Mitch McConnell has been absent from the Senate for more than six weeks following a serious fall. According to his office, he's recovering in a rehab facility, undergoing multiple physical therapy sessions each day, and isn't medically cleared to return ...
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If paid medical leave is good enough for Mitch McConnell, it's good enough for every American worker

Mitch McConnell has been absent from the Senate for more than six weeks following a serious fall. According to his office, he's recovering in a rehab facility, undergoing multiple physical therapy sessions each day, and isn't medically cleared to return to work.

This isn't about McConnell's health, however. It's about everyone else's.

McConnell is receiving something tens of millions of American workers don't: the ability to focus on getting well without worrying about losing his job or his paycheck. That's exactly how it should be. When you're sick or injured, your job is to recover, not to decide whether you can afford to.

Yet the U.S. remains the only industrialized nation that does not guarantee paid sick leave at the national level.

That's not because the issue has never come before Congress. It has. Repeatedly. McConnell himself has voted against paid sick leave many times. The irony is difficult to ignore.

The internet is busy speculating about McConnell's condition. That's beside the point. His doctors say he isn't medically cleared to return to work, and no one argues he should ignore that advice. We understand that recovering from a serious injury can take weeks or longer. We don't expect him to "tough it out." We don't accuse him of lacking commitment.

Why shouldn't the same grace extend to the office employee recovering from surgery? Or the restaurant server battling pneumonia? Or the manufacturing worker trying to avoid spreading the flu across an entire production line?

Too often, workers without paid leave face an impossible choice: go to work sick or lose income they can't afford to lose. That's bad for employees, bad for employers, and bad for public health.

As an employment lawyer, I advise employers on compliance. Paid sick leave, however, is one of those issues where the law lags behind good policy. Employers that offer paid leave benefit from healthier workplaces, lower turnover, better morale, and fewer sick employees coming to work. It's one of those rare workplace policies that advances both employee well-being and sound business interests.

Reasonable people can debate how a national paid leave law should be structured. They can debate accrual rates, employer size exemptions, and who should bear the cost.

But we shouldn't still be debating whether workers deserve the opportunity to recover from illness or injury without risking their livelihoods.

If weeks of medically necessary leave is appropriate for a politician, it ought to be appropriate for the people who stock our grocery shelves, brew our beer, teach our children, care for our parents, and keep our businesses running every day.

Recovery shouldn't be a privilege reserved for senators. It should be a right every American worker can count on.

Congress, it's long past time to make paid sick leave the law of the land.
      

The workplace is not a pulpit

When employees come to work, they should never have to wonder whether the next email from the boss will contain a work assignment or a sermon.

That's the issue at the heart of a new lawsuit against USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins.

A group of federal employees and their union have asked a federal court to block Rollins from sending agency-wide emails that preach her personal Christian beliefs to roughly 100,000 Department of Agriculture employees. The plaintiffs allege that despite already being sued over the practice, Rollins has continued using official USDA communications to quote Scripture and deliver explicitly evangelical messages—not just on Easter and Christmas, but now on Memorial Day and Independence Day as well. They are asking the court to stop the messages before the next major Christian holiday arrives.

According to the lawsuit, this isn't merely an elected official acknowledging religion or wishing employees a happy holiday. The complaint alleges that Rollins has repeatedly used official government email to proclaim that "Jesus has been raised from the dead," refer to "our faith," "our risen Lord," and "the greatest story ever told," while speaking as the head of a federal agency to employees required to read her communications. The plaintiffs argue that these messages communicate that Christianity is the preferred faith within USDA and pressure employees of different faiths—or no faith at all—to conform.

Whether the plaintiffs ultimately prevail on their Establishment Clause claims is for the courts to decide.

But from an employment-law perspective, the allegations illustrate a much more universal principle.

Power changes everything.

A conversation about religion between two friends is one thing. The same conversation between a supervisor and an employee is something entirely different. The law recognizes that employees don't experience communications from their bosses as ordinary conversations. Supervisors control evaluations, promotions, assignments, discipline, and careers. Employees know that. Even when no threat is made, the imbalance of power creates pressure.

That's why Title VII requires employers to accommodate employees' sincerely held religious beliefs while simultaneously prohibiting religious harassment. It protects an employee's right to practice a religion. It also protects an employee's right not to have someone else's religion imposed upon them.

