Coupling of polymeric brushes functionalized with RGD peptide on PCL surfaces to increase cell adhesion

Osteoarthritis is a complex disease referring to the degeneration of articular cartilage, which has poor intrinsic capacity of self-regeneration. In order to find a way to create a construct able to replace and regenerate this particular tissue, a functionalized biodegradable polymer via polymer brushes can represent a design for cartilage loss. The aim of this work is the study of the functionalization of a biodegradable polymer (PCL) surface with RGD peptide via PNIPAM brushesope

Restoring Reasonableness to Workplace Religious Accommodations

When Congress amended Title VII of the Civil Rights Act in 1972 to require employers to reasonably accommodate employees’ religious practices absent undue hardship to their business, it intended to protect employees from being forced to choose between their jobs and their religious beliefs. Yet in the decades since, courts have cut away at this right to the point it is practically nonexistent. Particularly concerning is the growing tendency of courts to read reasonableness out of the accommodation requirement, either by conflating reasonableness and undue hardship so that an accommodation’s reasonableness depends solely on whether it would cause the employer undue hardship, by setting the bar for reasonableness so low it is practically meaningless, or by ignoring the requirement altogether. Consequently, employers today have near carte blanche over whether and how to provide religious accommodations—a power imbalance that often forces employees into the precise dilemma from which Congress sought to protect them. This Article argues for the restoration of employees’ right to reasonable religious accommodations. It does so by asserting that reasonableness under Title VII is a standalone requirement, separate and distinct from undue hardship, that must be evaluated from the employee’s perspective. An accommodation should be deemed reasonable to the employee only if it (1) fully eliminates the conflict between the employee’s job and religion, (2) does not cause the employee to suffer an adverse employment action, and (3) avoids unnecessarily disadvantaging the employee’s terms or conditions of employment. This conceptualization of reasonableness aligns with Congress’s intent and, if adopted, would help level the playing field between employers and employees in this increasingly critical area of law

When Should Employers Be Liable for Factoring Biased Customer Feedback into Employment Decisions?

In today’s customer-centric business environment, firms seek feedback from consumers seemingly at every turn. Firms factor customer feedback into a host of decisions, including employment-related decisions such as who to hire, promote, and fire; how much to pay employees; and what tasks to assign them. Increasingly, researchers are discovering that customer feedback is often biased against certain populations, such as women and racial minorities. Sometimes customers explicitly declare their biases, but more often their prejudices are harder to detect — either because they intentionally hide their biases in their ratings or because the customers do not realize their own biases, and thus unknowingly allow such biases to skew their perceptions, and consequently their ratings, of service exchanges. When firms rely on tainted customer feedback to make employment decisions, they indirectly discriminate against employees. Although the law makes clear that employers cannot discriminate against employees based on customers’ explicit discriminatory preferences, it has yet to address whether and to what extent employers are liable for factoring biased customer feedback into employment decisions. This Article argues that employers should not get a free pass to discriminate simply because it is the customers who bear the discriminatory animus; nor should employers be liable in every instance where biased customer feedback taints an employment decision. To strike an appropriate balance, employers should be held to a negligence standard, whereby their liability for using biased feedback depends on whether they knew, or reasonably should have known, the data was tainted, and if so, whether they acted reasonably in response by taking appropriate preventive or corrective measures. A major advantage of this framework is that it works in both the easy cases, where discriminatory feedback is explicit and obvious, as well as in the hard cases, where bias in customer feedback is obscured, by tying employer liability to the ease with which customer bias can be detected. Where customer bias is obvious, the law would impose on employers a heightened duty in terms of both knowledge and response, whereas if bias is hidden, employers would be held to a lower standard

When “Close Enough” is Not Enough: Accommodating the Religiously Devout

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires employers to “reasonably accommodate” employees’ religious practices that conflict with work requirements unless doing so would cause undue hardship to their business operations. Can an accommodation be reasonable if it only partially removes the conflict between an employee’s job and their religious beliefs? For instance, if a Christian employee requests Sundays off because he believes working on his Sabbath is a sin, and his employer responds by giving him Sunday mornings off to attend church services but requires him to work in the afternoon, has the employer provided a reasonable accommodation? The federal courts of appeals are divided. For some, the answer is no because the proposed accommodation does not eliminate the conflict; the employee still must choose between his job and his religion—the precise dilemma Title VII seeks to avoid. For others, the answer could be yes. These courts take the view that because the statute requires only “reasonable” accommodation, rather than “full,” “total,” or “complete,” an accommodation that lessens, but does not eliminate, the conflict may nonetheless be reasonable depending on the circumstances. This Article argues that an accommodation is reasonable only if it fully eliminates the conflict between an employee’s job and religion. Several tools of statutory interpretation support this position, including textualism, legislative history, Supreme Court precedent, and agency guidance. Additionally, and perhaps even more importantly, a full-accommodation rule reflects the reality of religious devotion for the millions of American workers who believe in full obedience to the tenets of their faiths. For these individuals, religious observance is not something that can or should be done partway. If an employee believes it is sinful to work on Sundays, the ability to attend church in the morning hardly mitigates the sin of working in the afternoon. Thus, a partial accommodation is not just unreasonable—it is no accommodation at all

