Labor and Employment Law Commons^™

California’S 2023 Legislative Cycle: Governor Newsom Provides Victories And Losses For The Labor Movement, Victoria Chan

GGU Law Review Blog

During the 2023 legislative cycle, the California Legislature sent more than 900 bills to Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk for his review. Of the 900 bills, thirteen bills were sponsored by the California Labor Federation (CLF) in support of major labor initiatives. The CLF is a coalition of 1,200 unions dedicated to protecting workers. The CLF indicated that this past legislative year was a “fantastic year for organized labor in the [California] State Legislature,” specifically, thirteen of its sponsored bills passed the California Legislature and arrived at the Governor’s desk for his review.

Below is a preview of two workers’ rights …

The Long Shadow Of Inevitable Disclosure, Stacey Dogan, Felicity Slater

Faculty Scholarship

A growing body of evidence has highlighted the human and economic costs associated with contractual restrictions on employee mobility. News accounts describe abusive use of non-compete clauses to prevent low wage workers from seeking better options. Economists, meanwhile, have demonstrated that innovation and economic dynamism may suffer when employers can easily prevent their employees from changing jobs. While state legislatures have attempted to address these concerns by restricting employers' use of non-compete agreements, the Federal Trade Commission recently announced a plan to prohibit them altogether. As policymakers focus attention on contractual limits on employment mobility, however, a more insidious threat …

Defining Who Is An Employee After A.B.5: Trading Uniformity And Simplicity For Expanded Coverage, Edward A. Zelinsky

Articles

My assessment of California’s A.B.5 differs from the evaluation advanced by the advocates and opponents of that legislation: I conclude that A.B.5 made a significant but limited expansion of the coverage of California labor law but at a notable cost. Even as A.B.5 broadened the reach of the Golden State’s labor protections, A.B.5 also made the definition of "employee” more complex and less uniform. Those seeking federal or state legislation like A.B.5 confront the same trade-off under which greater coverage is achieved at the expense of more complexity and less uniformity in the definition of who is an employee. The …

Bostock Was Bogus: Textualism, Pluralism, And Title Vii, Mitchell N. Berman, Guha Krishnamurthi

All Faculty Scholarship

In Bostock v. Clayton County, one of the blockbuster cases from its 2019 Term, the Supreme Court held that federal antidiscrimination law prohibits employment discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity. Unsurprisingly, the result won wide acclaim in the mainstream legal and popular media. Results aside, however, the reaction to Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion, which purported to ground the outcome in a textualist approach to statutory interpretation, was more mixed. The great majority of commentators, both liberal and conservative, praised Gorsuch for what they deemed a careful and sophisticated—even “magnificent” and “exemplary”—application of textualist principles, while …

Making Employment Arbitration Fair And Accessible, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

Mandatory arbitration agreements require employees, as a condition of employment, to agree to arbitrate all employment disputes instead of filing court suits. The Supreme Court has approved such agreements but many labor experts oppose them. The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill to prohibit pre-dispute agreements, the common form for mandatory arbitrations. This article argues that the House bill would have the practical effect of virtually eliminating employment arbitration. Instead, proposals are presented for either legislative or judicial steps to ensure that employment arbitration is fair and accessible. Requirements would include: (1) voluntary agreements on the part of …

Brief Of Amicus Curiae The Washington And Lee University School Of Law Black Lung Clinic In Support Of Petitioners: California V. Texas, Timothy C. Macdonnell

Scholarly Articles

Section 1556 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) makes two major changes to the Black Lung Benefits Act. These changes remove limiting language to make it simpler for disabled miners and their families to establish that they are entitled to federal benefits. First, § 1556(a) reinstates the fifteen-year rebuttable presumption, which presumptively entitles former coal miners to benefits if they have worked over fifteen years underground and have a totally disabling pulmonary disease. The second, § 1556(b), reinstates a continuation of benefits for surviving spouses whose coal-mining spouse was receiving benefits at the time of their death. …

Narrowly Tailoring The Covid-19 Response, Craig Konnoth

Publications

No abstract provided.

