Ohio Employer Law Blog | Daily Updates | 01CWIRTW #798: the 'gunner' edition>01D plus more

WIRTW #798: the 'gunner' edition

I never expected to fall in love with English football in my 50s. Yet here we are.

A couple of years ago, I started following Arsenal FC. What began as casual curiosity turned into waking up early on weekends, structuring Saturdays around matches, and finding my way to our local Arsenal supporters' bar.

What's struck me most about Premier League culture isn't just the football. It's the songs.

Every player has one. Every meaningful moment has one. The supporters don’t just watch the match; they participate in it. One chant starts in the corner, another picks up across the room, and suddenly the whole bar is singing in unison for a defender, a winger, or the club's newest star.

It's joyful. Tribal. Loud. Completely unlike anything in American sports culture.

So I decided to see what would happen if I asked ChatGPT to write a football song about me.

The result was better than it had any right to be.

🎶 🎶 🎶

He tells you the risk and the move you should make,
Then wins the damn case while plaintiffs pump their brakes.
From breweries to boardrooms they all sing his name:
OH, JON HYMAN, HE MAKES HR GREAT AGAIN!

🎶 🎶 🎶

Come on you Gunners!!!

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

Dems urge EEOC to retain pregnancy rule's IVF protections — via HR Dive

Can an Employee Sue for Failure to Accommodate a Disability She Said She Didn't Have? — via Eric Meyer's Employer Handbook Blog

Hallucinations, Inaccuracies, and the Erosion of the Rule of Law — via Above the Law

Asking people to do a one-week work trial before offering them the job — via Ask a Manager

DOL Proposes New Joint Employer Rule: What Employers Need to Know — via Employment Law Letter

AI Resume Screeners Have a Favorite Candidate: Other AI — via Improve Your HR by Suzanne Lucas, the Evil HR Lady

The Psychological Costs of Adopting AI — via Harvard Business Review

Vibes Versus Numbers: The Real State of Craft Beer — via Beervana

Why Breweries Can Hire Staff But Can't Keep Them (And How to Fix It) — via The Brewer Magazine

Tag, You're It: The NFL Franchise Tag as a Modern Non-Compete Agreement — via The L•E•Jer

3 Dangerous Password Habits You Should Avoid — via Boy Genius Report

When employers gamble on bad facts, they usually lose

How does a case like this ever get to trial?

That was my first thought after reading Griffin v. Copper Cellar Corp.

Rose Griffin worked as a cook at a Tennessee restaurant. According to the 6th Circuit, one coworker repeatedly grabbed her breasts, arranged food at her workstation to look like an ejaculating penis, told her he wanted to have sex with her, pushed her down onto a prep station while thrusting against her, and stuck his hands down his pants while massaging himself in front of her.

This was not subtle workplace misconduct. It was repeated, physical sexual harassment.

And when Griffin complained? A supervisor allegedly told her to "keep [her] head down and [her] mouth shut." Managers allegedly laughed about the harassment. The damage to Griffin was severe. She testified that she felt humiliated and violated, suffered nightmares, lost sleep and appetite, experienced chest tightness and muscle spasms, and even contemplated suicide.

A jury found for Griffin on her hostile-work-environment claim and awarded her $179,000 in compensatory damages. The district court later awarded another $480,364.50 in attorneys' fees.

Copper Cellar appealed. The 6th Circuit affirmed everything.

So let's do the math. Copper Cellar now owes more than $659,000, before interest and costs, plus whatever it paid its own lawyers to defend the case through trial, post-trial motions, and appeal. All after reportedly offering just $25,000 to settle the case before trial.

Sometimes, the smartest litigation strategy is knowing when you have a losing hand.

Employers hate paying settlements. I understand why. No company wants to reward litigation or admit wrongdoing.

But litigation is not about pride. It is about risk.

And when your risk includes a jury hearing evidence that a female employee was groped, sexually humiliated, ignored by management, and pushed into suicidal thoughts, you do not roll the dice unless you've exhausted all options.

This employer chose to roll the dice. And it lost badly.

The lesson is not merely "don't sexually harass employees." That should be obvious.

The real lesson is that when the facts are this bad, listen to your lawyer when they tell you it is time to settle.

Because juries do not like employers that tolerate this kind of conduct. And appellate courts are not going to rescue you from the consequences.

The 11th Circuit just lowered the bar on racial harassment

A noose. A blackface doll. Hung at a Black employee's desk.

If you're thinking, "that's a textbook hostile work environment," congratulations—you have better instincts than the 11th Circuit.

In Nevins v. DCH Health Systems, the court acknowledged exactly what happened: an unknown employee hung a blackface doll by a noose in the plaintiff's workspace. The panel even called it what it is—"repugnant and racially hostile."

And then it shrugged.

According to the court, that incident—paired with a couple of stray racist comments over a two-year period—still isn't "severe or pervasive" enough to alter the terms and conditions of employment. Three incidents. Spread out. Case dismissed.

Read that again.
A noose.
A blackface effigy.
At your desk.
Not enough.

Yes, Title VII isn't supposed to be a "code of workplace civility." But this case isn't about someone being rude, crude, or socially clueless. This is about a symbol of racial terror, paired with blackface, deliberately placed in a Black employee's workspace. That's not incivility. That's intimidation. And it should be unlawful.

This is not a close call. The Supreme Court has told us for decades that "severe or pervasive" is disjunctive. You don't need frequency if the conduct is severe. And if anything qualifies as severe, it's a noose—a symbol soaked in the history of racial terror and lynching—paired with blackface.

