Can you really fire someone for any reason? This informative Colorado employment law post explores the at-will employment doctrine and its exceptions.

Can you have an unpaid intern? This post highlights the legal ins and outs of unpaid internships and explains how to analyze your internship with a series of factors.

This post provides an overview of the EEOC’s new interpretative guidance on retaliation for employment discrimination claims, including practical tips for employers.

If your ministry asks potential volunteers or employees about any criminal record, do you need to throw out your application and start anew in light your state’s “ban the box” law? This post addresses how religious employers should be aware of “ban the box” laws and the changing legal landscape of considering criminal history in hiring.

When an employee is accused of misconduct, particularly when those allegations are criminal in nature, conducting an internal investigation is a best practice. But what is an organization to do when the alleged offender refuses to show up for an interview? May it go so far as to fire the employee, even if that means the employee loses out on benefits or other compensation? A recent case from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals says it can.

Not everything a church does to a pastor is outside the reach of the court. That is a recent lesson church officials learned in a case out of Ohio federal court dealing with the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine. Also known as the church autonomy doctrine, this is the principle that civil courts will stay out of the doctrinal and important decisions a church makes, such as the decision to fire a pastor or remove a parishioner from membership. This case, Barrow v. Living Word Church, et al.,¹ is an interesting twist on the doctrine, and serves as a word of caution for churches.

There has been a lot of back and forth about how the mission must take care during prefield screening not to run afoul of the ADA. I agree. Under the ADA, before you can give an applicant a “medical examination,” which includes most psychological screenings, you have to first consider all the non-medical information and hand out a conditional offer.

This post is update to the "Labor Unions at Christian Colleges? NLRB Thinks So" post.

This article was published in the 2014 Evangelical Missionary Society's annual publication number 22 called The Missionary Family: Witness, Concerns, Care.

Link to a pdf file of the article.

Many examining psychologists are not aware of the existence of 29 CFR § 1630.13, titled “Prohibited medical examinations and inquiries.”  Even more importantly, section 1630.10, “Qualification standards, tests, and other selection criteria,” discusses the types of tests that can be used.