Law Commons^™

Institutional Liability For Sexual Violence In Prisons Based On Theaided-By-Agency Theory, Tori Klevan

Fordham Law Review

Sexual assault perpetrated by correctional officers in prisons and jails is a pervasive problem in women’s correctional facilities. However, victims who choose to pursue a civil action rarely recover damages for their injuries because our legal system fails to provide adequate options for relief. This failure leaves victims uncompensated and disincentivizes correctional institutions from implementing effective preventative measures. Part of the reason for this failure is that most U.S. courts refuse to hold employers liable for sexual violence committed by their employees. They find that employers cannot be held liable for the tortious conduct of their employees unless the conduct …

Independent Contractors & Noncompetition Covenants: A Modified Approach, Matthew J. Sandor

Fordham Law Review

This Note examines the way in which noncompetition covenants should be applied to independent contractors. An increasing portion of the American labor force is now employed outside the traditional employer-employee context. Today, nearly sixty million American workers are categorized as independent contractors, with many subject to noncompetition covenants that restrict their ability to participate in the labor market freely. In response to this dramatic change, state courts and legislatures have used a variety of approaches in enforcing noncompetes in the independent contractor context. These approaches run the gamut, with some states liberally construing noncompetes against independent contractors while others have …

An Employment Discrimination Class Action By Any Other Name, Ryan H. Nelson

Fordham Law Review

In a few years, four out of every five nonunion workers in America will have been forced by their employers to sign an individual arbitration agreement as a condition of employment. This new reality, coupled with the U.S. Supreme Court’s fealty to compelled arbitration and cramped reading of Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (“Rule 23”), has killed the employment discrimination class action. But that does not imply the death of collective redress for workers suffering from discrimination. In that spirit, this Article engages in two analyses to keep equal employment opportunity alive at scale.

First, it …

The Reality Of Materiality: Why A Heightened Adversity Standard Has No Place In Title Vii Discrimination Claims, Abigail Mccabe

Fordham Law Review

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbids discrimination in the workplace. Except, according to certain lower courts’ limiting interpretations, for when it does not. Circuit courts have spent decades imposing an extratextual materiality requirement onto Title VII in contravention of its broad remedial purpose. Accordingly, countless victims of discrimination are unable to seek recourse because their alleged harm was purportedly too insignificant to constitute actionable discrimination under Title VII. This materiality requirement not only presents an additional substantive hurdle for plaintiffs, but also leads to inconsistency and unpredictability, as each circuit fumbles to define what conduct is …

“Community Guidelines”: The Legal Implications Of Workplace Conditions For Internet Content Moderators, Anna Drootin

Fordham Law Review

Content moderation is the internet’s not-so-secret, dirty little secret. Content moderators are working around the world, and around the clock, to scrub the internet of horrific content. Most moderators work for low pay and with little or no health care benefits. The content they are exposed to leaves them vulnerable to a number of different mental health issues, including post-traumatic stress disorder. Their work is often hidden from users and is de-emphasized by the technology industry. This Note explores potential solutions to the labor and employment issues inherent in content moderation work and suggests that there could be a path …

The Disparate Treatment Of Rights In U.S. Trade, Desirée Leclercq

Fordham Law Review

Rights advocates are increasingly urging U.S. trade negotiators to include new binding and sanctionable provisions that would protect human rights, women’s rights, and gender equality. Their efforts are understandable. Trade agreements have significant advantages as a process for advancing international rights. Even though Congress and the executive incorporate international environmental standards and labor rights into U.S. trade agreements, they have refused to incorporate gender rights and broader human rights. The rationale behind the United States’s disparate treatment of rights in trade has received almost no scholarly attention. That is a mistake. Using labor rights as a case study, this Article …

Can Private Sector Unionization Be Saved?: An Analysis Of The Pro Act As A Model For Effective Nlra Reform, Christopher Adinolfi

Fordham Law Review

In February 2020, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Protecting the Right to Organize Act (“PRO Act”), one of the most prolabor pieces of legislation since the creation of the current labor relations framework in 1935. For almost seventy-five years, the substantive text of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) has remained largely unchanged, despite the pervasive increase of anti-labor hostility from companies seeking to avoid the unionization of their workers. Across all stages of unionization, organizers and bargaining agents face coercive management tactics, diminished negotiating positions, the loss of collective action tools, and a National Labor Relations Board …

Production Liability, Aditi Bagchi

Fordham Law Review

It is well known that many consumer goods are produced under dangerous working conditions. Employers that directly supervise the production of these goods evade enforcement. Activists and scholars have argued that we must hold the manufacturers and retailers that purchase goods made in sweatshops accountable. However, there has been little movement toward such accountability. Responsibility for the conditions under which goods are made—what I call “production liability”—entails assigning responsibility for workers to firms that do not directly employ them. Production liability, therefore, conflicts with deep intuitions about the boundaries of individual responsibility. This Article offers a moral and economic defense …

The Workers' Constitution, Luke Norris

Fordham Law Review

This Article argues that the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, Social Security Act of 1935, and Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 should be understood as a “workers’ constitution.” The Article tells the history of how a connected wave of social movements responded to the insecurity that wage earners faced after the Industrial Revolution and Great Depression by working with government officials to bring about federal collective bargaining rights, wage and hour legislation, and social security legislation. It argues that the statutes are tied together as a set of “small c” constitutional commitments in both their histories and theory. …

Where Breaking Glass Ceilings Leads To Glass Walls: Gender-Disparate Managerial Decision-Making Power And Authority, Bina Nayee

Fordham Law Review

Today, litigation over plainly discriminatory employment practices is much less common than it was in the two decades following Title VII’s enactment as employers have largely reformed practices that most obviously violate employment discrimination law. But many less obvious employment practices, particularly those embedded in implicit bias or unconscious sex stereotyping, remain. One example is employers’ distribution of managerial decision-making power and authority based on assumptions about sex. Although this particular employment practice has not yet been litigated, there is a strong argument that a legal challenge to this practice could succeed. This Note argues that female managers can and …

The Flsa Permission Slip: Determining Whether Flsa Settlements And Voluntary Dismissals Require Approval, Alex Lau

Fordham Law Review

The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) seeks to protect the poorest, most vulnerable workers by requiring that they be paid a minimum wage and compensated for their overtime labor. When employers do not pay their workers minimum wage or overtime compensation and thereby violate the FLSA, workers have the power to sue their employers for remuneration. Like many other types of cases, most FLSA cases settle before going to trial. Unlike those other types of cases, however, most courts have held that settlements of FLSA cases must be approved to be enforceable. Even though Federal Rule of Civil …

Ban The Box: A Call To The Federal Government To Recognize A New Form Of Employment Discrimination, Christina O'Connell

Fordham Law Review

As the number of Americans with criminal histories grows significantly, states and cities across the nation have reacted by adopting ban-the-box laws. Ban-the-box laws received their name because they ban the criminal history box on initial hiring documents. The goal of the ban-the-box movement is to promote job opportunities for persons with criminal records by limiting when an employer can conduct a background check during the hiring process and encouraging employers to take a holistic approach when assessing an applicant's fit for a position.

There is no federal ban-the-box law, but states have taken varying approaches to adopting ban-the-box statutes. …