Employment Law

Course Description

MAN4402 – Employment Law is a 3-credit upper-division course on the law governing the employment relationship. Institutions title it Employment Law and Employment Law and Regulations. It is written for managers and HR practitioners rather than for lawyers — the objective is to recognize legal issues early, comply with the rules, and know when to call counsel.

Employment law is where a manager is most likely to create serious liability without realizing it. A casually worded offer letter, an undocumented termination, a misclassified employee, or a manager's response to an accommodation request can each produce a claim, and the decisions are usually made by line supervisors rather than by lawyers.

Content covers the employment relationship — at-will employment, contracts, and independent contractor classification; equal employment opportunity — Title VII, race, color, religion, sex, and national origin discrimination, and the pregnancy and religious accommodation requirements; disparate treatment and disparate impact analysis; harassment — hostile environment, quid pro quo, employer liability, and prevention; the Americans with Disabilities Act — disability definition, essential functions, reasonable accommodation, and the interactive process; the Age Discrimination in Employment Act; the Fair Labor Standards Act — minimum wage, overtime, and exempt versus non-exempt classification; the Family and Medical Leave Act; workers' compensation and OSHA; labor law under the NLRA, including protected concerted activity; privacy, monitoring, and testing; wrongful discharge and retaliation; and dispute resolution — agency charges, arbitration, and litigation.

Offered at approximately 13 Florida institutions with bachelor's-level business, management, or human resource programs.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Describe the sources of employment law and the roles of federal, state, and local authority.
• Explain employment at will and its contractual and statutory exceptions.
• Distinguish employees from independent contractors and describe the consequences of misclassification.
• Describe Title VII protected classes and prohibited practices.
• Distinguish disparate treatment from disparate impact and describe the proof frameworks.
• Analyze a harassment scenario and describe employer liability and available defenses.
• Describe an employer's obligations for religious accommodation.
• Apply the ADA definition of disability and identify essential job functions.
• Conduct the interactive process and evaluate reasonable accommodation and undue hardship.
• Describe age discrimination protections and their application to workforce reductions.
• Apply FLSA minimum wage and overtime rules and classify positions as exempt or non-exempt.
• Describe FMLA eligibility, qualifying reasons, and employer obligations.
• Describe workers' compensation and workplace safety obligations under OSHA.
• Describe employee rights under the NLRA including protected concerted activity.
• Describe workplace privacy, monitoring, and drug and background testing limits.
• Identify retaliation risk and describe how to reduce it.
• Describe the EEOC charge process and the roles of arbitration and litigation.
• Analyze a workplace scenario, identify legal exposure, and recommend a course of action.

Optional Outcomes

• Describe Florida-specific employment requirements and the Florida Civil Rights Act.
• Describe non-compete and restrictive covenant enforceability.
• Describe employee benefits regulation including ERISA and COBRA.
• Describe immigration compliance including Form I-9 and E-Verify.
• Describe whistleblower protections.
• Describe conducting a lawful workplace investigation.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• Sources of employment law — statutes, regulations, common law, and agency guidance.
• Employment at will — the rule and its exceptions.
• Worker classification — employee, independent contractor, and joint employment.
• Title VII — protected classes, coverage, and prohibited practices.
• Proof frameworks — disparate treatment, disparate impact, and burden shifting.
• Harassment — hostile work environment, quid pro quo, and the Faragher-Ellerth defense.
• Religious accommodation — obligations and limits.
• Pregnancy and related protections.
• The ADA — disability, essential functions, accommodation, and the interactive process.
• The ADEA — age discrimination and reductions in force.
• The FLSA — minimum wage, overtime, exemptions, and recordkeeping.
• The FMLA — eligibility, leave entitlement, and reinstatement.
• Workers' compensation — coverage, exclusive remedy, and claims.
• OSHA — the general duty clause, standards, and inspections.
• The NLRA — protected concerted activity, union organizing, and unfair labor practices.
• Privacy and testing — monitoring, drug testing, and background checks.
• Discipline and discharge — documentation, progressive discipline, and separation.
• Retaliation — the most frequently filed claim category, and how it arises.
• Dispute resolution — EEOC charges, agency investigation, arbitration, and litigation.

Optional Topics

• Florida Civil Rights Act and state-specific requirements.
• Non-compete and restrictive covenants.
• ERISA, COBRA, and benefits regulation.
• Immigration compliance and E-Verify.
• Whistleblower protections.
• Workplace investigations.

Resources & Tools

• Employment Law for Business (Bennett-Alexander & Hartman), McGraw Hill — the standard text for non-law students.
• Employment Law for Human Resource Practice (Walsh), Cengage — strongly practitioner-oriented.
• EEOC — enforcement guidance, charge statistics, and plain-language explanations; free and authoritative.
• U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division — FLSA and FMLA fact sheets and the exemption tests.
• OSHA — standards, the general duty clause, and inspection procedures.
• NLRB — decisions and guidance on protected concerted activity.
• Florida Commission on Human Relations — administers the Florida Civil Rights Act.
• Chapter 760, Florida Statutes (Florida Civil Rights Act) and Chapter 440 (workers' compensation) — free on Online Sunshine.
• Florida Division of Workers' Compensation — employer coverage requirements and forms.
• SHRM — compliance toolkits and state law summaries.

