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Articles 1 - 30 of 54
Full-Text Articles in Law
Beyond The Glass Ceiling: Panes Of Equity Partnership, Rachel Arnow-Richman
Beyond The Glass Ceiling: Panes Of Equity Partnership, Rachel Arnow-Richman
UF Law Faculty Publications
This Article, prepared for a “micro-symposium” on Professor Kerri Stone’s monograph Panes of the Glass Ceiling (2022), explores the partnership pay gap in large law firms and the role of high-profile litigation in facilitating pay equity. There is a rich literature and extensive data on the gender attainment gap in elite law practice, particularly with regard to women’s attrition from practice and poor representation within the partnership ranks. Less attention has been paid to the way in which the exceptional women who achieve equity partner status continue to lag behind their male peers. This Article explores “Women v. BigLaw,” a …
Disclosing Discrimination, Stephanie Bornstein
Disclosing Discrimination, Stephanie Bornstein
UF Law Faculty Publications
In the United States, enforcement of laws prohibiting workplace discrimination rests almost entirely on the shoulders of employee victims, who must first file charges with a government agency and then pursue litigation themselves. While the law forbids retaliation against employees who complain, this does little to prevent it, in part because employees are also responsible for initiating any claims of retaliation they experience as a result of their original discrimination claims. The burden on employees to complain—and their justified fear of retaliation if they do so—results in underenforcement of the law and a failure to spot and redress underlying structural …
Temporary Termination: A Layoff Law Blueprint For The Covid Era, Rachel Arnow-Richman
Temporary Termination: A Layoff Law Blueprint For The Covid Era, Rachel Arnow-Richman
UF Law Faculty Publications
The COVID-19 pandemic led to Congress’ passage of two groundbreaking pieces of legislation, mitigating the financial toll on individuals unable to work due to the pandemic. The protections include: paid sick time, job protected leave for routine childcare, and expanded unemployment benefits. The current worker protection system affords insufficient rights in the event of an economic termination. The accommodations arising from the COVID-19 pandemic have long been demanded and could pave the way for enduring employment reform. This Article encourages the recognition of “temporary termination” for employees terminated for economic reasons. Arnow-Richman advocates for the following “temporary termination” rights: advance …
To Report Or Not To Report: Data On School Law Enforcement, Student Discipline, Race, And The 'School-To-Prison Pipeline', Michael Heise, Jason P. Nance
To Report Or Not To Report: Data On School Law Enforcement, Student Discipline, Race, And The 'School-To-Prison Pipeline', Michael Heise, Jason P. Nance
UF Law Faculty Publications
The “school-to-prison pipeline” wreaks havoc on the lives of thousands of students each year, particularly with respect to students of color. While the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the school-to-prison pipeline remain unclear, the eventual return to full in-person teaching nationwide undoubtedly will renew this long-festering problem. The presence of law enforcement officers in schools is a key component of the school-to-prison pipeline and has generated considerable recent national attention, especially after George Floyd’s tragic death in the spring of 2020. Indeed, several robust empirical studies document that the increased presence of school resource (and/or police) officers in a …
The New Enforcement Regime: Revisiting The Law Of Employee Competition (And The Scholarship Of Professor Charles Sullivan) With 2020 Vision, Rachel Arnow-Richman
The New Enforcement Regime: Revisiting The Law Of Employee Competition (And The Scholarship Of Professor Charles Sullivan) With 2020 Vision, Rachel Arnow-Richman
UF Law Faculty Publications
This Article, prepared for Seton Hall Law School’s 2019 Symposium on the scholarship of Professor Charles Sullivan, labels and critiques “the new enforcement regime” in employee mobility law. For centuries, employee noncompetes have been regulated primarily through the common law rule of reason. The last decade, however, has witnessed a surge in public initiatives seeking to restrict employers’ use and enforcement of these agreements. They include proposed legislation, regulatory undertakings, class action litigation, and state enforcement programs that seek reforms ranging from an end to the use of noncompetes with vulnerable workers to the outright prohibition of all forms of …
The Politics Of Pregnancy Accommodation, Stephanie Bornstein
The Politics Of Pregnancy Accommodation, Stephanie Bornstein
UF Law Faculty Publications
How can antidiscrimination law treat men and women “equally” when it comes to the issue of pregnancy? The development of U.S. law on pregnancy accommodation in the workplace tells a story of both legal disagreements about the meaning of “equality” and political disagreements about how best to achieve “equality” at work for women. Federal law has prohibited sex discrimination in the workplace for over five decades. Yet, due to long held gender stereotypes separating work and motherhood, the idea that prohibiting sex discrimination requires a duty to accommodate pregnant workers is a relatively recent phenomenon—and still only partially required by …