Those protections don't disappear because the speaker sincerely believes what they're saying.

In fact, sincerity is beside the point.

The issue isn't whether Secretary Rollins has the right to hold or express her Christian beliefs in her personal life. Of course she does.

The question is whether the head of a federal agency should use the machinery of government—and mandatory workplace communications—to evangelize a captive audience of employees.

That's a workplace issue every employer should understand.

Most employers would never tolerate a manager repeatedly sending department-wide emails urging employees to attend church, quoting Scripture, or telling employees that salvation comes through Jesus Christ. HR would shut it down immediately, not because religion is unwelcome in the workplace, but because coercion is.

The problem, however, is that proselytizing in the workplace is inherently coercive.

It blurs the line between personal belief and professional conduct. It pressures coworkers—especially subordinates—to nod along, stay quiet, or risk being labeled difficult, disrespectful, or even insubordinate.

And while defenders often frame these efforts as promoting religious liberty, they frequently accomplish the opposite. They open the door to exclusion, marginalization, and retaliation against employees who decline a coworker's or boss's invitation to Bible study or object to being told they're going to hell over coffee or lunch.

That doesn't promote inclusion.

It undermines it.

And it doesn't protect religious liberty.

It weaponizes it.

Employees have the absolute right to practice the religion of their choice—or none at all. That right is personal, private, and protected. It's no one else's business.

The workplace is not a pulpit, and no employee should ever feel pressured to conform to, participate in, or endorse an employer's, supervisor's, or coworker's religious beliefs or practices.

Anything less violates the core principles that Title VII was designed to protect, regardless of what any administration—or any employer—might prefer.

Winning a disability discrimination claim doesn't necessarily win an ADA lawsuit

Winning a disability discrimination claim doesn't necessarily win an ADA lawsuit. The 2nd Circuit's recent decision in Cangro v. Department of Finance is a perfect example. The employer successfully defeated the employee's disability discrimination and retaliation claims—but still must defend a reasonable accommodation claim.

The employee suffered from serious respiratory conditions. After working remotely during the pandemic, he requested permission to work his required in-office days from the employer's Staten Island office instead of its Manhattan headquarters, claiming the commute and office environment aggravated his medical issues.

The employer said no.

The 2nd Circuit agreed that the employee hadn't plausibly alleged disability discrimination or retaliation. There wasn't sufficient evidence of discriminatory intent or a qualifying adverse employment action. Those claims were dismissed.

But the reasonable accommodation claim survived. 

The employee claimed that the employer denied his accommodation request without engaging in a meaningful interactive process despite medical evidence that the Manhattan office and commute aggravated his respiratory disabilities.

Whether the requested accommodation was actually reasonable is a question for another day. The 2nd Circuit expressly declined to answer it. Indeed, the real lesson for employers isn't about remote work at all. It's about process.

Too many employers treat accommodation requests as problems to defeat instead of workplace problems to solve. The ADA does not require an employer to grant an employee's preferred accommodation, but it does require a thoughtful, individualized process—evaluating the request, considering alternatives, engaging in a genuine dialogue, and documenting why a proposed accommodation will or will not work.

That process becomes even more important when the employee has already performed the job successfully under the same or a similar arrangement. Prior remote work does not permanently entitle an employee to work from home. Business needs change, job duties evolve, and temporary pandemic practices do not necessarily become permanent essential-function determinations. But if an arrangement worked for an extended period and the employer now says it cannot work, the employer should be prepared to explain what changed—and support that explanation with facts, not assumptions.

A well-supported, well-documented accommodation analysis may keep a dispute from becoming a lawsuit. And if litigation follows, it gives the employer its best chance at a good resolution. Without it, however, an employer can win the discrimination and retaliation battles and still spend years fighting the reasonable accommodation war.

WIRTW #804: the 'crash on the barrelhead' edition

Ryan Adams canceled his latest tour this week. His explanation? He's broke. Sick. Tired. Defeated.

Maybe all of that is true. Touring is brutal. The music business is unforgiving. And I don't take pleasure in watching someone suffer.

But I also don't have much sympathy for Ryan Adams.

