How do you fireproof your workplace decisions from discrimination lawsuits? By doing exactly what Kent State University just did.

A transgender professor sued after being denied a leadership role and campus transfer, claiming sex discrimination. On appeal, the 6th Circuit affirmed the summary dismissal of the case, because the employer had its ducks in a row.

Here's what happened, and why the university won.

The professor unleashed weeks of profanity-laced tweets calling colleagues "cishet white ladies," "transphobes," and worse. Colleagues reported feeling harassed.

The dean didn't overreact. She rescinded a special workload arrangement but still invited the professor to participate on committees.

When the professor sought a campus transfer, faculty committees said "no" — citing fit, collegiality, and department needs. Notably, this same department had unanimously granted tenure just a year earlier.

When a procedural hiccup arose, the dean ordered a do-over vote. That's the opposite of discrimination

The court saw exactly what was happening: Kent State had clear, documented, legitimate reasons for its actions, none of which had anything to do with gender identity.

The lessons for every employer:

1. Document decisions in real time. The dean's contemporaneous emails explaining why she was rescinding the workload change became the best evidence that the move wasn't discriminatory.

2. Stick to process, even when it's messy. By ordering a clean, second committee vote, the dean showed respect for procedure, which killed any claim of bias.

3. Focus on conduct, not identity. The university responded to unprofessional conduct (personal attacks on colleagues), not to who the professor was, and that distinction carried the day in court.

By honing in on those three things—documentation, process, and conduct, you'll put yourself in a much stronger position to defend any dispute that lands in court.

Outrage mobs shouldn't run your HR department. Yet Vice President JD Vance is urging the outrage mobs on. "When you see someone celebrating Charlie's murder, call them out and call their employer." That was his closing call to action as guest host of Charlie Kirk's podcast yesterday.

Plenty didn't need the nudge. Within 24 hours of Kirk's killing, employers nationwide—from media outlets to universities, airlines to retailers—were disciplining or firing staff over posts deemed "insensitive" or "celebratory" of his death.

A cottage industry of doxxing quickly formed. A site originally branded Expose Charlie's Murderers (since rebranded Charlie Kirk Data Foundation for obvious legal reasons) began cataloging names, employers, and posts. Activists like Laura Loomer pledged to ruin careers.

With the rise of remote work, wage and hour laws have forced employers to grapple with what should be a straightforward question: When does a remote employee's workday actually begin and end?

In Lott v. Recker Consulting, the Southern District of Ohio offered a clear answer.

Kiara Lott and 130 of her fellow Patient Care Associates worked from home as call-center reps. Their day started with the familiar remote routine: coffee, logging in, Duo security, VPN, ADP timekeeping, Microsoft Teams, and then opening the phone system and workflow tools to handle patient calls.

They sued under the FLSA, claiming they weren't paid for the minutes spent booting up, logging in, authenticating, and later shutting down. The employer countered that all of that was non-compensable "preliminary" or "postliminary" time.

Here's where the court drew the line:

⏱️ Not compensable: powering on the laptop, entering credentials, dual-authentication, opening ADP, even VPN.

⏱️ Compensable: opening and using the actual tools integral to the job—the softphone, workflow system, client directories, EMR access. The workday starts there. It ends when the last such application is closed.

In other words, for remote workers, pay obligations track the tools actually used to do the job—not merely firing up the machine itself.

Keep in mind: this is just one case, from one federal district court, and it may be an outlier. Other courts (notably the 9th and 10th Circuits) have treated boot-up time in physical call centers as compensable. This court explicitly declined to follow that path, reasoning that "turning on a computer" is too generic—it opens up Reddit just as easily as it opens up Epic. The real test is whether the employee has launched the applications that are integral and indispensable to their principal duties.

Here's my takeaway for employer: Define "Workday Start" and "Workday End" in your policies. Spell out that the paid day begins when employees launch the first integral job-related application and ends when they close the last one. Make sure your handbook and supervisor instructions align. And eliminate mixed signals like "be ready at start time" versus "don't touch anything before your shift."

Courts are only beginning to sketch the contours of "hours worked" when the workplace is the kitchen table. In the remote-work era, wage-and-hour compliance lives and dies by clarity. If you don't define the boundaries of the workday, a court just might do it for you.

On this week's episode of The Norah and Dad Show, I check in with Norah as she kicks off her sophomore year of college. We talk about her experiences pledging a sorority, balancing two jobs, navigating classes, and how the dorm food is holding up.

It's a fun conversation about growth, responsibility, and finding your footing in year two of college life.

Below is a quick clip to whet your appetite.

You can listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music, Overcast, on our website, or through your favorite podcast app. And if you enjoy it, please like, review, and subscribe—it really helps us grow!

My family are Gooners. For the uninitiated, that means we're Arsenal Football Club supporters. My 17-year-old son is the most passionate of the lot.

The claimant also referred to case law where the courts and tribunals have raised their concerns around employers using the metric of fit and/or cultural matching when determining who to give a job to. I accept that a degree of caution needs to be used here, but remind myself that there is nothing that explicitly prevents such an assessment. There may be times when it is perfectly lawful for an employer to decide that somebody just will not be a fit with the team and that therefore it would be difficult to work together. An example of this could be a small company where everybody who works in the office is an ardent support of Arsenal Football Club, and they decide to pick an Arsenal fan at interview over a similarly qualified Tottenham Hotspur season ticket holder because they do not want to damage the harmony of the office. 

The decision there would be lawful (albeit taking the example to the extreme would not necessarily be good for business).

Can we still trust the EEOC to enforce our anti-discrimination laws? SCOTUS just green-lit racial profiling. This is bad. Really, really bad. What would you do if ICE showed up at your door? WIRTW #771: the 'americana' edition Does the NLRA protect the lone-wolf complainer?