Finding Balance, Forging A Legacy: Harassers’ Rights And Employer Best Practices In The Era Of Metoo, Rachel Arnow-Richman
Finding Balance, Forging A Legacy: Harassers’ Rights And Employer Best Practices In The Era Of Metoo, Rachel Arnow-Richman
UF Law Faculty Publications
This article, prepared for the Annual Jack Pemberton Lecture on Workplace Justice, calls for the development of best practices for handling accused harassers in response to the MeToo movement. It contends that much of MeToo’s legacy will be determined by the voluntary choices of employers as they implement new policies and practices surrounding sexual harassment. It is therefore crucial that employers gain a better understanding of the nature and scope of sexual harassment and the risks of both over- and under-enforcement of anti-harassment norms. Through analysis of Harvey Weinstein’s final contract as Co-Chairman of the Weinstein Companies, the article juxtaposes …
A Structural-Purposive Interpretation Of “Employment” In The Platform Economy, E. Gary Spitko
A Structural-Purposive Interpretation Of “Employment” In The Platform Economy, E. Gary Spitko
Florida Law Review
The considerable growth of the platform economy has focused attention on the issue of whether a provider engaged through a transaction platform should be classified as an employee of the platform operator, and therefore within the purview of workplace protective legislation or as an independent contractor, thus outside the scope of such legislation’s protections. This Article focuses specifically on whether the operator’s reservation of the right to impose quality control standards on the provider ought to give rise to employment obligations running in favor of the provider and against the operator. This narrow issue is of great importance to the …
The Declining Fortunes Of American Workers: Six Dimensions And An Agenda For Reform, Stephen F. Befort
The Declining Fortunes Of American Workers: Six Dimensions And An Agenda For Reform, Stephen F. Befort
Florida Law Review
At the turn of the century, I undertook an assessment of the then-current state of workplace rights and obligations. I concluded that the balance of power between employers and workers was “badly skewed” in favor of employers. This Article revisits that topic for the purpose of assessing twenty-first-century trends through the lens of six workplace dimensions. They are: workforce attachment, union–management relations, employment security, income inequality, balancing work and family, and retirement security. An examination of these dimensions reveals that the status of U.S. workers has significantly declined during the first sixteen years of the twenty-first century. This Article then …
Antidiscriminatory Algorithms, Stephanie Bornstein
Antidiscriminatory Algorithms, Stephanie Bornstein
UF Law Faculty Publications
Can algorithms be used to advance equality goals in the workplace? A handful of legal scholars have raised concerns that the use of big data at work may lead to protected class discrimination that could fall outside the reach of current antidiscrimination law. Existing scholarship suggests that, because algorithms are “facially neutral,” they pose no problem of unequal treatment. As a result, algorithmic discrimination cannot be challenged using a disparate treatment theory of liability under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII). Instead, it presents a problem of unequal outcomes, subject to challenge using Title VII’s …
Of Power And Process: Handling Harassers In An At-Will World, Rachel Arnow-Richman
Of Power And Process: Handling Harassers In An At-Will World, Rachel Arnow-Richman
UF Law Faculty Publications
In the wake of the #MeToo movement, companies have taken swift and severe disciplinary action against alleged harassers, raising questions in some instances as to whether their responses were justified. This Essay, prepared for the Yale L.J. Forum’s symposium on the sexual harassment scholarship of Professor Vicki Schultz, argues that balancing the goals of the #MeToo movement with principles of fairness to the accused demands attention to an overlooked aspect of the problem: the status of the alleged harasser. The background rule of employment at will, coupled with employer contracting practices and the law of sexual harassment itself, produces a …
Reckless Discrimination, Stephanie Bornstein
Reckless Discrimination, Stephanie Bornstein
UF Law Faculty Publications
If there are known, easily adopted ways to reduce bias in employment decisions, should an employer be held liable for discriminatory results when it fails to adopt such measures? Given the vast amount we now know about implicit bias and the ways to reduce it, to what extent is an employer who knowingly fails to do so engaging in intentional discrimination? This Article theorizes a “recklessness” model of discrimination under Title VII, arguing for liability where an employer acts with reckless disregard for the consequences of implicit bias and stereotyping in employment decisions. Legal scholars have argued that Title VII …
