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Not every stray comment contributes to creating a hostile work environment. Instead, harsh words or acts like excluding someone from a meeting may reflect a management style that, while uncomfortable, does not create a hostile work environment. A recent case distinguishes the two and offers lessons to employers on telling the difference.

In a letter sent to chief executives, general counsel and board chairs, the agency’s leader emphasized that workplace initiatives tied to diversity, equity and inclusion must still comply with longstanding protections under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has sued a Tennessee employer for alleged practices that should have died in the last century. It’s a warning that all employers need to make sure every division, location and supervisor understands what’s acceptable and what can never be tolerated under any circumstances.

Discrimination lawsuits involving allegations not within the EEOC’s priorities will increase in direct relationship to the types of cases the agency is prioritizing. Think more age, race, sexual orientation and gender identity, genetic information, equal pay and disability discrimination cases.

Employers should self-audit to determine whether they may be inadvertently discriminating based on a protected classification.

In February, the commission sent letters to several law firms questioning their participation in a certification program run by a company called Diversity Lab. The company created the Mansfield Certification Program, which was supposed to help law firms achieve common diversity goals in the delivery of legal services.

Just a few weeks after EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas took to social media site X to plea for white men who believe they have been discriminated against because of their race, sex or both to file complaints, a plaintiff has filed a failure-to-hire lawsuit based on reverse discrimination.

“Illegal” DEI started out relatively undefined. The EEOC and the Department of Justice have been refining its definition ever since. The problem: The government’s definition of DEI runs headlong into Title VII and the Americans with Disabilities Act, which are still good law, and against two Supreme Court decisions affirming employers’ voluntary DEI programs in narrow circumstances.

If you’ve had to create lunchroom rules based on what employees are bringing to eat or heating up in the microwave, it’s time to rethink that strategy. An employer recently paid $200,000 to a couple whose discrimination lawsuit began with a co-worker’s complaint about allegedly “pungent” Indian food and deteriorated from there.

Chances are, at some point an employee is going to come to HR and tell you they believe they have been discriminated against, harassed or otherwise been treated unfairly. How you respond to that complaint can mean the difference between losing a lawsuit and all that entails or resolving the problem early and avoiding liability.