SimplyHR | Employment & Labor Blog 

In a groundbreaking ruling released recently, Unknown v. Anthony Foxx, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission confirmed that allegations of sexual orientation discrimination necessarily state a claim of sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII).

The National Labor Relations Board has long held employers cannot stifle employee communications about the conditions of their employment in general handbook confidentiality clauses, but on Aug. 27, the NLRB took that prohibition one step further.

In a 2-1 decision, the board ruled The Boeing Co.’s confidentiality restriction for employees under HR investigations violated the National Labor Relations Act. (Boeing Co., 2015 BL 278958, 362 N.L.R.B. No. 195, 8/27/15.)

Whether it’s using a company laptop at home or accessing social media and other personal sites via an office desktop computer, the lines between an employee’s personal and work lives are increasingly blurred.

As revealed by the recent Ashley Madison website hack, many employees across the United States use business computers and business email accounts for very personal reasons — reportedly over 15,000 email addresses used to register accounts were linked to government or military servers. However, dealing with an employee who “cheats” on an employer’s computer, Internet or email use policy may not be as simple as it seems.