Supreme Court To Tackle Admissions Bias Circuit Split

By Katie Buehler

The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday that it will decide what type of evidence is needed to claim facially neutral admissions policies are racially discriminatory, after turning away two similar cases in the three years since the justices barred the use of affirmative action in higher education.

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Justices Won't Test NLRB Firing Protections After Slaughter

By Braden Campbell

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday turned away former National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox's challenge to a split D.C. Circuit ruling allowing her firing, declining to ponder whether board members' job protections survived last term's decision in Trump v. Slaughter. 

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Amazon Security Ruling Applies To Conn. Servers, Judge Told

By Brian Steele

Steakhouse servers should benefit from a decision issued by the Connecticut Supreme Court, and then adopted by the Second Circuit, that held Amazon must pay its warehouse workers for time spent going through security screenings, a state court judge heard Monday.

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Justices Won't Take Up Fired Black Counselor's Bias Suit

By Grace Elletson

The U.S. Supreme Court refused Monday to review the dismissal of a Black career counselor's race bias suit alleging a government contractor that aids veterans fired her out of discrimination, declining an invitation to revisit an evidentiary framework set in a landmark 1973 ruling.

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Ex-OpenAI Engineer Must Stay In Custody In Recording Case

By Hailey Konnath

The former OpenAI product team engineer accused of hiding a secret recording device in an executive conference room has been ordered to stay behind bars after prosecutors argued he has "considerable resources and ties to Saudi Arabia," according to news reports and the government's motion for detention.

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Port Of Seattle Challenges Trump Grant Terms Targeting DEI

By Elaine Briseño

The Port of Seattle and several Washington cities and counties asked a federal judge to block the Trump administration from enforcing new grant conditions that would threaten $87 million in funding, arguing the restrictions lack clear standards of conduct.

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Flock Accused Of 'Boys Club' Culture By Fired Worker

By David Aaro

A former account manager at Flock sued the surveillance technology company in Texas federal court Monday, claiming she faced a sexist "boys club" culture in the workplace and got fired after complaining about it.

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Abbott Wins Bid To Move Ex-Worker's Bias Suit To Illinois

By Susan Smiley

Abbott Laboratories has convinced a Michigan federal judge that a former employee's sex discrimination and retaliation lawsuit belongs in Illinois. 

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Brief

Data Co. To Pay $2M To Resolve Feds' US Worker Bias Probe

By Patrick Hoff

A data company will pay $2 million and face a two-year suspension from a federal program that allows employers to hire foreign workers to settle U.S. Department of Justice probes and related litigation alleging it discriminated against U.S. workers, the federal government announced.

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Brief

EEOC Poised To Withdraw Disparate Impact Guidance

By Patrick Hoff

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is close to nixing decades-old guidelines that help employers ensure that their hiring practices don't inadvertently discriminate against workers, after the proposed rescission was sent to the White House for review.

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Calif. Appeals Court Revives Claims In Northrop Wage Row

By Katherine Smith

A California appeals court has partially reopened a former employee's suit alleging that Northrop Grumman illegally issued multiple wage statements per pay period to some of its workers, ruling that a trial court must decide if the company's actions were in good faith before it can award damages.

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Olive Garden Workers Get Conditional Opt-In Nationwide Cert.

By Lauren Berg

Olive Garden cannot trim a collective action that accuses it of tipped wage violations and underpaying employees, a Massachusetts federal judge has ruled, while preliminarily approving an opt-in class of the pasta chain's servers and bartenders.

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Delta Accused Of Wage Abuse By Calif. Flight Attendants

By Gina Kim

Delta Air Lines Inc. cheated nonexempt flight attendants out of overtime wages by failing to compensate them for time they spent undergoing security checks, yearly staff training, preparing aircraft for boarding, cleaning planes and other work-related duties, alleges a proposed class action lodged Friday in California state court.

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Amazon Union Pans Co.'s Case In 5th Circ. Election Challenge

By Braden Campbell

Amazon's challenge to the National Labor Relations Board's order to bargain with workers at a Staten Island warehouse relies on "extraordinarily strained readings of the board's decision" to reject its objections to an election the union won handily, the Teamsters told the Fifth Circuit.

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Full Fed. Circ. Won't Revive Insulet's $59M Trade Secrets Win

By Adam Lidgett

The Federal Circuit will not reinstate a jury's $59.4 million trade secret theft verdict against EOFlow Co. Ltd., rejecting insulin product developer Insulet Corp.'s request for rehearing of a panel decision overturning the award.

