Pages

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Aside from appointing a new head honcho for their 2012 legislative session they can call yet more emergency press conferences.

The National Law Review has reported

Appearance-Based Discrimination Not Actionable in Wisconsin

On January 25, 2011, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin decided the case of Debra Brice v. Richard Resch and Krueger International, Inc., 111 FEP Cases 844 (E.D. Wis. 2011). This is a case with exceedingly unusual facts, but a fairly unremarkable holding: if you claim to suffer unlawful employment discrimination, you can file a discrimination complaint; but you cannot also take the same facts and go to court and call your claim something else. Your discrimination claim is your exclusive remedy for discrimination. Moreover, while employees can sue for sex/gender discrimination, they cannot also sue for “appearance” based discrimination, which is not separately unlawful.

In this case, Ms. Brice alleged that Richard Resch, the CEO of Krueger International, Inc. (“KI”), ordered her fired shortly after she was offered a job because he did not like her “body shape,” did not find her attractive, and would not be interested in sexually harassing her or having a romantic relationship with her.

The federal court decision addressed a variety of claims brought by Ms. Brice. First, Ms. Brice claimed that Mr. Resch and KI “tortiously interfered” with her contract with KI. [...] Ms. Brice also alleged “breach of contract.” [...]

My expectation is that a four-man Republican leadership panel of the Minnesota State Senate will choose to hold a short-notice press conference to discuss the family values at stake and the need to make changes in GOP leadership positions for the upcoming session based on Ms. Brice's claims.

Meanwhile, I expect to read online that the Secretary of the Senate has, at a restaurant, confronted an employee about dismissal from an at-will position because of yet another National Law Review report:

Hooters of America LLC has sued a competitor in Georgia Federal Court for allegedly misappropriating its trade secrets and other confidential business information following the departure of several Hooters executives to Twin Peaks Restaurants.

We are quite serious after having
dis uncovered this relationship ...
There is more to each story, and if the Republicans oblige as I am guessing, it will be red meat thrown to mainstream media in Minnesota. There are ways to get your name in the press, and one way is calling emergency meetings to pontificate over things in general, and about things apart from the Minnesota Senate's internal functions because that's already been worked to death by the Republican leadership and the press; with the GOP'ers having huffed and puffed, harrumphed and clucked both directly and indirectly over family values and "appropriateness" of relationships to which, allegedly, they were not actual parties with first hand information.