Courts across the country have recognized that a single noose can be enough. Because of course it can. The message is unmistakable.

But the 11th Circuit treats it like just another data point in a tally: three incidents over two years, some not said to her face, no evidence it interfered with her job performance. Move along.

That framing misses the point entirely. This isn't about counting comments. It's about the nature of the conduct. Some acts are so egregious that they poison the workplace instantly. This is one of them.

Worse, the court leans on the employer's "prompt remedial action"—telling the employee to throw the doll away.

That's it? Dispose of the evidence and call it a day?

If that satisfies Title VII, then we've set the bar somewhere far below basic human decency.

Here's the practical consequence: this decision hands employers and bad actors a roadmap. One noose? Probably safe. One grotesque racist display? Maybe two? As long as it's not "pervasive," you might dodge liability.

That's not what Title VII is supposed to do. The law is meant to protect employees from workplaces poisoned by discrimination—not to parse whether a lynching symbol shows up often enough to count.

A noose and a blackface doll at a Black employee's desk is severe. Full stop. Anything less turns "hostile work environment" into an empty promise.

Is paid family and medical leave finally coming to Ohio?

Ohio just took another swing at paid family and medical leave. This one might matter.

On April 23, Senators Beth Liston (D) and Louis Blessing (R) introduced SB 396—a bipartisan bill that would create a statewide paid leave insurance program run by ODJFS. It's early. No hearings yet. But bipartisan sponsorship gives this version more legs than prior attempts.

Here's the gist.

The bill sets up a social insurance model funded through payroll contributions (estimated around 0.4%). Employers with 15+ employees would have to contribute. Smaller employers might dodge the payments, but not necessarily the paperwork.

Eligible employees could receive up to 14 weeks of paid leave (18 in some cases) for the usual suspects—serious health conditions, bonding with a new child, caring for a family member, or certain military needs. Benefits would replace up to 85% of wages, capped.

Job protection? Yes. Health insurance continuation? Also yes. And leave would run concurrently with FMLA where applicable.

Employers could opt out—sort of. The bill allows private plans, but expect strict equivalency rules, ongoing reporting, and oversight. If you've dealt with similar programs in other states, you know "opt-out" doesn't mean "hands-off."

If this all sounds familiar, it should. This bill largely mirrors paid leave frameworks already in place across a growing number of states. Ohio is starting to look like the outlier.

So what should employers do now? Don't panic. But don't ignore it either.

Start by pressure-testing your current leave policies against what's proposed. Look at your short-term disability, PTO, and FMLA practices. Model the financial hit of payroll contributions. If you offer generous benefits already, explore whether a private plan could make sense.

And if you operate in multiple states, brace for more complexity. Another jurisdiction means more coordination, more compliance risk, and more administrative lift.

Also worth watching: enforcement. The current draft is light on details, but expect anti-retaliation provisions, penalties, and agency oversight to show up as the bill evolves.

This isn't law. Not yet. But it's not nothing either.

Paid leave keeps coming back to the Ohio legislature. This version has bipartisan backing and a familiar blueprint. That combination makes it harder to dismiss.

Now is the time to get ahead of it. Loop in your HR team. Talk to your payroll provider. Start modeling costs and stress-testing your policies. And if you need help figuring out what this could mean for your business, reach out.

WIRTW #797: the 'compliment' edition

What is the best professional compliment you can get?

For me, it's this: "You don't sound like a lawyer."

I hear this often. And every time, I take it as a win.

Because when someone says that, what they're really saying is this: you're clear. You're direct. You're understandable. You're not hiding behind jargon, hedging every sentence, or turning a simple idea into an explanation that we can't understand or a 500-word paragraph.

In other words, you're communicating.

Too many lawyers confuse complexity with intelligence. They speak and write like they're being graded by a law professor instead of heard or read by a business owner. They default to legalese because it feels safe. Precise. Familiar.

It's a massive barrier.

Clients don't hire lawyers to sound like lawyers. They hire us to solve problems, explain risk, and help them make decisions. None of that requires Latin phrases or sentences that run on for half a page.

In fact, the opposite is true. The more complicated the issue, the more valuable plain English becomes.

If your client has to read your email twice to understand it, you've already lost ground. If they have to ask you to explain in "plain English," you've already lost them. If they forward it to someone else (or an AI) with "Can you translate this?" you've missed the mark entirely.

Clarity isn't dumbing things down. It's doing the hard work of making the complex accessible. It's knowing your subject well enough to explain it simply.

That's my job.

So no, I don't want to "sound like a lawyer." I want to sound like someone my clients can understand.

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

Employment Agency Pushes Discrimination Cases That Match Trump's Agenda — via The New York Times

'New girls clubs' took on the old boys. Now Trump wants to ban them — via USA Today

7 stories about the state of DEI at the federal level — via HR Dive

Claude AI agent's confession after deleting a firm's entire database: 'I violated every principle I was given' — via The Guardian

Generative AI and Privilege: What Recent Court Decisions Mean for Your Company — via EntertainHR

The AI Layoff Trap — via Brett Hemenway Falk and Gerry Tsoukalas

When FMLA Has Impeccable Timing Around a Holiday, This is What Employers Shouldn’t Do. — via Jeff Nowak's FMLA Insights

Groovy! DOL Proposes New Joint Employment Test for FLSA and FMLA — via Who Is My Employee?

Why The Rules Exist — via Improve Your HR by Suzanne Lucas, the Evil HR Lady