Scaling Carnegie: Four Iterations Of Teaching Transactional Workplace Law Skills, Rachel Arnow-Richman
Scaling Carnegie: Four Iterations Of Teaching Transactional Workplace Law Skills, Rachel Arnow-Richman
UF Law Faculty Publications
The post-Recession demand for increased skills education in law school has spawned rich experimentation in course development and pedagogy. Less progress has been made, however, in developing holistic and sustainable curricula. Among the many challenges is the high per-student cost of delivering hands-on skills-oriented learning. The success of many law school initiatives to improve practice-readiness will depend in large part on the viability of merging skills education into the traditional large-class format. This published presentation, delivered at the Emory Law School Center for Transactional Law & Practice, examines four models of teaching transactional workplace law skills, based on the author’s …
Modifying At-Will Employment Contracts, Rachel Arnow-Richman
Modifying At-Will Employment Contracts, Rachel Arnow-Richman
UF Law Faculty Publications
Long-term employment relationships are constantly in flux: terms of compensation, company policies, and a variety of other conditions of work are routinely altered over the course of an employee’s job. In cases involving at-will employment, the economic realities and power dynamics are such that changes in terms are likely to be introduced unilaterally by the employer, often without advance notice. To date, however, neither courts nor commentators have holistically considered this problem of “midterm modifications” - contractual documents imposed post-hire on implicit or explicit threat of termination. Bringing together the law of noncompetes, arbitration agreements, and employee handbooks, this Article …
Mainstreaming Employment Contract Law: The Common Law Case For Reasonable Notice Of Termination, Rachel Arnow-Richman
Mainstreaming Employment Contract Law: The Common Law Case For Reasonable Notice Of Termination, Rachel Arnow-Richman
Florida Law Review
This Article simultaneously exposes a fundamental error in employment termination doctrine and a paradox in contract law jurisprudence. Contemporary employment law has developed under the assumption that at-will parties may terminate their relationship both without reason and without notice. This Article argues that the second half of this formulation—the idea that parties reserve the procedural right to terminate without notice—is neither historically supported nor legally correct. Employment at will, as originally expressed, was a mere duration presumption reflecting America’s rejection of the predominant British rule favoring one-year employment terms. While subsequent case law expanded the presumption in various ways, a …
Illusory Protection: The Fifth Circuit’S Misguided Interpretation Of Title Vii’S Anti-Retaliation Provision In Hernandez V. Yellow Transportation, Inc., William C. Matthews
Illusory Protection: The Fifth Circuit’S Misguided Interpretation Of Title Vii’S Anti-Retaliation Provision In Hernandez V. Yellow Transportation, Inc., William C. Matthews
Florida Law Review
After Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway Co. v. White resolved the issue of what constitutes an “adverse action” under the Title VII anti-retaliation statute, the scope of employer liability was substantially broadened. The Supreme Court’s decision reinforced the broad intent behind the anti-retaliation statute and acknowledged the statute’s remedial purpose. The Fifth Circuit, however, has been reluctant to expand employer liability as evidenced through its interpretation of the “adverse action” prong relating to coworker harassment. More specifically, the Fifth Circuit’s “In Furtherance” standard, which is used to judge whether an employer is liable for coworker harassment in retaliation for …
Fact Sheet #71: Shortchanging The Unpaid Academic Intern, Patricia L. Reid
Fact Sheet #71: Shortchanging The Unpaid Academic Intern, Patricia L. Reid
Florida Law Review
On the eve of the Fair Labor Standards Act’s seventy-fifth anniversary, unpaid academic internships threaten to outpace government regulation and undermine opportunities for gainful employment. Although coveted by students eager to fill a line on their résumé, unpaid academic internships are a subspecies of unpaid internships that might soon face extinction. While the advent of unpaid internship litigation decreases the likelihood that employers will plead ignorance of the law when they defend against disgruntled unpaid interns, recent litigation does little to clear up a half-century of contradictory case law. The only certainty that surrounds the legal status of unpaid academic …
Mutual Marginalization: Individuals With Disabilities And Workers With Caregiving Responsibilities, Nicole Buonocore Porter
Mutual Marginalization: Individuals With Disabilities And Workers With Caregiving Responsibilities, Nicole Buonocore Porter
Florida Law Review
