Beware the legal risks of AI meeting agents

AI meeting agents are everywhere. They join Zoom calls, transcribe conversations, summarize action items, and promise to save employees hours of note-taking. From a business perspective, the upside is obvious: better documentation, fewer "I don't remember saying that" disputes, and cleaner follow-up.

But like most shiny tech, AI meeting agents come with real employment law and litigation risk—especially if you don't think through how (and when) you use them.

Workplace investigations are hard. Until they’re not.

Workplace investigations are hard.

Witnesses forget. Memories conflict. Motives get murky. HR is left piecing together timelines, credibility, and intent from incomplete information, while everyone involved insists they did nothing wrong.

And then there are the easy ones.

Take the paramedic who now faces nearly two dozen criminal charges for allegedly urinating all over his workplace — on a supervisor's keyboard, into communal coffee creamer, an ice machine, orange juice, hand soap, ChapStick, canned vegetables, an air-conditioner vent, even a pot of chili. According to prosecutors, he didn't just do it. He filmed himself doing it. In uniform. Then allegedly posted the videos online to sell.

Federal court provides road map for lawful DEI programs

I keep getting asked how employers can legally maintain DEI programs in today's political climate. A federal judge just answered that question in a lawsuit the Missouri Attorney General brought against Starbucks—and in dismissing it, handed corporate America a roadmap.

The AG argued Starbucks' DEI policies were illegal because they "favored" BIPOC, women, and LGBTQ+ employees through mentorship, affinity groups, partnerships, and "quotas" tied to executive pay.

The court held that allegations without facts are just theories—and theories don't establish jurisdiction or liability.

WIRTW #788: the 'it's a beautiful day' edition

When I was a kid, Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood wasn't background noise. You sat on the floor. You watched. You waited for him to come through the door, change his shoes, and pull on that cardigan. Nothing flashy happened. No one was mocked. No one was humiliated. No one "won."

And yet, by the end, you felt steadier.

It took me years to understand why. Fred Rogers wasn't just entertaining children. He was teaching empathy—carefully, intentionally, and without irony. Which is why I keep coming back to this thought: we need a sociological study comparing the empathy of adults who grew up on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood with those who didn't.

Because empathy feels like the missing muscle in American society right now.

Every episode opened with a simple, disarming truth:

"I like you just the way you are."

Not if you earn it.
Not if you agree.
Not if you fit in.

Just: you matter.

That idea once felt obvious. Today, it feels almost subversive. We sort people by usefulness, loyalty, productivity, and tribe. Empathy gets rationed. Compassion gets qualified. Caring about the “wrong” people is treated as a flaw.

Rogers never hedged.

"You are worth caring about."

That's where empathy begins. And when a society stops teaching that lesson, it doesn't become tougher or more realistic. It becomes colder—and easier to harden.

Rogers also understood that empathy requires emotional literacy. You can't recognize pain in others if you've been taught to deny it in yourself. On his show, he talked openly about fear, anger, sadness, and loss—not to inflame them, but to name them.

"When we're frightened, we tend to lash out at others."

That isn't politics. It's human behavior. When empathy erodes, fear rushes in. And fear doesn't make people wiser or stronger. It makes them reactive.

Rogers' answer wasn't suppression or denial. It was honesty.

"The thing that is mentionable becomes manageable."

That lesson applies to adults as much as children. Societies that can't talk honestly about discomfort don't become resilient. They become brittle.

Empathy also shapes how we see one another.

"The neighbors you find are the neighbors you look for."

If you go looking for threats, you'll find them. If you go looking for people, you'll find those too. One path leads to suspicion and withdrawal. The other leads to restraint and connection.

And empathy doesn't require unanimity.

"We don't have to think alike to love alike."

That sentence feels almost antique now, which should worry us. We increasingly treat disagreement as disqualification and difference as danger. Rogers offered a quieter alternative: coexistence without dehumanization.

He never framed empathy as weakness. He treated it as a civic skill—something to be taught, practiced, and protected. A society held together by empathy doesn't need as much fear or force to function.

Which brings us to where we are.

The erosion of empathy doesn't just harden people; it makes them easier to lead by fear. When compassion is framed as weakness, it leaves a vacuum. And something always rushes in to fill it.

So yes, fear still matters. But it's a consequence, not a cause. Fear is downstream of the deliberate erosion of empathy. When people are taught not to care, cruelty becomes easy. And when empathy disappears, bad ideas don't have to work very hard.

Fred Rogers never talked about politics. He didn't need to. He was doing something more basic: teaching children how to live with other people without losing their humanity.

America didn't lose its way because we cared too much.

We lost it because we stopped treating empathy as a strength.

Empathy isn't softness. It's social infrastructure. It's our superpower. And any culture that mocks it shouldn't be surprised when things start coming apart.

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Here's what I read this week that you should read, too.

Just Subpoena It.

This week, the EEOC sent a strong message to corporate America when it went to federal court to force Nike to turn over years of documents tied to allegations that its DEI programs discriminated against White employees.

The EEOC isn't suing Nike for discrimination—at least not yet. Instead, it has filed a subpoena enforcement action after Nike allegedly refused to fully comply with an investigation that reaches back to 2018. According to the agency, Nike's "DEI-related 2025 Targets" and other initiatives may have resulted in race-based decision-making in hiring, promotions, layoffs, internships, and mentoring and leadership-development programs.

Union activity Is not a license to be abusive at work

Let's get something straight right out of the gate: employees have the right to organize. They also have the right to complain about work, staffing, and management decisions. What they do not have is a free pass to be abusive, vulgar, and demeaning toward coworkers and supervisors—union campaign or not.

That's what makes the Starbucks case now pending before the Fifth Circuit so frustrating.

When does $5,000,000 not equal $5,000,000?

Elizabeth Graham worked as a benefits generalist in the human resources department of Bristol Hospice Holdings. She filed (and later withdrew) an EEOC charge alleging age and sex harassment. A couple of months later, during an acquisition integration, the company accused her of blowing off a training assignment (and then lying about it). The VP of HR terminated her — allegedly for insubordination and falsifying what happened.

A federal court jury just awarded her $5,000,000 in punitive damages, on top of $75,000 in non-economic compensatory damages. That punitive award will never last.