HerringLaw: Civil Rights & Discrimination Law in Iowa

FMLA amended to benefit Military personnel

I do not often handle Family & Medical Leave Act cases, but was researching the issue and came upon this information at the Department of Labor's website. It might be of some assistance to returning veterans or families of veterans:

The Family and Medical Leave Act and National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2008

On January 28, 2008, President Bush signed into law H.R. 4986, the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2008 (NDAA), Pub. L. 110-181. Among other things, section 585 of the NDAA amends the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) to permit a "spouse, son, daughter, parent, or next of kin" to take up to 26 workweeks of leave to care for a "member of the Armed Forces, including a member of the National Guard or Reserves, who is undergoing medical treatment, recuperation, or therapy, is otherwise in outpatient status, or is otherwise on the temporary disability retired list, for a serious injury or illness."
The provisions in the NDAA providing this leave are effective as of the date of the President's signing. The Department of Labor is working quickly to prepare more comprehensive guidance regarding rights and responsibilities under this new legislation. In the interim, WHD will require employers to act in good faith in providing leave under the new legislation. Because the NDAA amends the FMLA, FMLA-type procedures should be used as may be appropriate (for example, procedures regarding substitution of paid leave and notice).

The NDAA also permits an employee to take FMLA leave for "any qualifying exigency (as the Secretary [of Labor] shall, by regulation, determine) arising out of the fact that the spouse, or a son, daughter, or parent of the employee is on active duty (or has been notified of an impending call or order to active duty) in the Armed Forces in support of a contingency operation." By its express terms, this provision of the NDAA is not effective until the Secretary of Labor issues final regulations defining "any qualifying exigency." DOL is expeditiously preparing such regulations. In the interim, DOL encourages employers to provide this type of leave to qualifying employees.

DOL will update this page as additional guidance is developed and published.
To view the amended Title I of the Family and Medical Leave Act:
Title I of the FMLA, as amended by the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2008

Take your iWork & Apple Pages templates to another level.

Link: Take your iWork & Apple Pages templates to another level..

[I'm always looking for creative new layouts and thought this might be of interest.]

iPhone and Shazam a great pair

iPhone applications provide all sorts of helpful functions, such as the Typepad app. to update one's blog [being used to male this post] and I discovered just now a very useful one, Shazam [there are similar ones available] will listen to music and identify it - I have several tracks in my iTunes which need identifying but until now I couldn't but I just played one, put my iPhone up to listen to it, it "tagged" it and I was then able to update my iTunes list info- great use

Even Lawyers have to beware "Nigerian Scams"

Everyone is gullible at some level, some more than others. Even Lawyers. A cautionary tale of lawyers being seduced by "Nigerian" scam emails is in the latest California Bar Journal.

Special Education Resources

I was reading a comment by a friend of mine who is a lawyer in California, Ed Siebel [who is also a Mac user, as am I] and see that he has a website for his work in the area of advocacy for children with special education needs, Specedlawyer.com . Of course, he's in California, but there are also federal Protection & Advocacy offices in the states. Iowa's office is in West Des Moines and there is a website..

Without Electricity

Storms in Des Moines have caused broad swathes of power outages, which teaches one to not rely TOO much on the Internet, since only with this iPhone am I able to access it at all, and that'll only last as long as the battery- looks like a trip to Caribou Coffee is in this morning's plans.

Great Search tool for Mac OS X

Similar to the OSX system's Spotlight, SpotInside, does a great job of searching for things but has a few more features that make it easy to use.  First, it is freeware, so you can add it to your computer and use it in addition to or instead of Spotlight without lots of hassle.   You put in the words you want to use and it creates a Boolean search as well as a grouped and single words search.  Then the results are listed and when you click on the source document, you get a 'QuickLook' type of image that lets you see what the terms are inside the document. 

I was searching for an email [Dudezine] from Martin Hurley, who writes on photography and marketing of it.  Up popped several choices, documents and Eudora mailboxes, then it showed where the words were in each: 

Nifty free iPhone Apps

I haven't yet purchased the new 3G but have been having a Great time with the version 2 software for my phone : PhoneSaber, Shakespeare, Typepad [of course], and many more so I may need to update this list as I use each of them

The ubiquitous Mac

There was a day when I'd travel and rarely see sign of a Mac - am right now in United's Red Carpet club and they are on desks and laps throughout. Or else the iPhone is. Now I've become just part of a multitude - tho it's nice to finally have company.

ERISA issues in 'typical' discrimation cases

Today I attended an excellent discussion at the American Association for Justice of ERISA and employee benefits with the result that in the future I'll be asking more intake questions on the topic not only of lost wages but of 'benefits' lost since not only can a person have rights under traditional discrimination law but also under ERISA - so if a person has had their employment affected it's important to look into possible benefits issues - especially since early on, it's not easy to discern all the possibilities.

Philadelphia

is a wonderful city and I'd never really seen it, downtown, despite living in the east [DC area] for years and visiting our daughter here at UPenn more recently.  But I have been here for a convention [American Association for Justice] and yesterday took the first real block of free time to walk over about some 16 city blocks [from 12th & Market] shooting photographs.  No time to yet upload them to my gallery site, yet, but I loved the bus stops, as you can see.  Reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright, whose Fallingwater I visited as we drove home after graduation this past May.

Way Cool iPhone!!!

I am at a convention and yet was able to upgrade my iPhone to version 2 and now am going crazy downloading applications - such as this on for Typepad posting [free apps so far but there are more]