This Article explores the marginalization of two groups of employees—individuals with disabilities and workers with caregiving responsibilities. One might argue that these two groups have little in common. However, while these groups are not perfectly aligned, they do have much in common in the workplace. First, these employees are unable to consistently meet their employers’ expectations of an “ideal worker.” Thus, they often must seek adjustments or modifications in the workplace to accommodate for their failure to conform to the ideal-worker norm. The need for accommodation causes both groups of employees to suffer from “special-treatment stigma,” which manifests itself in …
The Tort Label, Sandra F. Sperino
The Tort Label, Sandra F. Sperino
Florida Law Review
Courts and commentators often label federal discrimination statutes as torts. The tort label leads to reasoning that is superficial and not transparent about its motivations and goals. Courts do not engage in nuanced discussions about the kind of reasoning they are using or the values they are prioritizing in reaching the result. Importantly, the tort label gives the appearance that the courts are engaging in a form of traditional analysis that is noncontroversial. This Article argues that multiple claims courts make about the employment discrimination statutes related to the tort label are so baseless that they do not even reach …
The Forgotten Role Of Consent In Defamation And Employment Reference Cases, Alex B. Long
The Forgotten Role Of Consent In Defamation And Employment Reference Cases, Alex B. Long
Florida Law Review
As has been well documented, the fear of defamation suits and related claims lead many employers to refuse to provide meaningful employment references. However, an employer who provides a negative reference concerning an employee enjoys a privilege in an ensuing defamation action if the employee has consented to the release of information concerning the employee’s job performance. Thus, many attorneys now advise prospective employers to have applicants sign consent agreements, permitting the prospective employer to conduct an investigation into the applicant’s work history and releasing from liability anyone who provides information about the employee’s work history. The Restatement (Second) of …
Social Media And The Workplace: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Privacy Settings And The Nlrb, Kathleen Carlson
Social Media And The Workplace: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Privacy Settings And The Nlrb, Kathleen Carlson
Florida Law Review
Social media has permeated every aspect of society. The use of social media can easily lead to issues in an employment law context when employees suffer adverse employment actions based on the information they choose to share via their personal social media websites. Today’s laws concerning online privacy are in a nebulous state and have led some observers to suggest that employees who use social media may not find adequate legal protection from wrongful termination. This Note refutes this contention by analyzing current laws that may protect employees from adverse employment actions due to their use of social media. This …
To Enforce A Privacy Right: The Sovereign Immunity Canon And The Privacy Act’S Civil Remedies Provision After Cooper, Daniel J. Dimatteo
To Enforce A Privacy Right: The Sovereign Immunity Canon And The Privacy Act’S Civil Remedies Provision After Cooper, Daniel J. Dimatteo
Florida Law Review
In 2005, a joint investigation between separate government agencies revealed that Stanmore Cooper, a pilot, failed to disclose to the Federal Aviation Administration that he was HIV positive. Cooper sued the agencies in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, claiming that they violated the Privacy Act by disclosing his medical records to one another without his consent. Alleging that the unlawful disclosure of his condition caused him severe emotional distress, Cooper sought monetary relief under the Privacy Act’s civil remedies provision, which establishes a cause of action against the government for “actual damages.” The dispositive …
Rights In Recession: Toward Administrative Antidiscrimination Law, Stephanie Bornstein
Rights In Recession: Toward Administrative Antidiscrimination Law, Stephanie Bornstein
UF Law Faculty Publications
This Article documents how, over the past six years and coinciding with the “Great Recession of 2008,” both public and private antidiscrimination enforcement mechanisms have become increasingly constrained, such that the ability to enforce the mandate of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 - the main federal law prohibiting employment discrimination - may be facing a crisis point. While enforcement mechanisms for federal antidiscrimination law have long left room for improvement, recent developments in the economy, due to the 2008 recession, and in federal case law, due to a series of procedural decisions by the Roberts Court, …
Work Wives, Laura A. Rosenbury
Work Wives, Laura A. Rosenbury
UF Law Faculty Publications
Traditional notions of male and female roles remain tenacious at home and work even in the face of gender-neutral family laws and robust employment discrimination laws. This Article analyzes the challenge of gender tenacity through the lens of the “work wife.” The continued use of the marriage metaphor at work reveals that the dynamics of marriage flow between home and work, creating a feedback loop that inserts gender into both domains in multiple ways. This phenomenon may reinforce gender stereotypes, hindering the potential of law to achieve gender equality. But such gender tenacity need not always lead to subordination. The …
