Summary: The law separates the wages your employer cost you from the harm your employer did to you. The duty to mitigate has always applied to the first. In July 2026, the Fifth Circuit answered for the first time whether it also reaches the second, and held that it does not. This blog explains what
Most people know the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) protects employees and applicants who have disabilities. Fewer know it also protects people who don’t have a disability themselves but are closely connected to someone who does.
The ADA defines unlawful discrimination to include “excluding or otherwise denying equal jobs or benefits to a qualified individual
Working through a disability, a pregnancy, or a serious health condition is hard enough without feeling like your employer is making it harder. If you asked for a change at work so you could keep doing your job, and got silence, a flat “no,” or a runaround instead. You are not imagining things, and you
Racial gaslighting rarely announces itself. It shows up as a nickname you never agreed to, a story about an incident that keeps shifting, work rules that seem to bend only when you’re the one following them, or a derogatory comment dropped once and then explained away as “just a joke.” Individually, any one of these
Many workers who face serious mistreatment at work are surprised to learn that the law may not protect them. Employment discrimination law in the United States and in Texas is built on a framework of employee thresholds, meaning that certain protections only apply once an employer reaches a minimum number of employees. If your employer
Telling your employer you are pregnant should be a moment of joy, not the start of a quiet campaign to push you out the door. Yet Texas workers describe the same patterns to us regularly: a once-supportive manager who turns cold, a denied request to sit on a stool, a write-up for something that was
You tell your employer you’re pregnant — and suddenly everything changes. You get passed over for a promotion you had been tracking for months. Your hours get cut. Your manager starts micromanaging your every move. Or worse, you get let go with a vague explanation that doesn’t quite add up.
If any of that sounds
Summary: To bring a hostile work environment claim, an employee must show that the harassment was “severe or pervasive.” Those three words control whether your case moves forward or gets dismissed. But what do they actually mean? After more than thirty years of case law, courts still do not agree on where the line is.
Pregnancy should be a time of anticipation and preparation—not anxiety about whether your employer will treat you fairly. Yet, as plaintiff-side employment law attorneys, we routinely see workers pushed out, denied accommodations, or retaliated against simply because they are pregnant or have pregnancy-related conditions. Understanding your rights under federal and state law is essential to
Summary: Not every resignation is voluntary. When an employer makes working conditions so unbearable that a reasonable person would feel compelled to quit, the law may treat that resignation the same as a termination. This is called constructive discharge, and it could mean the difference between walking away with nothing and holding your employer accountable.