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Pot Co. Ascend Says It Had Good Reasons To Fire Executive

By Sam Reisman

Major cannabis company Ascend Wellness has urged a New York federal judge to find that a wrongful termination case brought by a former executive should be thrown out because the company documented a record of inappropriate behavior and fulfilled its duties to communicate its reasons for firing him.

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Amazon Noncompetes Run Afoul Of California Law, Suit Says

By Ben Adlin

Two former Amazon employees have accused the company of wrongfully forcing its California workers to sign agreements containing a noninterference provision, contending the provision amounts to a noncompetition clause that's forbidden by state law.

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Jackson Lewis Hires Calif. DOJ Atty With Employment Chops

By Gina Kim

An attorney who has decades of experience representing employees in wage-and-hour class actions and Fair Labor Standards Act collective actions against major companies and most recently served as supervising deputy attorney general for the California Department of Justice has joined Jackson Lewis PC.

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2nd Circ. Eases Employer Defense Of Dress Code Rules

The Second Circuit recently sided with Starbucks in a ruling that makes it easier for companies to defend dress code policies against unfair labor practice challenges, but employers shouldn't read it as a license to ban union insignia, say attorneys at Shipman & Goodwin.

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Tracking The 2027 Va. Bills That May Tighten Data Center Regs

Data center developers and operators should monitor Virginia legislation responding to the state's new data center accountability framework, local moratoria and the end of an electricity consumption tax, which could change review thresholds, impose new energy rules and slow the approval process, say attorneys at Holland & Knight.

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Reel Justice: 'The Odyssey' And Making Tough Trial Choices

In “The Odyssey,” Odysseus succeeds because he abandons the search for a perfect answer, highlighting for litigators why successful advocacy is about making thoughtful choices that circumvent cognitive biases and mental shortcuts, says Veronica Finkelstein at Widener-Delaware Law.

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DOJ Or Trump: Judge Asks Who Is Deciding Golf Course Plan

By Jared Foretek

Trump administration lawyers continued to insist at a hearing Monday there is no final plan to remake East Potomac Golf Course, and they changed their tune about whether one would require environmental review, despite new social media posts from the president announcing that work on the overhaul would begin "immediately."

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Wood Smith, Charlesbank Capital Ink Pioneering MSO Deal

By Emma Cueto

Insurance defense firm Wood Smith Henning & Berman has inked a deal to take investment from middle market investment firm Charlesbank Capital Partners via a managed services organization, according to an announcement Monday, the largest U.S. firm to announce such a move.

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Brief

Arizona Court Approves State's First Non-ABA Law School

By Emma Cueto

The Arizona Supreme Court has approved the state's first law school not accredited by the American Bar Association, citing the need to increase the number of lawyers per capita in the state and provide more affordable options for legal education.

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Court Denies Gov't Bid To DQ Susman Godfrey In ABA's Suit

By Andrea Keckley

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has denied the U.S. Department of Justice's bid to disqualify Susman Godfrey LLP from representing the American Bar Association in its lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's executive orders against multiple major law firms. 

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Trump Taps DOJ Official, Federal Prosecutor For Judgeships

By Courtney Bublé

President Donald Trump on Monday nominated a senior U.S. Department of Justice attorney for a Nebraska federal judgeship and an assistant U.S. attorney for a seat on the Northern District of Indiana bench.

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Rogoff Tells 9th Circ. His Firing Furthers Trump's 'Evil' Plan

By Ben Adlin

Roger Rogoff urged the Ninth Circuit to affirm a lower judge's order reinstating him as Seattle's top federal prosecutor, asserting in a filing Friday that he's entitled to keep the court-appointed U.S. attorney position until President Donald Trump fills the role with a Senate-confirmed nominee.

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Proskauer Says It Didn't Drop Reddit To Defend Perplexity

By Lauren Berg

Proskauer Rose LLP and Perplexity AI are urging a New York federal judge to allow the law firm to represent the artificial intelligence company in Reddit's suit over alleged data scraping, balking at the social media platform's argument that its one-time law firm can't represent its current opponent.

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What The Justices Won't Hear: A Roundup Of Cert Denials

By Taylor Bowie

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up cases from Google, a U.S. Navy contractor, and other appellate hopefuls on Monday, according to an order list.

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Catching Up With Delaware's Chancery Court

By Jarek Rutz

The Delaware Chancery Court last week blocked Cloudflare Inc. from completing a restructuring meant to preserve its founders' voting control, while Tower Semiconductor Ltd. accused Intel Corp. of backing out of a semiconductor manufacturing agreement and social media company Triller Group Inc. challenged its removal from Nasdaq.

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