Testimony Of Marcy L. Karin In Support Of B23-0494. The "Ban On Non-Compete Agreements Amendment Act Of 2019", Marcy L. Karin

D.C. Council Testimony

No abstract provided.

Brief Of Amici Curiae Employment Law Professors In Support Of Respondents, Sandra F. Sperino

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This Court should not interpret section 1981 to require proof of but-for causation, given that statute’s text, history, and purpose. Although Comcast invokes the canon of statutory construction that Congress intends statutory terms to have their settled common-law meaning, that canon does not apply here. Section 1981 has no statutory text that reflects a common-law understanding of causation. Indeed, in 1866, when Congress enacted the predecessor to section 1981, there was no well-settled common law of tort at all. Rather, just as courts have read 42 U.S.C. § 1982, which shares common text, history and purpose, this Court should read …

Reclaiming The Navajo Range: Resolving The Conflict Between Grazing Rights And Development, Ezra Rosser

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Grazing is fundamental to Navajo identity, yet management of the Navajo range remains highly problematic. This Essay connects the federal government's devastating livestock reduction effort of the 1930s with the inability of the Navajo Nation to place meaningful limits on grazing and the power of grazing permittees. It argues that the Navajo Nation should consider reasserting the tribe's traditional understanding that property rights depend on use as a way to create space for reservation development.

An American Approach To Social Democracy: The Forgotten Promise Of The Fair Labor Standards Act, Kate Andrias

Articles

There is a growing consensus among scholars and public policy experts that fundamental labor law reform is necessary in order to reduce the nation’s growing wealth gap. According to conventional wisdom, however, a social democratic approach to labor relations is uniquely un-American—in deep conflict with our traditions and our governing legal regime. This Article calls into question that conventional account. It details a largely forgotten moment in American history: when the early Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) established industry committees of unions, business associations, and the public to set wages on an industry-by-industry basis. Alongside the National Labor Relations Act, …

An American Approach To Social Democracy: The Forgotten Promise Of The Fair Labor Standards Act, Kate Andrias

Faculty Scholarship

There is a growing consensus among scholars and public policy experts that fundamental labor law reform is necessary in order to reduce the nation’s growing wealth gap. According to conventional wisdom, however, a social democratic approach to labor relations is uniquely un-American – in deep conflict with our traditions and our governing legal regime. This Article calls into question that conventional account. It details a largely forgotten moment in American history: when the early Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) established industry committees of unions, business associations, and the public to set wages on an industry-by-industry basis. Alongside the National Labor …

Threats To Medicaid And Health Equity Intersections, Mary Crossley

Articles

2017 was a tumultuous year politically in the United States on many fronts, but perhaps none more so than health care. For enrollees in the Medicaid program, it was a “year of living precariously.” Long-promised Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act also took aim at Medicaid, with proposals to fundamentally restructure the program and drastically cut its federal funding. These proposals provoked pushback from multiple fronts, including formal opposition from groups representing people with disabilities and people of color and individual protesters. Opposition by these groups should not have surprised the proponents of “reforming” Medicaid. Both people of …

The Progressives: Racism And Public Law, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

American Progressivism inaugurated the beginning of the end of American scientific racism. Its critics have been vocal, however. Progressives have been charged with promotion of eugenics, and thus with mainstreaming practices such as compulsory housing segregation, sterilization of those deemed unfit, and exclusion of immigrants on racial grounds. But if the Progressives were such racists, why is it that since the 1930s Afro-Americans and other people of color have consistently supported self-proclaimed progressive political candidates, and typically by very wide margins?

When examining the Progressives on race, it is critical to distinguish the views that they inherited from those that …

Testimony Of Marcy Karin. The Committee Of The Whole. October 10, 2017, Marcy L. Karin

D.C. Council Testimony

No abstract provided.

