Beginning on September 1, 2023, the Texas Labor Code will prohibit race discrimination on the basis of an employee’s hair texture or a protective hairstyle commonly or historically associated with race. Protected hairstyle includes braids, locks, and twists. Twenty states have pass similar laws commonly referred to as CROWN Acts. CROWN is an acronym for
The U.S. Supreme Court is considering the future viability of affirmative action plans in the academic sphere and could make significant changes to the legality of race-based admissions policies in colleges and universities. Like academia, over the last twenty years, many companies have adopted diversity and affirmative action programs (even where not required by
In a recent case out of a federal court in Houston, a former African American sales representative for FedEx received a jury verdict in the amount of $366M. In that case, Jennifer Harris claimed that she opposed racial discrimination and that she was retaliated against and terminated for engaging in her protected activity. She brought
In an opinion likely to prove useful to employers defending a termination based on a constructive discharge theory, a Houston Court of Appeals held that a resigning employee whose charge of discrimination lacks an allegation of constructive discharge, fails to exhaust his administrative remedies on that theory. In court of appeals opinion, Parker was an