Employer Liability for Non-Employee Discrimination

Discrimination against employees by customers, vendors, and other third parties is a serious issue that will likely become even more pressing in the near future. Increased workplace interactions between employees and non-employees, coupled with the societal shift toward subtle, covert, and sometimes even unconscious discrimination, mean non-employee discrimination is likely to become more pervasive—even as it becomes harder to detect. As this perfect storm brews, it is worth considering how judicial treatment of non-employee discrimination can be improved. I argue that one of the most important changes needed is for the law to cease treating discrimination by non-employees and discrimination by fellow employees as one and the same. These forms of discrimination should be analytically distinct because employers generally cannot exercise the same degree of control over non-employees as they can over their own employees. The law can best account for this crucial distinction by holding employers to a reasonableness standard for non-employee discrimination. Under this standard, employers would be liable for the discriminatory actions of third parties if: (1) they knew or should reasonably have known about the discrimination and (2) failed to act reasonably in response to the discrimination. This approach apportions liability more commensurately with the level of control employers can realistically exercise over non-employees, while still incentivizing employers to aggressively monitor and address non-employee discrimination

When Should Employers Be Liable for Factoring Biased Customer Feedback into Employment Decisions?

In today’s customer-centric business environment, firms seek feedback from consumers seemingly at every turn. Firms factor customer feedback into a host of decisions, including employment-related decisions such as who to hire, promote, and fire; how much to pay employees; and what tasks to assign them. Increasingly, researchers are discovering that customer feedback is often biased against certain populations, such as women and racial minorities. Sometimes customers explicitly declare their biases, but more often their prejudices are harder to detect — either because they intentionally hide their biases in their ratings or because the customers do not realize their own biases, and thus unknowingly allow such biases to skew their perceptions, and consequently their ratings, of service exchanges. When firms rely on tainted customer feedback to make employment decisions, they indirectly discriminate against employees. Although the law makes clear that employers cannot discriminate against employees based on customers’ explicit discriminatory preferences, it has yet to address whether and to what extent employers are liable for factoring biased customer feedback into employment decisions. This Article argues that employers should not get a free pass to discriminate simply because it is the customers who bear the discriminatory animus; nor should employers be liable in every instance where biased customer feedback taints an employment decision. To strike an appropriate balance, employers should be held to a negligence standard, whereby their liability for using biased feedback depends on whether they knew, or reasonably should have known, the data was tainted, and if so, whether they acted reasonably in response by taking appropriate preventive or corrective measures. A major advantage of this framework is that it works in both the easy cases, where discriminatory feedback is explicit and obvious, as well as in the hard cases, where bias in customer feedback is obscured, by tying employer liability to the ease with which customer bias can be detected. Where customer bias is obvious, the law would impose on employers a heightened duty in terms of both knowledge and response, whereas if bias is hidden, employers would be held to a lower standard

When Any Sentence is a Life Sentence: Employment Discrimination Against Ex-Offenders

For the sixty-five million Americans with a criminal record, it is cruelly ironic that perhaps the most important resource for turning their lives around—employment—is also often the most elusive. Shut out from legitimate job opportunities, many ex-offenders resort to illegal means of survival that hasten their return to prison. Recidivism has devastating consequences not only for the individual offender, but also the family, the community, and society at large. This article proposes three amendments to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that seek to balance ex-offenders’ need for employment with employers’ safety concerns. First, employers should be prohibited from discriminating against an ex-offender whose criminal record is not directly related to the job in question or who does not pose an unreasonable threat to property or to the safety of others. Second, employer inquiries about an applicant’s criminal record should be delayed until after at least one job interview. Third, a negligent hiring provision should be added to Title VII that creates a rebuttable presumption against negligence and that caps damages in certain cases. These measures represent a sensible, middle-of-the-road approach that promotes the employment of ex-offenders in appropriate cases, while ensuring that neither employers nor the public are unduly burdened as a result