Labor and Employment Law Commons^™

Reproductive Justice At Work: Employment Law After Dobbs V. Jackson Women’S Health Organization, Laura T. Kessler

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

In June 2022, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, landmark decisions which held that the U.S. Constitution protected a right to abortion prior to fetal viability. Overnight, about 64 million American women of childbearing age potentially lost the right to decide what happens in their own bodies. In the two years since the decision, seventeen states have made most or all abortions illegal, with the fight over abortion still taking place in state and federal courts. Experts across fields have explored the decision's effects on health, economic …

The Bias Presumption, Bradley A. Areheart, Dave Hall

Scholarly Works

The American workplace is a fractured sphere of public life, in which white men often wield power at the expense of women and people of color. However, that power imbalance is no longer fully imbued with the active animus that characterized the first few centuries of American life; now, much of the damage done by discrimination is done structurally and implicitly. Consequently, the operation of bias and disadvantage is often invisible to employers and employees alike. The problem of discrimination in American life is thus larger and deeper than a few bad actors, and it will be impossible to solve …

Busting The Union Buster: Why A Fair Balance Of Employees' Right To Unionize And Employer Free Speech Requires Workplace Meetings Discussing The Employer's Views On Unionization To Be Voluntary, Jennifer L. Murray

Duquesne Law Review

On April 7, 2022, National Labor Relations Board (the "Board") General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo sent shockwaves through American industries when she issued GC Memo 22-04. The memo announced that she would be asking the Board to find a violation of the National Labor Relations Act ("the Act" or "the Wagner Act") for mandatory meetings in which employees are required to listen to employer speech concerning the exercise of their statutory labor rights.¹ Days later, Abruzzo filed a brief in a case pending before the Board, Cemex Construction Materials Pacific, LLC, asking the Board to ban such meetings.^{2 …}

Pay Differences In The Absence Of Discrimination: Legislative Fallacies And Statistical Truths, Allan G. King, Stephen G. Bronars

Journal of Legislation

No abstract provided.

College Athlete Unionization, Roberto L. Corrada

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

The U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 2021 decision in NCAA v. Alston has opened the door to serious consideration of the potential for college athlete unionization and collective bargaining. The ruling, highlighted by Justice Kavanaugh's concurring opinion, suggests collective bargaining as a potential solution to the National Collegiate Athletic Association's ("NCAA's") antitrust vulnerabilities. This Article delves into the initial legal and strategic questions surrounding the prospect of unionization, focusing particularly on NCAA Division I football and basketball, due to their significant revenue generation making them prime candidates for unionization efforts.

The National Labor Relations Board ("NLRB" or "Board") is positioned to …

The Thinning Blue Line: Ptsd Benefits For Law Enforcement In Minnesota, Caleb Wootan

Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice

No abstract provided.

Rigid Rideshares And Driver Monitoring, Seth D. Goldstein

Student Scholarship

(Excerpt)

Since 2018, Uber has submitted applications for numerous patents that use algorithms to “define” safety. These patents “calculate” safety through multiple factors, including crime reports and statistics, news databases, academic databases of reports of violent conflicts in a location, the car’s condition, how often the driver swerves, and “social media.” These machine-learning models attempt to predict “the likelihood that a driver will be involved in dangerous driving or interpersonal conflict.” Drivers are generally outraged by these patents and have commented that these recorded metrics will be “used to manipulate and influence” driver behavior. There is merit to this fear. …

Dobbs V. Employee Benefits: Major Questions Left After The Landmark Decision, Brendan Mohan

Akron Law Student Publications

The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned nearly fifty years of precedent established in Roe v. Wade, shifting the power to regulate abortion laws from the federal government to individual states. This seismic legal shift has raised significant questions about the intersection of state abortion laws and employee benefits, particularly for companies that offer abortion-related benefits through employer-sponsored health plans. The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) contains express and implied preemption provisions that have historically shielded employee benefit plans from conflicting state regulations. However, the extent to which ERISA can be used …

Reimagining The Deduction For Employee Compensation, Daniel Schaffa

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

U.S. businesses pay trillions of dollars in employee compensation, a substantial fraction of which is deductible for tax purposes. This deduction reduces the taxable income of businesses, ultimately lowering business tax burdens by hundreds of billions of dollars. With a few exceptions, the tax code confers the same deduction to a business for every dollar of employee compensation, regardless of whether that compensation goes to an employee earning millions or an employee earning minimum wage. This is consistent with a pure Haig-Simons income tax, under which any business expense incurred ought to be deductible dollar-for-dollar. But many, if not most, …

The Inherent Harm Of Employment Discrimination: What Behavioral Economics Teaches Us About Title Vii's Adverse Action Requirement, Janelle L. Ariota

Campbell Law Review

For decades, many courts have wrestled with the judicially created concept of "adverse employment actions" in determining whether a plaintiffhas proved a primafacie case of employment discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of1964. Circuit courts have regularly applied different types of heightened adverse employment action standards, which only muddied the already complicated understanding ofworkplace discrimination. This Comment explores the recent circuit split concerning adverse employment actions and the introduction of the Supreme Court's new "some harm" testfrom Muldrow v. City of St. Louis. This Comment takes the position that principal behavioral economics theories can inform the judicial …

Henderson And The Objective Observer Standard: The Future Of Race-Conscious Standards Post-Students For Fair Admissions, Gabriela Dionisio

Seattle University Law Review

On June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Students for Fair Admissions v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, which struck down race-conscious admissions policies. Within just a year after its ruling, Students for Fair Admissions has already had a sweeping impact, reaching beyond higher education. Although the Supreme Court did not indicate whether Students for Fair Admissions applies to sectors beyond higher education, law firms, and other employers have already modified their diversity policies and initiatives, erasing race and company diversity considerations. Given those dramatic changes, there is growing fear that Students for Fair Admissions …

