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Title VII Ruling may affect employers with
less than 15 full time employees

There has been a very important change in the Federal Employment Laws that will now impact the majority of the smaller business in this country. Prior to January 1997 if an employer had less than 15 full time employees they were not exposed to potential employment discrimination lawsuits under Title VII. The new Supreme Court Ruling is, that Employers with less than 15 full time employees may now be subject to federal discrimination laws. The Supreme Court ruled that part time employees, and employees on leave of absence(paid or unpaid) are to be counted in determining application of Title VII of The Civil Rights Act; The Age Discrimination In Employment Act, and The American's With Disabilities Act. The number of employees will be determined from payroll for 20 calendar work weeks out of the current or preceding calendar year.

For your information, the average discrimination lawsuit in this country costs an employer anywhere from $50,000.00 to $200,000.00 even when there is no merit to the case, just to answer and defend the lawsuit. This could devastate and or destroy a smaller employer. According to an article released by Associated Press and published on January 15, 1997 in the Dallas Morning News, as of 1991 there were more than half a million employers in this country with 10 to 19 employees. Another article on this new ruling appeared in the Wall Street Journal January 15, 1997 and is on their interactive web site http://www.wjs.com, including the Supreme Court's opinion on a recent case. Many small employers have wrongly assumed that because their active, full-time work force remained below 15 that these statutes did not apply to them. The addition of summer part-time help to a company's payroll (even though for only 12 weeks) may be enough, in some cases, to cause them to cross the line.

For more information on this, and other employment law compliance issues, please contact me at msautter@getyers.com, or visit our web site http://www.getyers.com