Career Pathways

• Human Resources Specialist (SOC 13-1071) and HR Generalist.
• Human Resources Manager (SOC 11-3121) — where compliance responsibility concentrates.
• Employee Relations Specialist — investigations and discipline.
• Compliance Officer (SOC 13-1041) — across industries.
• Labor Relations Specialist (SOC 13-1075).
• Risk Manager and Safety Manager — workers' compensation and OSHA exposure.
• Paralegal (SOC 23-2011) — in labor and employment practice.
• Pre-law preparation — The Florida Bar certifies Labor and Employment Law as a specialty, and it is an active Florida practice area.

Special Information

Florida differs from the national picture in several specific ways

General textbooks describe federal law; a Florida practitioner needs the state overlay:

• Florida's minimum wage is set by the state constitution, exceeds the federal minimum, and rises on a scheduled path with annual indexing afterward. Employers must pay the higher applicable rate. Any textbook citing only the federal figure is wrong for Florida.
• Florida is a right-to-work state under its constitution — union membership or dues payment cannot be required as a condition of employment.
• The Florida Civil Rights Act (Chapter 760, F.S.) parallels Title VII, applies to employers with 15 or more employees, and adds marital status as a protected characteristic. It is administered by the Florida Commission on Human Relations. The charge-filing window is 365 days with the FCHR, against 300 days with the EEOC in Florida as a deferral state — so the state window is the longer one. HB 1407 (2026), effective July 1, 2026, revised the FCRA's procedural framework to resolve a long-running court split over the limitations period for filing the subsequent civil action. Work from the current statute: material written before mid-2026 describes a framework that has changed.
• Florida has no state family and medical leave law, so FMLA is the only leave entitlement for most private employees, and its 50-employee threshold leaves many Florida workers uncovered.
• Florida requires E-Verify for private employers with 25 or more employees, in addition to the universal federal Form I-9 obligation.
• Workers' compensation is governed by Chapter 440, F.S., and Florida's coverage thresholds are industry-specific — construction employers must carry coverage with as few as one employee, while most other industries trigger at four.
• Non-competes are governed by § 542.335, F.S., which is comparatively employer-friendly: subsection (1)(g)1 expressly provides that a court "shall not consider any individualized economic or other hardship that might be caused to the person against whom enforcement is sought." Florida enforces restrictive covenants routinely, which surprises people arriving from states that disfavor them.
• The CHOICE Act — Contracts Honoring Opportunity, Investment, Confidentiality, and Economic Growth — took effect July 3, 2025 and goes considerably further for agreements it covers. It permits non-compete and garden leave agreements running up to four years, creates a presumption of enforceability, and directs courts to issue preliminary injunctions in favor of covered employers, subject to compensation thresholds, written disclosure, and notice conditions. It supplements rather than replaces § 542.335. Any treatment of Florida non-compete law that stops at § 542.335 is now incomplete.

Retaliation is the most common claim, and it is the most avoidable

Retaliation is filed more often than any other category of EEOC charge, and it can succeed even where the underlying complaint fails — the employee need only have engaged in protected activity and suffered an adverse action because of it. The practical implication for managers is direct: once someone has complained, raised a safety issue, or requested an accommodation, every subsequent employment decision about them needs documented, independent justification. Most retaliation liability is created by supervisors reacting emotionally, not by policy.

Exempt versus non-exempt is the wage-and-hour issue that generates the most liability

Misclassifying an employee as exempt from overtime is common, expensive, and rarely intentional. The tests are specific — salary basis, salary level, and duties — and a job title does nothing on its own. "Salaried" and "exempt" are not synonyms. Because these claims aggregate across a workforce and carry liquidated damages, the exposure from a single wrong classification decision can be substantial.

Learn issue-spotting, not case citations

The course's real objective is the ability to recognize that a situation has legal implications before acting on it. Managers rarely need to know the holding of a particular case; they need to know that a termination two weeks after an accommodation request looks like retaliation, that "we need someone with more energy" reads as age discrimination, and that these are moments to involve HR or counsel. Case study analysis is the pedagogy for exactly this reason.

Pairs directly with recruitment and selection

MAN4402 and MAN4320 are complementary: MAN4320 develops the mechanics of lawful hiring and MAN4402 develops the statutory framework behind it. Many Florida HR concentrations require both.

Upper-division standing

The 4000-level number means junior or senior standing and, at most institutions, admission to the bachelor's program. Prerequisites commonly include a management or human resource management course such as MAN3025 or MAN4301. Note that a business law course (BUL2241 or BUL3130) is a different number covering different content and does not substitute; verify locally.