In what has become an annual tradition for my final post of the year, I present the holiday classic, 'Twas the Employment Law Night Before Christmas … tweaked and updated for 2025.

To all of my readers, connections, and followers, new and legacy, thank you all for reading, commenting, and sharing throughout the year. Please have a happy and, most importantly, healthy and safe holiday season.

I'll see everyone on January 5, 2026, with new content to kick off the new year, including a fresh batch of Worst Employer nominees.

Something has gone sideways when the Chair of the EEOC is publicly urging white men to file discrimination charges.

Yes, I said it that bluntly, because sometimes clarity matters more than politeness.

Let's start with the part Andrea Lucas and her supporters rush to say first: Title VII protects all employees. Race is race. Sex is sex. Discrimination is discrimination. That has always been true.

But that's not the real question. And pretending it is avoids the harder, more important one.

The real question is why Congress passed Title VII in the first place. It wasn't because lawmakers worried white men might someday struggle for professional opportunity. It was passed because entire groups of people, especially Blacks and women, were systematically locked out of jobs, promotions, and whole industries. Not subtly. Not accidentally. By design.

Title VII was a civil rights law aimed at expanding opportunity for the historically marginalized and dismantling a labor market built on exclusion. That context matters. A lot.

So, when the head of the nation's civil rights enforcement agency makes public pleas for white men to file discrimination charges, she isn't just reciting a legal truism. She's making a strategic and moral choice about the purpose of civil-rights enforcement.

That choice is backwards.

This isn't about whether white men can be discriminated against. They can. The law already covers them. Courts already hear their cases. No special encouragement campaign is required.

What's troubling is the suggestion that "anti-white" or "anti-male" discrimination deserves priority attention, at a time when discrimination against marginalized groups is more subtle, more coded, and harder to prove than ever. Bias today rarely announces itself. It shows up as "not a fit," "not leadership material," "not polished," or "lacking presence." The people most insulated from those vague, subjective assessments remain the people most likely to be presumed competent and neutral on arrival.

The EEOC Chair's solicitation of white men isn't a message of neutrality. It's a reframing of civil rights enforcement.

Her shift has consequences. Employers don't become fairer in response to this rhetoric; they become more cautious and more defensive. As a result, they make "safe" hiring choices. Historically, those choices are familiar ones, which is how old inequities quietly reassert themselves.

If an employer excludes someone because they're white or male, enforce the law. Period. But publicly encouraging white men to file charges misreads purpose, history, and present reality.

The EEOC was created to open doors that had been nailed shut for generations. It was not created to reassure the historically powerful that losing exclusive access feels unfair.

Civil rights enforcement should be about expanding opportunity—not manufacturing grievance.

And the moment we forget that is the moment we stop protecting civil rights at all.
Where Apple, Disney, JPMorgan, Target and more landed on DEI in 2025 — via HR Dive

The 6th Circuit just handed employers a clear win in Bowles v. Chicken Salad Chick. The court held that a fast-casual restaurant did not have to accommodate a cashier/service employee who requested to sit for five minutes after every ten minutes of standing. That request would have eliminated essential job functions and fundamentally changed the job.

The Sixth Circuit held that an employer cannot be liable for failing to engage in the ADA interactive process where the employee's requested accommodation is unreasonable as a matter of law, because an interactive-process claim presupposes the existence of a viable reasonable accommodation.

This is the legally correct result and the view of most federal circuits.

But here's the part that employers shouldn't miss. Winning the case doesn't mean the accommodation process was a success.

Too many employers approach accommodation requests defensively, driven by the fear that someone—somewhere—might try to take advantage. And yes, a small minority of employees will push the envelope. And your patience. That's reality.

But you shouldn't design your accommodation process around the outliers.

The ADA isn't a "gotcha" statute, and the interactive process isn't a trap. It's supposed to be a practical, good-faith conversation about how to keep a qualified employee working. When the response to a request starts and ends with "we can't," the employer has already shifted from problem-solving to problem creating. That's when employers lose the plot.

The better approach isn't complicated:

• Listen to the request.
• Ask follow-up questions aimed at solutions.
• Explore alternatives—even if the initial proposal won't work.
• Document the effort, not just the rejection.

This case turned on the fact that the employee's specific request was unreasonable as a matter of law. Next time, it may not be. And when a jury hears that an employer shut the conversation down because "people might abuse it," that explanation usually lands poorly.

Most employees asking for accommodations aren't gaming the system. They're just trying to work. If employers govern accommodation requests based on the few who might abuse them, they end up mistreating the many who won't—and inviting exactly the kind of litigation they're trying to avoid.

Winning cases is good. Avoiding them is better.

After a year of collecting 12 nominees and then letting you all decide from the final seven via ranked-choice voting, we didn't even need a second round. The votes were that decisive and the result was never in doubt.

Today is your final day to VOTE for the Worst Employer of 2025

---

One of my recurring professional nightmares is advising a client on a termination that goes badly.

Not "this ends in a lawsuit" badly—but catastrophically badly. The kind that devolves into workplace violence, an active shooter situation, or some other despicable act that no one saw coming but everyone later says should have been anticipated.

That fear drives my mantra with clients: you can never be too careful. If there's even a whiff that something could go sideways—emotional volatility, erratic behavior, mental health concerns, escalating conduct—you take reasonable steps to make sure it doesn't. You plan. You slow down. You involve the right people. You treat the termination not as an HR task, but as a safety event.

Which brings me to former Michigan head football coach Sherrone Moore.

Based on public reporting, Michigan terminated Moore "for cause" after an investigation concluded he had an inappropriate relationship with a staff member. Within hours, Moore was taken into custody in connection with an alleged assault. Subsequent reporting suggests university leadership was aware of mental health concerns before the termination, yet the firing allegedly occurred in a one-on-one meeting, without HR present and without security.

From a risk-management perspective, this is about as close to a worst-case scenario as it gets. Here are five lessons every employer should take to heart:

First, terminations are safety events. Especially when misconduct, emotional instability, or mental health issues are in play. That means HR involvement, neutral witnesses, security or the police on standby, and a controlled setting. Hoping for the best is not a plan.

Second, control the timing and the exit. Once the decision is made, remove the employee from the workplace as quickly and quietly as possible. Terminations should occur when fewer people are around (ideally at the end of the workday or workweek) to reduce volatility, embarrassment, and the risk of escalation. A calm, efficient exit is a safety measure, not an insult.

Third, don't investigate in silos. Prior complaints, behavioral changes, and multiple investigations must be viewed holistically. Patterns matter. Escalation matters.

Fourth, mental health knowledge changes the calculus. It doesn't bar termination as long as it's not the reason for the termination, but it absolutely heightens the duty of care around how it's handled.

And finally: HR is never optional. If an employee can be fired without HR involved, the process is broken.

Terminations that end in tragedy are the overwhelming exception. But every termination carries risk. The goal isn't to predict the unthinkable—it's to prepare for it. Because when things go wrong, the question is always the same: what did you know, and what did you do with it?

WIRTW #783: the 'Christmas movies' edition What does a font have to do with an employer's values? Apparently, a lot. 🚨 Vote for the Worst Employer of 2025 🚨 Jury tags SHRM for $11.5 million in discrimination lawsuit WIRTW #782: the 'lights' edition