Denver Employment Law Blog

Employees are under a lot of pressure to not upset their employers, and so they may not feel comfortable taking actions that their employers won't like. However, the public has an interest in learning the truth, and so the law offers protections for employees who exercise their legal rights to report illegal or unsafe activity in the workplace. One of the most important ways state and federal laws protect these workers is through laws prohibiting certain types of workplace retaliation.

Illegal workplace retaliation occurs when an employer punishes an employee for engaging in legally protected activity. This activity can include reporting sexual harassment, illegal discrimination or unsafe working conditions, or otherwise blowing the whistle on unlawful behavior.

A case pending before the Colorado Supreme Court currently has the potential to change the landscape of employment law in this state.

Interestingly, this case involves a man who himself worked in human resources for a public hospital. He described his position as one in which part of his job was to prevent employees from being unlawfully or improperly treated.

A previous post on this blog talked about how several well-known companies are facing allegations from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or EEOC, that they engaged in discriminatory recruiting practices. The issue was that these employers either placed, or allowed, Facebook ads that were selectively shown both to people under 40 and to men.

There are in fact a number of ways employers in the Denver area can run into legal trouble in how they conduct their recruiting and hiring process. Likewise, employers also need to be careful when promoting employees internally, as an employer is not allowed to discriminate in the advancement of employees any more than in hiring and firing decisions.

The United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or EEOC, recently filed formal allegations against several companies accusing them of unlawful targeted recruiting that, according to the allegations, was designed to discourage older workers, and in some cases women, from applying for certain positions.

According to some experts, this action represents the first time the EEOC has formally applied anti-discrimination laws to online targeted advertising, such as through Facebook. In this context, targeting advertising is the practice of using a social media platform, like Facebook, to make sure that certain groups of people see ads for open positions, while others do not see these ads.