Same Crime, Different Time: Sentencing Disparities In The Deep South & A Path Forward Under The Fourteenth Amendment, Hailey M. Donovan

Seattle University Law Review

The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. The American obsession with crime and punishment can be tracked over the last half-century, as the nation’s incarceration rate has risen astronomically. Since 1970, the number of incarcerated people in the United States has increased more than sevenfold to over 2.3 million, outpacing both crime and population growth considerably. While the rise itself is undoubtedly bleak, a more troubling truth lies just below the surface. Not all states contribute equally to American mass incarceration. Rather, states have vastly different incarceration rates. Unlike at the federal level, …

Regulatory Choices And Legal Disputes In The Fight Against Covid-19 Infections In The Workplace, Susan Bisom-Rapp, Marco Peruzzi

Faculty Scholarship

This is a comparative study of two countries’ legal and policy actions to stem the spread of COVID-19 in the workplace, focusing on Italy and the United States (US). Both nations sustained great loss of life and high infection rates during the first years of the pandemic. This chapter examines how Italy and the US approached COVID-19 vaccine mandates for workers. Of particular interest are the regulatory choices made, including the choice not to regulate, and the consequences of those choices on the employment relationship. Additionally revealing are the legal grounds upon which regulatory actions were challenged, and how courts …

Unleashing Corporate Entrepreneurship, Bernice A. Grant

Brooklyn Law Review

Noncompetition agreements (noncompetes), which prohibit employees from launching or working at competitive companies for certain periods, have become increasingly prevalent in the workplace. Employers claim they need noncompetes to protect their trade secrets and other legitimate business interests, but most workers do not have access to trade secrets—and when they do, such secrets can be better protected through confidentiality and intellectual property agreements. In practice, many companies appear to use noncompetes as an employee retention tool, but this is not a legitimate purpose for a noncompete. In addition, noncompetes have a disproportionately negative impact on women, people of color, and …

Strategic Enforcement: A Shift From Analytic To Systemic Thinking And Strategy, Raul Virella

Full-Text Theses & Dissertations

In 2021, the State of New Jersey mandated a shift from nearly seventy years of linear, complaint-based enforcement of labor laws to a strategic enforcement approach that recognizes the complex and dynamic nature of the workplace. This dissertation explores how members of the New Jersey Division of Wage and Hour Compliance transitioned their thinking and practices to align with this new approach. A 15-item survey was distributed via email to a sample of 94 members from the Division of Wage and Hour Compliance and the Office of Strategic Enforcement and Compliance, focusing on two research questions.

The first research question …

Benefits Transparency, Samantha J. Prince

Marquette Law Review

Recently, several states and cities have enacted equal pay laws in a push for pay transparency in job postings to inform and help reduce wage gaps. Some of these laws also require a description of the employee benefits that the company offers. However, none of these laws require a detailed description of said benefits, even though employee benefits on average make up 24% of an employee’s compensation.

Businesses can choose how much to disclose with respect to their benefits and they may even engage in what this author calls “benefits washing”—a practice where companies provide vague or misleading information about …

Public Primacy In Corporate Law, Dorothy S. Lund

Seattle University Law Review

This Article explores the malleability of agency theory by showing that it could be used to justify a “public primacy” standard for corporate law that would direct fiduciaries to promote the value of the corporation for the benefit of the public. Employing agency theory to describe the relationship between corporate management and the broader public sheds light on aspects of firm behavior, as well as the nature of state contracting with corporations. It also provides a lodestar for a possible future evolution of corporate law and governance: minimize the agency costs created by the divergence of interests between management and …

Robo-Voting: Does Delegated Proxy Voting Pose A Challenge For Shareholder Democracy?, John Matsusaka, Chong Shu

Seattle University Law Review

Robo-voting is the practice by an investment fund of mechanically voting in corporate elections according to the advice of its proxy advisor— in effect fully delegating its voting decision to its advisor. We examined over 65 million votes cast during the period 2008–2021 by 14,582 mutual funds to describe and quantify the prevalence of robo-voting. Overall, 33% of mutual funds robo-voted in 2021: 22% with ISS, 4% with Glass Lewis, and six percent with the recommendations of the issuer’s management. The fraction of funds that robo-voted increased until around 2013 and then stabilized at the current level. Despite the sizable …

The Limits Of Corporate Governance, Cathy Hwang, Emily Winston

Seattle University Law Review

What is the purpose of the corporation? For decades, the answer was clear: to put shareholders’ interests first. In many cases, this theory of shareholder primacy also became synonymous with the imperative to maximize shareholder wealth. In the world where shareholder primacy was a north star, courts, scholars, and policymakers had relatively little to fight about: most debates were minor skirmishes about exactly how to maximize shareholder wealth.

Part I of this Essay discusses the shortcomings of shareholder primacy and stakeholder governance, arguing that neither of these modes of governance provides an adequate framework for incentivizing corporations to do good. …

The Pioneers, Waves, And Random Walks Of Securities Law In The Supreme Court, Elizabeth Pollman

Seattle University Law Review

After the pioneers, waves, and random walks that have animated the history of securities laws in the U.S. Supreme Court, we might now be on the precipice of a new chapter. Pritchard and Thompson’s superb book, A History of Securities Law in the Supreme Court, illuminates with rich archival detail how the Court’s view of the securities laws and the SEC have changed over time and how individuals have influenced this history. The book provides an invaluable resource for understanding nearly a century’s worth of Supreme Court jurisprudence in the area of securities law and much needed context for …