New England Biz Law Update

While they had pleaded bias claims “conceptually consistent with Title VII,” Whole Foods employees disciplined for wearing Black Lives Matter face masks had not established viable discrimination or retaliation claims, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed. The ...

A gay employee who filed a discrimination lawsuit against his employer won’t be getting his day in court. A federal appellate court upheld a summary judgment, finding there was insufficient evidence of an adverse employment action for the case to ...

A number of “take home COVID-19” lawsuits have been filed across the country. These suits involve cases in which employees are believed to have caught COVID-19 at work and then brought it home to a family member who was adversely ...

A habit of discriminatory language could help an employee’s claim of a hostile work environment when generalized harassment is coupled with more specific ties to an employee’s protected class, a Massachusetts trial court judge has decided. In the case of ...

In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision reversing Roe v. Wade, some major U.S. employers have announced new abortion-related benefits, including covering costs for employees who need to travel out of state to obtain abortion care. Amazon, one ...

The U.S. Supreme Court recently issued a decision that affects arbitration of employment disputes, delivering a rare win against employers and setting aside a precedent from the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In May 2022, the Court ruled in ...

The Federal Trade Commission is considering new regulations to restrict companies’ use of noncompete clauses. Last year, President Joe Biden asked the FTC to consider limiting these clauses. But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce contends that the FTC doesn’t have ...

A ballot initiative strongly supported by ridesharing and restaurant delivery services to secure their workers’ status as independent contractors will not move forward, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has ruled. Uber Technologies Inc., Lyft Inc., and DoorDash Inc. advocated for the proposed ballot initiatives ...

The National Labor Relations Board has modified the timing of its electronic notice-posting requirement when an employer has not yet reopened its facility due to COVID-19, or a substantial number of employees have not yet returned to work on site, ...

OSHA has announced that COVID-19 enforcement is the agency’s top priority for 2022. The program will involve inspection of “high hazard” employers and further inspection of health care employers that have received COVID-19 complaints in the past. To open an ...