In ruling on a case involving the rights of telephone company employees to wear union t-shirts while they were working, Brett Kavanaugh began his opinion with the observation that “common sense sometimes matters in resolving legal disputes.” But, as the case ... More »
In 2010, a trainer at SeaWorld drowned when the killer whale she was working with during a performance “grabbed her and pulled her off the platform into the pool, refusing to release her.” The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) investigated ... More »
Yesterday, President Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh currently serves as a judge on the United States Appeals Court for the District of Columbia Circuit. He was nominated to the D.C. ... More »
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone that when faced with a choice between originalism and right-wing ideology, the Supreme Court’s two avowed originalists, Justices Gorsuch and Thomas, decided that they weren’t going to let doctrinal purity get in t... More »
In Chicago, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois ruled in favor of sandwich franchise Jimmy John’s, who argued that the company cannot be liable for the FLSA violations of its individual restaurants. Jimmy John’s may control mayonnai... More »
“The day that organized labor has been dreading for several years is finally here,” Sarah Jaffe writes at the Times’ opinion page. Jaffe is one of many arguing that workers and their unions must get back to basics — to old fashioned organizing, to strikes mod... More »
In February, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Janus v. AFSCME. Today, a slight majority of the Court issued a decision that regrettably impacts far more than just “fair share” fees and the more than 40-year-old precedent established by Abood v. Detro... More »
Here’s a very quick summary based on an even quicker read of the Court’s Janus opinion which overrules Abood and holds that agency fees violate the First Amendment. The majority opinion by Justice Alito starts by reasoning that Abood was inconsistent “with sta... More »
Justice Gorsuch’s silence during the Janus oral argument generated considerable buzz. Wishful (yet tentative) commentators hoped the silence was a sign that the new Justice’s originalism would lead him to uphold Abood. To be sure, Justice Thomas, the Court’s... More »
The Editorial Board of the New York Daily News yesterday drew attention to what has been a repeated “pilgrimage” in a stymied search for equal rights and fair treatment: the yearly trip of “some of New York State’s 100,000 field hands to the Capitol” to ask fo... More »
Janus, the Court’s case about public sector agency fees that will be decided this term, is a case that could be framed in two ways. On the one hand, Janus is a case about compelled political speech: the government, by imposing agency fees as a condition of emp... More »
A coalition of six organizations committed to eliminating discrimination against LGBT individuals in the workplace filed an amicus brief in support of the respondents in Janus. Miriam Frank—teacher, feminist, and author of Out In the Union: A Labor History of ... More »