Sampling Of Employment Retaliation Cases Against Colleges And Universities In The District Of Columbia. Supplemental Testimony By Marcy Karin And Grace Emery For October 10, 2017 Committee Of The Whole Hearing, Marcy L. Karin

D.C. Council Testimony

No abstract provided.

The Dubious Empirical And Legal Foundations Of Wellness Programs, Adrianna Mcintyre, Nicholas Bagley, Austin Frakt, Aaron Carroll

Articles

The article offers information on the dubious empirical and legal foundations of workplace wellness programs in the U.S. Topics discussed include enactment of Affordable Care Act for expanding the scope of incentives availas; analysis of financial incentives offered to the employees for encouraging their participation in wellness programs; and targeting incentives specifically toward individuals diagnosed with chronic diseases.

Disability Rights And Labor: Is This Conflict Really Necessary?, Samuel R. Bagenstos

Articles

In this Essay, I hope to do two things: First, I try to put the current labor-disability controversy into that broader context. Second, and perhaps more important, I take a position on how disability rights advocates should approach both the current controversy and labor-disability tensions more broadly. As to the narrow dispute over wage-and-hour protections for personal-assistance workers, I argue both that those workers have a compelling normative claim to full FLSA protection—a claim that disability rights advocates should recognize—and that supporting the claim of those workers is pragmatically in the best interests of the disability rights movement. As to …

The Triangle Of Law And The Role Of Evidence In Class Action Litigation, Jonah B. Gelbach

All Faculty Scholarship

In Tyson Foods v. Bouaphakeo, a "donning and doffing" case brought under Iowa state law incorporating the Fair Labor Standards Act's overtime pay provisions, the petitioners asked the Supreme Court to reject the use of statistical evidence in Rule 23(b)(3) class certification. To its great credit, the Court refused. In its majority opinion, the Court cited both the Federal Rules of Evidence and federal common law interpreting the FLSA. In this paper, I take a moderately deep dive into the facts of the case, and the three opinions penned by Justice Kennedy (for the Court), Chief Justice Roberts (in …

Foreword: The Workplace Law Agenda Of The Obama Administration, Ruben J. Garcia

Scholarly Works

Professor Ruben Garcia introduces a Symposium issue of the Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal focused on an assessment of several key aspects of the workplace law record thus far of President Barack Obama.

The New Labor Law, Kate Andrias

Articles

Labor law is failing. Disfigured by courts, attacked by employers, and rendered inapt by a global and fissured economy, many of labor law’s most ardent proponents have abandoned it altogether. And for good reason: the law that governs collective organization and bargaining among workers has little to offer those it purports to protect. Several scholars have suggested ways to breathe new life into the old regime, yet their proposals do not solve the basic problem. Labor law developed for the New Deal does not provide solutions to today’s inequities. But all hope is not lost. From the remnants of the …

Justice Kennedy's Big New Idea, Sandra F. Sperino

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

In a 2015 case, the Supreme Court held that plaintiffs could bring disparate impact claims under the Fair Housing Act (the "FHA"). In the majority opinion, Justice Kennedy relied heavily on the text and supporting case law interpreting Title VII of the Civil Rights Act ("Title VII") and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (the "ADEA '). Without explicitly recognizing the powerful new idea he was advocating, Justice Kennedy's majority opinion radically reconceptualized federal employment discrimination jurisprudence. This new reading of Title VII and the ADEA changes both the theoretical framing of the discrimination statutes and greatly expands their scope. …

Under The Prison Litigation Reform Act's So-Called Three Strikes Provision, When Does A Dismissal Count As A Strike: Coleman V. Tollefson (13-1333), Betsy Ginsberg

Articles

The Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1996 amended the federal in forma pauperis statute to include, among other provisions, what has become known as the “three strikes provision.” Under this provision, prisoners who have accumulated three strikes—three dismissals of cases that were frivolous, malicious, or failed to state a claim—are no longer permitted to proceed in forma pauperis unless they can show immediate danger of serious physical injury. This case asks the Court to determine whether a dismissal by the district court immediately counts as a strike or whether it does not count until any appeal of the dismissal has …

Retaliation And The Reasonable Person, Sandra F. Sperino

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

When a worker complains about discrimination, federal law is supposed to protect that worker from later retaliation. Recent scholarly attention focuses on how courts limit retaliation claims by narrowly framing the causation inquiry. A larger threat to retaliation law is developing in the lower courts. Courts are declaring a wide swath of conduct as insufficiently serious to constitute retaliation.

