‎
• Title VII

Sexual discrimination claims continue to be big news in the world of suits by suits.  We’ve previously commented at some length regarding the novel issues raised in the sexual harassment lawsuit brought by former Kleiner Perkins partner Ellen Pao.

Today, we turn to a related and equally unique issue:  a sexual orientation claim brought under the auspices of the Americans With Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1201 et seq.  Although there is no federal statute that protects employees from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation generally, Brian Anthony Martinez, the former international managing director of television for Bloomberg Media, brought a lawsuit against his former employer in 2011, alleging that he was terminated after Bloomberg discovered that he had undergone therapy for domestic abuse from his male partner, thus (arguably) bringing his claims under the ADA.

• Arbitration
• Breach of Contract
• Discrimination
• Wrongful Termination

This week's latest news in suits by suits:

• Former Univision National Radio Sales President Laura Hagan has sued the company, its parent company, Katz Media, and the now-deceased CEO of Katz Media, Stu Olds, for discrimination and breach of her employment contract in federal court in New York. Hagan is 66 and was born in Ecuador. She claims that, despite her division consistently exceeding sales projections, Olds asked her to resign without explanation in October 2008. The EEOC issued Hagan a right to sue letter in May 2012. According to Hagan, Olds made repeated remarks to Hagan concerning her age, race and national origin, and, at a managers’ meeting in 2004 attended by 250 company employees, included in a slide presentation a photo of Carmen Miranda (of Chiquita Banana) that was manipulated to show Hagan’s face.
• Earlier this week, Facebook and the ACLU filed friend-of-the-court briefs in the appeal currently pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit presenting the issue of whether "liking" a political candidate on Facebook is constitutionally-protected speech. The issue arose in the workplace. Plaintiff was a deputy in the sheriff’s office in Hampton, Virginia, and clicked that he "liked" the Facebook page of the candidate challenging his boss in an election. His boss was re-elected sheriff and then fired plaintiff and some of his colleagues, allegedly because they did not support him in the election. A federal judge found that "liking" on Facebook is not protected speech and granted summary judgment to the sheriff. Kashmir Hill of Forbes has written this analysis of the arguments presented by Facebook and the ACLU that "liking" is, in fact, speech protected by the First Amendment.
• The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has held that former Thomas M. Cooley Law School professor Lynn Branham was not entitled to any rights protecting her against termination beyond those provided in her one-year employment contract. Branham argued that the ABA’s suggested tenure policies, including its suggestion that professors "should have permanent or continuous tenure" should be read into her employment contract. The Sixth Circuit held that Branham’s employment contract did not incorporate that suggestion from the ABA, which is only a suggestion, not a requirement, in any event.

• Breach of Contract
• Discrimination
• Social Media
• Summary Judgment
• The Inbox

This just in: on Thursday, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed a new law making it unlawful for an employer to request or require an employee or prospective employee to provide the password for his or her account or profile on a social networking site. The law, which amends Illinois’s existing Right to Privacy in the Workplace Act, and goes into effect on January 1, 2013, supposedly addresses the trend of employers requiring job applicants to give access to their Facebook profiles as part of the job application process.

• Discrimination
• Social Media

The latest gold medalists in the race for our attention: 

• Not that Chick-fil-A needed more publicity, but Laura Hautala of the Los Angeles Times brought us the fascinating story of Adam Smith, chief financial officer of a Tuscon medical equipment manufacturer named Vante.  Smith went to the drive-thru of his local Chick-fil-A, told the employees that they worked for a hateful company, and then posted the confrontation on YouTube.  Shortly thereafter, Vante fired him.  In a press statement, Vante did not identify Smith’s ordering of free water as the straw that broke the camel’s back.

• Discrimination
• The Inbox
• Wrongful Termination

On Monday, we talked about how plaintiffs can prove pregnancy discrimination by direct evidence – the proverbial “smoking gun.”  Now, it’s time to tackle how a plaintiff can prove pregnancy discrimination under the McDonnell-Douglas test, through making a prima facie case of discrimination and then rebutting the employer’s assertion that it acted for legitimate, nonpretextual reasons.  Once again, the star of our hypothetical scenario is Marissa Mayer, the newsworthy new Yahoo! CEO.

• Discrimination
• Pregnancy Discrimination

Marissa Mayer is big news these days.  She’s the new Yahoo! CEO, at only 37 years old.  She’s also expecting her first child, and made waves when she told Fortune Magazine that her maternity leave would be a “few weeks long” and she’d “work through it.” 

All of the hullaballoo over Mayer’s career and personal life made the Suits by Suits team curious.  What if Mayer suffered repercussions at Yahoo! due to her pregnancy or upcoming childbirth?  How would she be able to prove that Yahoo! discriminated against her?

• Discrimination
• Pregnancy Discrimination

• Bill Singer, writing in Forbes, discusses one potential consequence for financial industry employees who arbitrate employment disputes with former employers: future employers can see them as willing to fight these disputes and this negative branding can harm chances of employment.
• Evan J. Shenkman, in a piece posted on Lexology, discusses an interesting New Jersey case involving an alcoholic nurse who also had anxiety problems: when she was terminated for not showing up to work, the employer suggested she was being fired for both alcoholism and lack of attendance – and that, therefore, a jury could have concluded she was wrongfully terminated for her alcoholism (attendance is generally a valid reason for termination, the court held).
• This article doesn’t deal with United States law (our usual focus here on Suits by Suits), but in a ‎tip of our beret to our friends in Britain hosting the Olympics, here’s an article that those with an ‎interest in UK employment law might like: Charlotte Lloyd-Jones discusses a recent case there ‎where employees were fired for “gross misconduct on the basis that they were preparing to ‎compete with their employer,” as a breach of an employment contract. The appellate tribunal ‎held that just because the employees might compete in the future didn’t supply a basis for firing ‎them in the present. It also held that the employees have to drive on the left.‎
• And, from the nightmares of the near future department: should employees post on Facebook ‎while they’re in termination meetings with their employers? And if they do, what should ‎employers do about it? It’s already happened, in a case involving an American Airlines ‎employee. Daniel Schwarz has some interesting commentary on this issue here. Welcome to the ‎future!‎

• Arbitration
• The Inbox

Here’s another post in our occasional series on religious discrimination in the workplace.  Today, we’re looking at a decision by the federal Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals that brings together three different concepts: religious organizations as employers, disabled persons as employees, and federal laws that apply to hiring.  As when you mix any three ingredients that are fine on their own, the results can be disastrous.  Throw in legislative history – the record Congress creates when it writes a law, and which some courts look to for guidance on how to interpret that law – and you have one fine mess. 

• Discrimination
• Religious Discrimination‎