Marital Status And Privilege, Laura A. Rosenbury
Marital Status And Privilege, Laura A. Rosenbury
UF Law Faculty Publications
This essay challenges the privilege attaching to marriage as a distinct form of relationship. Responding to Angela Onwuachi-Willig’s new book, According to Our Hearts: Rhinelander v. Rhinelander and the Law of the Multiracial Family, the essay identifies the legal and extralegal privileges flowing not just to monoracial marriage but to marriage. States recognize and support one form of relationship between adults to the exclusion of all others, creating privilege that flows outside of the home into the workplace and beyond. Instead of arguing that such privilege should be distributed more equally between monoracial and multiracial couples, this essay seeks …
Intellectual Property And Employee Selection, Elizabeth A. Rowe
Intellectual Property And Employee Selection, Elizabeth A. Rowe
UF Law Faculty Publications
In today’s marketplace, companies from Disney to Hooters are increasingly integrating their image into the service that they provide. This has come to be known as “branded service.” The human wearing the trade dress merges with the brand image. When a company chooses this strategy to differentiate itself from its competitors in the marketplace, it will often incorporate some intellectual property, and the result then necessarily influences hiring decisions. If a business decides not to hire a prospective employee because she does not fit the company’s image, and that decision is challenged under the antidiscrimination laws, to what extent should …
Employment Law Inside Out: Using The Problem Method To Teach Workplace Law, Rachel Arnow-Richman
Employment Law Inside Out: Using The Problem Method To Teach Workplace Law, Rachel Arnow-Richman
UF Law Faculty Publications
This Article, prepared for the Saint Louis University Law Review’s 2013 Symposium on Teaching Employment & Labor Law, explores the use of the problem method in employment law instruction. Drawing on my experience teaching the basic employment law course, I suggest that those areas of the field that require transactional lawyering skills are perhaps best taught contextually through a hypothetical problem, rather than through cases. Adopting the problem method in such circumstances not only gives students a richer understanding of the law and how it operates, but also the opportunity to cultivate problem-solving skills and professional judgment, thereby advancing the …
Clicking Away Confidentiality: Workplace Waiver Of Attorney-Client Privilege, Adam C. Losey
Clicking Away Confidentiality: Workplace Waiver Of Attorney-Client Privilege, Adam C. Losey
Florida Law Review
Barbara Hall, an administrative assistant, often arrives at work an hour and a half early solely to check her personal e-mails on her employer’s computer. Afterwards, “[i]n the grand tradition of Chekhov, or perhaps ‘Days of Our Lives,’ Barbara Hall carries on a dialogue throughout the workday with her two daughters, both of whom work at an event-planning company in Cleveland and use its e-mail system for such exchanges.” When she gets home from work, Barbara continues to use her workplace e-mail account to send personal e-mails. Barbara Hall and her daughters are not alone. The average employee is estimated …
Work, Family, And Discrimination At The Bottom Of The Ladder, Stephanie Bornstein
Work, Family, And Discrimination At The Bottom Of The Ladder, Stephanie Bornstein
UF Law Faculty Publications
With limited financial resources, few social supports, and high family caregiving demands, low-wage workers go off to work each day to jobs that offer low pay, few days off, and little flexibility or schedule stability. It should come as no surprise, then, that workers' family lives conflict with their jobs. What is surprising is the response at work when they do. This Article provides a survey of lawsuits brought by low-wage workers against their employers when they were unfairly penalized at work because of their caregiving responsibilities at home. The Article reflects a review of cases brought by low-wage hourly …
Discrimination Against Mothers Is The Strongest Form Of Workplace Gender Discrimination: Lessons From Us Caregiver Discrimination Law, Stephanie Bornstein, Joan C. Williams, Genevieve R. Painter
Discrimination Against Mothers Is The Strongest Form Of Workplace Gender Discrimination: Lessons From Us Caregiver Discrimination Law, Stephanie Bornstein, Joan C. Williams, Genevieve R. Painter
UF Law Faculty Publications
Work-family reconciliation is an integral part of labor law as the result of two major demographic changes: the rise of the two-earner family, and the pressing concern of elder care as Baby Boomers age. Despite these changes, most European and American workplaces still assume that the committed worker has a family life secured so that family responsibilities do not distract from work obligations. This way of organizing employment around a breadwinner husband and a caregiver housewife, which arose in the late eighteenth century, is severely outdated today. The result is workplace-workforce mismatch: Many employers still have workplaces perfectly designed for …