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Author:Noah Zatz

Noah Zatz is Professor of Law at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The UC Strike Injunction’s Second Fatal Flaw

Jun 25, 2024 Noah Zatz

Noah Zatz on the second procedural issue arising from a recent court order enjoining the UC grad student ULP strike.

The University of California Strike Injunction (Part 1)

Jun 24, 2024 Noah Zatz

Noah Zatz on the court order enjoining the strike by UC grad students.

Criminal Records Exclusion, “Rational Discrimination,” and Ban the Box

Jul 22, 2020 Noah Zatz

It is now well understood that employers discriminate against applicants with criminal records, but less is known about why they do so. This question is critical to designing appropriate laws and policies. New research shedding light on this issue has recently been published in Criminology and an accompanying policy brief. With my co-authors Naomi Sugie […]

Forced To Work Without Pay: Do Federal Employees Have a Thirteenth Amendment Claim?

Jan 15, 2019 Noah Zatz

The federal government shutdown is precipitating a wave of lawsuits and talk of sick-outs and strikes. That should be no surprise when approximately 400,000 federal employees are being required to work without pay. Wait, “required.”? Talk of being “forced” or “compelled” to work naturally raises questions about the 13th Amendment, which prohibits “involuntary servitude.” Indeed, […]

California Bans the Box, Twice: Establishing Disparate Impact with General Statistics (Part II)

Jan 17, 2018 Noah Zatz

In addition to adopting a new “Ban the Box” statute, California also recently issued innovative regulations applying general employment discrimination law principles to criminal record screening. The previous post provided some background and discussed how the regulations introduce a “bright-line” approach to when criminal screens are unjustified. This post turns to another innovation, one of […]

California Bans the Box, Twice: Bright-Line Limits on Justifying Criminal Record Screens (Part I)

Jan 16, 2018 Noah Zatz

On January 1, California’s new “Ban the Box” law took effect. Although California is known for its progressive labor policies, it also has a dismal history of racialized mass incarceration, making this development especially important. The new law fits squarely within the wave of “Fair Chance Hiring” policies steadily advancing in states and localities nationwide, […]

Kaepernick’s Grievance and Fancy Retaliation Theories

Oct 18, 2017 Noah Zatz

It seems like ages ago, but before the President starting telling NFL owners whom to fire, the big anthem story had been the failure of any NFL team to hire Colin Kaepernick out of free agency. Now that topic is back with Kaepernick filing a grievance against the NFL owners for colluding to keep him […]

How the Anthem Backlash Violates Employment Discrimination Law

Oct 13, 2017 Noah Zatz

With Vice President Pence staging a counterprotest and Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones issuing ultimatums to his team, it is worth reiterating that disciplining NFL players for taking a knee likely is illegal. Let us count the ways. Unlike a constitutional First Amendment analysis that must focus on government action (by, say, the President) to […]

Chicken Processing as Drug Rehab: Forced Labor in a Diversion Program

Oct 6, 2017 Noah Zatz

What happens when a worker’s hand gets crushed in the machinery of a fast-moving poultry processing line? You might expect him to get sent to a doctor and supported by workers comp, but a chilling article from the Center for Investigative Reporting tells a different story: Brad McGahey got sent to prison. Brad McGahey’s story—and […]

Ban the Box and Perverse Consequences, Part III

Aug 4, 2016 Noah Zatz

This is the final post in a three-part series. This is the last in a series of three posts on the prominent perverse consequences argument against “Banning the Box.” The argument is that efforts to curtail employer exclusion of people with criminal records inadvertently exacerbate the racial inequality they purport to redress. The first post […]

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OnLabor

Law. Workers. Organizing.

OnLabor is a blog devoted to workers, unions, and their politics. We interpret our subject broadly to include the current crisis in the traditional union movement (why union decline is happening and what it means for our society); the new and contested forms of worker organization that are filling the labor union gap; how work ought to be structured and managed; how workers ought to be represented and compensated; and the appropriate role of government — all three branches — in each of these issues.

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