Free Republic

The American Civil Liberties Union is investigating complaints from more than a dozen black employees at a Six Flags theme park who were told their hairstyles were inappropriate. Jonathan DeLeon, 17, was hired at Six Flags America in Largo, Md., in March to wear the costumes of Sylvester and Daffy Duck. A few weeks later, he said he was told to cut his braids, which were at least 3 feet long. Though his mother cut more than 2 feet of his hair, park officials were dissatisfied, he said. "They told me I had to cut them even shorter or go...

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — A Baton Rouge hospital, hoping to get to the bottom of an office prank, is ordering 25 employees to undergo DNA testing or be terminated. Leaders at Woman's Hospital say a man who works in Building Operations returned from several weeks off to find that someone had placed urine in his toolbox. After hearing of the incident, hospital administrators sent a memo to 25 employees who also work there telling them that DNA testing would be done unless someone came forward admitting guilt. Since no one came forward, the hospital said the DNA testing will...

Three Bay Area men whose job offers as flight attendants were withdrawn because they concealed their HIV-positive status can sue American Airlines for disability discrimination, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. The airline is entitled to request relevant medical information but, under state and federal laws, must wait until all other background checks have been completed and a job has been offered, said the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That allows the applicant to decide whether to disclose personal information and also makes it possible to determine whether an application wasn't rejected for an illegal reason, the court said....

Employers have recently tried every carrot they can think of — including cash incentives and iPods — to persuade employees to quit smoking. Now some are trying the stick. Pointing to rising health costs and the oversized proportion of insurance claims attributed to smokers, some employers in California and around the country are refusing to hire applicants who smoke and, sometimes, firing employees who refuse to quit. "Employers are realizing the majority of health costs are spent on a small minority of workers," says Bill Whitmer, chief executive of the Health Enhancement Research Organization, an employer and healthcare coalition in...