Many courts hold that it is legal for an employer to threaten to fire a worker, to place the worker on administrative leave, or to negatively evaluate the worker because she complained about discriminatory conduct. Even if the worker has evidence …

Labor Unions And Title Vii: A Bit Player At The Creation Looks Back, Theodore St. Antoine

Book Chapters

During the debates over what became Title VII (Equal Employment Opportunity) of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, I was the junior partner of the then General Counsel of the AFL-CIO, J. Albert Woll. There were only three of us in the firm. The middle partner, Robert C. Mayer, handled the business affairs of the Federation and our other union clients. Bob was also the son-in-law of George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO, which gave us a unique access to Meany’s thinking. The Federation had only one in-house lawyer, Associate General Counsel Thomas Everett Harris. Tom was an aristocratic Southerner …

Disarming Employees: How American Employers Are Using Mandatory Arbitration To Deprive Workers Of Legal Protection, Jean R. Sternlight

Scholarly Works

Employers’ imposition of mandatory arbitration constricts employees’ access to justice. The twenty percent of the American workforce covered by mandatory arbitration clauses file just 2,000 arbitration claims annually, a minuscule number even compared to the small number of employees who litigate claims individually or as part of a class action. Exploring how mandatory arbitration prevents employees from enforcing their rights the Article shows employees covered by mandatory arbitration clauses (1) win far less frequently and far less money than employees who litigate; (2) have a harder time obtaining legal representation; (3) are often precluded from participating in class, collective or …

The Tort Label, Sandra F. Sperino

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Courts and commentators often label federal discrimination statutes as torts. Since the late 1980s, the courts increasingly applied tort concepts to these statutes. This Article discusses how courts placed employment discrimination law within the organizational umbrella of tort law without examining whether the two areas share enough theoretical and doctrinal affinities.

While discrimination statutes are torts in some general sense that they do not arise out of criminal law and are not solely contractual, it is far from clear that these statutes are enough like traditional torts to justify the reflexive and automatic use of tort law. Employment discrimination statutes …

A Diamond In The Rough: Trans-Substantivity Of The Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure And Its Detrimental Impact On Civil Rights, Suzette Malveaux

Publications

No abstract provided.

Let's Pretend Discrimination Is A Tort, Sandra F. Sperino

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

In the past decade, the Supreme Court has repeatedly invoked tort common law to interpret federal discrimination statutes. During this same time period, the Supreme Court increasingly invoked textualism as the appropriate methodology for interpreting these statutes. One immediate effect of these two trends - tortification and textualism - is to restrict discrimination law by tightening causal standards.

This Article explores how interpreting discrimination statutes through the lenses of tort law and textualism can expand, rather than restrict, discrimination law. It assumes that courts will continue to characterize discrimination statutes as torts and as deriving from the common law, despite …

Torts And Civil Rights Law: Migration And Conflict: Symposium Introduction, Sandra F. Sperino

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Curiously, the connection between civil rights and civil wrongs has not been a topic that has captivated the attention of large numbers of legal scholars over the years. The distance that has developed between the two fields likely reflects their placement on opposite sides of the public-private divide, with Title VII and other anti-discrimination statutes forming part of public law, while torts is a classic, private law subject. To compound the division, both subjects are to some extent still under-theorized. Employment discrimination scholarship is often caught up in the process of analyzing the doctrinal implications of the latest Supreme Court …