The World Cup kicks off on June 11, and plenty of matches will be played during the workday. (June 17, I'm looking at you. Portugal vs. DR Congo starts at 1 p.m. ET, followed by England vs. Croatia just three hours later.)

Ohio's new AI Ethics Guide for Lawyers is worth reading.

"[O]nly AI tools offered with adequate security measures and other confidentiality safeguards should be used when client-related information is disclosed (or information possibly leading to the identity of a client)."

"Regardless of the AI tool utilized, lawyers should always anonymize client information and refrain from inputting details that could lead to the discovery of the client's identity."

For many craft breweries, the taproom is where the magic happens. It's where customers connect with your brand, your beer, and your people. 

Barbie Bassett, a longtime white news anchor for WLBT, lost her job after two on-air comments her employer deemed racially offensive. First, she referred to a Black reporter's grandmother as "grand m*mmy." WLBT received viewer and employee complaints and gave Bassett a written warning.

Less than six months later, during an on-air segment about Snoop Dogg, Bassett dropped the phrase, "fo shizzle, my n**zle." A Black co-anchor immediately told her, "I can't believe you just said the N word on live TV."

Complaints followed, as did national media, and then Bassett's termination.

She sued, claiming race discrimination. Her argument was, basically, WLBT fired her because she was white, relying heavily on testimony from the station's general manager that "there are some things that Black people can say that White people can't say."

The 5th Circuit was not having it. Title VII does not require employers to make perfect decisions. It requires them to make non-discriminatory ones. WLBT said it fired Bassett because she twice used racially offensive language on air, the second time after a written warning. That is a legitimate, non-discriminatory reason.

Maybe WLBT was wrong about what Bassett meant. Maybe she meant no harm. Maybe she thought she was merely quoting Snoop. None of that mattered. As the court put it, management does not have to make proper decisions, only non-discriminatory ones.

That is the key employer takeaway. Intent does not always save an employee. Impact matters. Reputation matters. And when the employee has already been warned, the next mistake may be the last.

This case also offers a reminder about "context." Yes, context matters. But context is not a magic wand. "I was just quoting a song" will not always get an employee back on the payroll. Some words carry freight. Some phrases carry history. And some live-TV comments leave employers with little choice but fire.

Employers should still be careful. Investigate. Document. Apply standards consistently. Avoid loose comments that sound like different rules for different races. But when an employee violates workplace standards after a clear warning, courts are not likely to second-guess the employer's business judgment.

Or, to borrow from Snoop: with Title VII, you have to mind your Ps and Qs … and definitely your Ns.

One of the biggest mistakes I see employers make, over and over again, is treating employee wage information as "confidential."

Policies that ban employees from discussing pay.

Confidentiality rules that include "wages," "salary," "compensation," or "payroll information."

Managers who tell employees they are not allowed to ask coworkers what they earn.

HR departments that discipline employees for talking about their pay.
Employers that fire employees for creating or sharing salary spreadsheets.

Stop it.

Federal labor law protects discussions of employees' pay data by non-supervisory employees. Period.

Vermont Information Processing learned that lesson the hard way.

Software engineer Christopher Bendel and a coworker compared salaries over Google Workspace. Then Bendel created a spreadsheet. Within hours, about 25 employees added their pay information. Management found it, hated it, disabled it, and fired him.

VIP defended the termination by calling Bendel disruptive, disloyal, hostile, and guilty of misusing company technology. The D.C. Circuit was not buying it.

The court upheld the NLRB's finding that VIP unlawfully fired Bendel because of his protected activity. The timing mattered. VIP had planned a new role for him before discovering the spreadsheet. Within roughly 90 minutes, he was gone. The shifting explanations looked like what they were: excuses.

The court gave VIP a partial win as to the other three fired employees, but not because salary sharing lost protection. The issue was procedural. The Board relied on a broader "workplace conditions" theory than the complaint had fairly charged.

Do not miss the forest for that procedural tree.

The core lesson is unchanged. Federal labor law protects pay transparency among non-supervisory employees, union or no union. Few things are more obviously about mutual aid or protection than employees comparing wages to determine whether they are paid fairly.

That means you cannot ban pay discussions. You cannot tell employees their wages are confidential. You cannot discipline them for asking coworkers what they make. You cannot fire them for creating a salary spreadsheet. And you cannot launder retaliation through complaints about attitude, disruption, loyalty, or culture fit.

Employers may still enforce neutral rules about working time, access to systems, trade secrets, harassment, threats, and sabotage. But those rules must be real, consistently enforced, and not a pretext to punish protected pay talk.

If your pay practices are defensible, you should be able to defend them. If they are not, the spreadsheet is not the problem. Your pay practices are.

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