The U.S. Department of Justice announced a settlement this week with a central Indiana furniture store for failing to rehire a soldier upon return from duty.
Monday, April 26, 2021
The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (“USERRA”) may require employers to pay employees for reserve duty if they provide paid leave for other, “comparable” absences from work, according to a February 3, 2021 decision of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in
White v. United Airlines, which reversed and remanded a decision of the Northern District of Illinois dismissing the plaintiff United pilots’ putative class action.
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The plaintiff pilots in
White serve in the U.S. Military Reserve Forces, and argued that USERRA requires United to grant them paid leave and profit-sharing credit for at least some of their reserve duty time because the airline pays, and allows profit sharing credit to, pilots serving jury duty and taking sick leave. In dismissing the
The Justice Department and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas announced today that they resolved a claim that luxury jeweler Harry Winston Inc. violated the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994 (USERRA) by refusing to offer full-time employment to U.S. Army National Guard Reservist John A. Walker because of his military service obligations. “Discrimination against members of the National Guard or Reserve because of their service to our country is intolerable, violates the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, and the Department of Justice will not stand for it,” said Assistant Attorney General Eric S. Dreiband of the Civil Rights Division. “We honor all servicemembers for their service to our nation, and this settlement signals the Justice Department’s ongoing commitment in protecting the rights of our men and women in uniform.”