On March 10, 2005, the Senate passed a sweeping overhaul of consumer bankruptcy law. Congress has debated passage of amendments to the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, 11 U.S.C. § 101, et seq., for the past eight years. As a response to what the business community and financial industry viewed as a meteoric rise in bankruptcy filings during the last two decades, Congress undertook to produce a sweeping overhaul of the consumer bankruptcy laws.

Under Title IX, an educational institution receiving federal financial assistance may not discriminate against any person on the basis of sex. Courts have interpreted Title IX as prohibiting diverse forms of intentional gender discrimination.

For the most part, the sweeping Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOXA) applies only to "issuers," i.e., companies that must file periodic reports with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

It's a regular Old West showdown: at one end of the dusty road are congressional Democrats with their Employee Free Choice Act; at the other end are congressional Republicans with their Secret Ballot Protection Act. Partisan politics has set the stage for a battle that may end in an amendment to those provisions of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) that govern union organizing.

Even though I practice employment law, I am still surprised at how many employees contemplate employment discrimination lawsuits. To subject oneself to such a long, painful, and expensive journey seems counterintuitive. However, emotions run high when an employee is fired. The first step in any such journey, for both employees and employers, should be to understand how the employment discrimination process works. This article outlines that process under federal law.

On March 30, 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision that has important implications for employers and employees. The Court determined that the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) protects workers who are 40 years of age or older against employment practices and policies that disproportionately affect older workers.

In 1998, when the U.S. Supreme Court decided <I>Burlington Industries v. Ellerth</I> and <I>Faragher v. City of Boca Raton</I>, it set forth an affirmative defense that may be used by an employer to avoid liability for sexual harassment predicated upon a hostile work environment when no adverse employment action has been suffered by the employee.

Does federal tax law support losses due to corporate misconduct? Will the IRS challenge such deductions? This article answers these important questions.

In an attempt to provide uniformity for various provisions of the Internal Revenue Code (the Code), the Working Families Tax Relief Act of 2004 (the Act) amended the definition of "dependent" for tax purposes. As is the case with many new laws, this amendment has unintended consequences that may create issues for sponsors of certain types of employee benefit plans. The new definition is effective for tax years beginning after December 31, 2004. Employers should take action now to evaluate the de

Employee benefit plans represent a major investment of time and money by an employer. Employee benefits are a significant component of total compensation and are therefore an important link between the employer and its employees.

We have all read the news accounts about some disgruntled employee showing up at the workplace and firing on his fellow employees and innocent bystanders. We've even coined a colloquial term for this terrible phenomenon: "going postal."

Under Title VII, an employer may not discharge any employee because of his or her religion. Instead, the statute requires employers to reasonably accommodate the religious practices of any employee, unless such accommodation would result in undue hardship to the employer's business.

Among the silent flurry of tax benefits enacted into law by President George W. Bush on October 22, 2004, is one noteworthy provision that eliminates the "double taxation" of attorneys' fee awards in certain employment-related lawsuits and settlements.

The Davis-Bacon Act (the Act) is a little-understood federal statute enacted to protect workers from receiving substandard wages on government projects. It requires payment of prevailing wages, as determined by the Secretary of Labor, to laborers and mechanics engaged in the construction, alteration, and/or repair of public buildings and public works belonging to the United States.

Our clients ask us some very interesting benefits questions. Here are some of their COBRA questions and the answers to them.

In addition to end-of-life planning through wills, trusts, and powers of attorney, our estate-planning group can assist clients with lifetime wealth transfer planning. Here, we discuss six alternatives for lifetime gifting to a grandchild. Each alternative is founded on Colorado and U.S. federal tax law principles that establish the parameters of each gifting technique. Lifetime gifting generally utilizes either the lifetime gift exemption amount of $1 million per donor or the $11,000-per-recipi