Labor and Employment Law Commons^™

The Future Of Intersectionality In Employment Law, Suzette Malveaux

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No abstract provided.

Researching Colorado Employment Law, Jill Sturgeon

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No abstract provided.

Wage Theft Criminalization, Benjamin Levin

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Over the past decade, workers’ rights activists and legal scholars have embraced the language of “wage theft” in describing the abuses of the contemporary workplace. The phrase invokes a certain moral clarity: theft is wrong. The phrase is not merely a rhetorical flourish. Increasingly, it has a specific content for activists, politicians, advocates, and academics: wage theft speaks the language of criminal law, and wage theft is a crime that should be punished. Harshly. Self-proclaimed “progressive prosecutors” have made wage theft cases a priority, and left-leaning politicians in the United States and abroad have begun to propose more criminal statutes …

Criminal Employment Law, Benjamin Levin

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This Article diagnoses a phenomenon, “criminal employment law,” which exists at the nexus of employment law and the criminal justice system. Courts and legislatures discourage employers from hiring workers with criminal records and encourage employers to discipline workers for non-work-related criminal misconduct. In analyzing this phenomenon, my goals are threefold: (1) to examine how criminal employment law works; (2) to hypothesize why criminal employment law has proliferated; and (3) to assess what is wrong with criminal employment law. This Article examines the ways in which the laws that govern the workplace create incentives for employers not to hire individuals with …

Labor And Employment Law At The 2014-2015 Supreme Court: The Court Devotes Ten Percent Of Its Docket To Statutory Interpretation In Employment Cases, But Rejects The Argument That What Employment Law Really Needs Is More Administrative Law, Scott A. Moss

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No abstract provided.

Cyberharassment And Workplace Law, Helen Norton

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No abstract provided.

Retaliatory Litigation Tactics: The Chilling Effects Of "After-Acquired Evidence", Melissa Hart

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Even a victim of the most egregious discrimination may recover little monetary relief if the defendant discovers, after firing the employee, that she committed some firable offense. Yet the case in which the Supreme Court so held, McKennon v. Nashville Banner Publishing Co., was widely viewed as a victory rather than a defeat for plaintiffs. This surprising perception flowed from the Court's holding that such "after-acquired evidence" of misconduct merely limited remedies but did not completely eliminate plaintiffs' rights to sue for discrimination. Given that McKennon could be portrayed either as a victory for plaintiffs or an unjust denial …

Where There's At-Will, There Are Many Ways: Redressing The Increasing Incoherence Of Employment At Will, Scott A. Moss

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Employment at will, the doctrine holding that employees have no legal remedy for unfair terminations because they hold their jobs at the will of the employer, has become mired in incoherence. State courts praise the common law rule as "essential to free enterprise" and "central to the free market," but in recent years they increasingly have riddled the rule with exceptions, allowing employee claims for whistleblowing, fraud, etc. Yet states have neither rejected employment at will nor shown any consistency in recognizing exceptions. Strikingly, states cite the same rationales to adopt and reject opposite exceptions, as a case study of …

The Uncertain Status Of Post-Employment Non-Compete Covenants In Texas, Jon H. Sylvester

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A post-employment non-compete covenant is an agreement by an employee that, after termination of employment he or she will not compete with his or her former employer-usually within a specified geographic area and for a specified period of time. Such covenants are standard parts of many employment contracts.

Under the long standing common law of contracts, non-compete covenants are generally suspect as restraints of trade. Post-employment non-compete covenants also bear a strong presumption of unfairness because of the superior bargaining power almost invariably wielded by the employer. Nevertheless most jurisdictions, including Texas, have traditionally enforced post-employment non-compete covenants within the …

A Critique Of The Justifications For Employee Suits In Strict Products Liability Against Third Party Manufacturers, Pierre John Schlag

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No abstract provided.

Unconstitutional Conditions Upon Public Employment: New Departures In The Protection Of First Amendment Rights, Harold H. Bruff

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No abstract provided.