For years, multiple women—including Phoebe Bridgers and Mandy Moore (his ex-wife)—have described the same basic pattern. Adams allegedly offered to mentor young female artists, pursued them romantically, and then, when those relationships soured or his advances were rejected, retaliated by undermining their careers or harassing them. Those allegations permanently altered how many view him.

What struck me wasn't just the allegations. It was how many musicians felt compelled to turn them into songs.

Phoebe Bridgers gave us "Motion Sickness".

Jason Isbell wrote "Chaos and Clothes".

Lucinda Williams unloaded with "Shadows & Doubts" and "Little Rock Star".

Old 97's? Depending on how you count, they may have written three songs inspired by Adams: "The New Kid", "Book of Poems", and "Crash on the Barrelhead".

I can't think of many musicians who've inspired an entire playlist of songs about what an awful human being they allegedly are.

That last one, "Crash on the Barrelhead", hits especially hard. Its message is unmistakable: if you keep living this way, eventually your choices catch up with you. Twenty-seven years later, these lyrics feel almost prophetic:

You're gonna crash on the barrelhead, son
You'll regret the things that you done
One of these days you're gonna rue
All the messed up things you do

The universe has a funny way of keeping score. Not always. Not quickly. But often enough.

Your reputation is the ledger.

It's one of the few things you build every single day without even realizing it. Every decision, every interaction, every kindness, every betrayal—they all become part of the story other people tell about you.

Once that story hardens, it's incredibly difficult to rewrite. Trust takes years to earn, seconds to lose, and for many people is never fully regained. Rebuilding a reputation is far harder than rebuilding a career or a tour schedule.

Eventually, enough people tell the same story about you that it stops sounding like gossip and starts sounding like your legacy.

Live your life so that you're never the subject of someone else's song about what an awful person you are.


Here's what I read this week that you should read, too.


The EEOC Just Broke Ground on EEO-1's Funeral 🪦 — via Eric Meyer's Employer Handbook Blog

When Employees Are Held Accountable for AI-Generated Decisions — via Harvard Business Review



The ADA is a two-way street

Once an employee requests an ADA accommodation, the employer has to give them exactly what they ask for… is NOT the law. In fact, it's the opposite of the law.

The ADA requires a reasonable accommodation—not the employee's preferred accommodation. Further, the ADA is a two-way street; employees have obligations, too.

One recent decision, Belval v. Electric Boat Corp., drives those points home.

The employee, who had multiple serious medical conditions, wanted to continue working from home full-time after COVID-era return-to-office policies resumed. Electric Boat didn't simply say "no." It allowed remote work throughout much of the pandemic, granted FMLA leave, consulted with his healthcare providers, engaged in the interactive process, and ultimately offered him three remote days each week—more than other employees received.

He insisted on full-time remote work.

The court sided with the employer because the ADA doesn't require an employer to provide the accommodation an employee wants. It requires an accommodation that is reasonable and enables the employee to perform the essential functions of the job. Employers may choose among effective accommodations.

Just as important, this opinion is a reminder that the interactive process should be documented like any other critical employment decision. Electric Boat had the receipts. It documented communications with the employee, consultations with his medical providers, proposed accommodations, repeated phone calls, follow-up correspondence, and even a final letter establishing a deadline to report to Occupational Health. That record showed more than participation. It showed cooperation.

Finally—and this may be the most overlooked lesson—the interactive process is a two-way street. Employees have obligations too. According to the court, the employee repeatedly failed to communicate with Occupational Health, directed company representatives to speak only with his attorney, ignored multiple attempts to discuss accommodations, and failed to appear for a required appointment. That mattered. The court held that the employee—not the employer—was responsible for the breakdown in the interactive process, which independently doomed his failure-to-accommodate claim.

Here are my three practical takeaways for employers from this case:

• The ADA requires a reasonable accommodation—not the employee's preferred one.

• Document every step of the interactive process: conversations, medical information, proposed accommodations, follow-ups, and attempts to communicate.

• Remember that good-faith participation is required from both sides. When an employee refuses to engage, ignores communications, or derails the interactive process, that failure can be fatal to an ADA claim.

Accommodation is a dialogue, not a demand. The employers that treat it that way—and carefully document every step—put themselves in the strongest position if that dialogue ever ends up in court.

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