Last year on Independence Day, I posted the Declaration of Independence. I think it’s appropriate to review once a year one of the most important documents produced by our forbears or by any group of people in history. Since Independence Day, 2009, falls on a Saturday, I’m doing my Independence Day post a day early.

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Five of the Second Circuit opinions authored by Judge Sonia Sotomayor deal with the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). ERISA cases aren’t considered as sexy as a lot of employment law cases, but the number of such cases is growing. The U.S. Supreme Court is occasionally asked to consider a case filed under this complicated statute. Getting a sense for how Sotomayor approaches ERISA is, therefore, useful.

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This post could be a follow-up to my analysis of the Supreme Court’s decision in Ricci v. DeStefano. Its genesis is, rather, a recent article in the New York Times about a meeting attended primarily by female playwrights to hear the results of a year-long research project on gender bias in the playwriting business. Female authors have long had a tough time getting their work staged and were sure their predicament was caused by gender discrimination.

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What do employees at all levels do when they’re on the phone and are put on hold? A variety of things, no doubt. As this video clip demonstrates, sometimes you need to close the door to your office, and sometimes you need to lock it.

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Employee privacy is a hot button issue generally. Privacy in the workplace is also growing in importance: monitoring email, searching employee property, taping conversations, videotaping certain locations of the workplace, and surveilling employees during work hours and while off duty. (See post on recent Supreme Court decision.) Judge Sonia Sotomayor authored one opinion in this area. It, of course, doesn’t deal with all the sub-privacy topics, but it deals with a couple of them. More important, it provides insight to her thinking on this increasingly explosive issue.

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In a previous post, I called attention to a case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court about the legality of a strip search of a student at school. What the Court decides in such a case can always have implications for workplace privacy issues and employer search policies. The Court has now decided Safford Unified School District #1 v. Redding.

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There will be some who say that the day of the statesman has long past. I don’t know if I’m that pessimistic about it, but something Harry Truman said provides some humor for the subject and may actually solve the debate about statesmen vs. politicians.

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In Ricci v. DeStefano. in a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has said Judge Sotomayor was wrong to conclude that white firefighters hadn’t been discriminated against because of their race when the City of New Haven denied them promotions. What timing!

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As noted in two previous posts, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Ricci v. DeStefano would be important because of its potential to change the way discrimination cases are evaluated under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and because Judge Sonia Sotomayor was one of three judges who issued the decision being reviewed by the Supreme Court. (Click here and here.) The Court’s decision is now in. The majority of the Court disagreed with Sotomayor, issuing one of the most significant opinions ever under Title VII.

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The above title may be a bit of an overstatement, but Cultural Offering provides us a cartoon that’s right on target.