In Today’s News and Commentary, a District Court dismisses the lawsuit challenging Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s decision to stop investigating disparate impact discrimination charges, the Department of Homeland Security targets Temporary Protected Status for Haitians again, and the Ninth Circuit is asked continue processing an appeal of the 2023 NLRB Cemex decision.

            The United States District Court for the District of Columbia has dismissed an amazon driver’s lawsuit challenging the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) decision to close investigations into disparate-impact claims. As Miriam reported in October, the EEOC administratively closed a charge filed by Leah Cross, an amazon delivery driver who was fired for failing to meet delivery quotas, which alleged Amazon’s policy of denying drivers bathroom breaks had a disparate impact on female drivers. But the EEOC closed the two-year investigation pursuant to changes in the EEOC’s priorities and a directive to drop probes based solely on disparate-impact claims. Ms. Cross then filed suit, arguing this violated the EEOC’s mandate under Title VII. On Tuesday, the District Court dismissed Ms. Cross’s lawsuit for lack of standing because she had not shown she suffered a “judicially cognizable injury from the Commission’s allegedly unlawful closure of her investigation.” Judge Trevor McFadden wrote courts are not the proper forum for resolving claims that the Executive branch should bring more investigations and enforcement actions—both of which are discretionary and concern the allocation of enforcement resources, not an interpretation of substantive requirements of the law or Title VII’s demands.

            Meanwhile, the Trump administration has announced that Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation for Haiti will expire after February 3, 2026. In June, Noem claimed that Haiti was a safe country to return to and attempted to terminate TPS protections for Haiti at the beginning of September, but Judge Cogan of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York said Noem had no authority to truncate the protection and blocked the move in Haitian Evangelical Clergy Ass’n v. Trump. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published a Federal Registrar Notice on the eve of Thanksgiving, stating “there are no extraordinary and temporary conditions” that prevent Haitians from returning even while acknowledging that conditions in Haiti remain “concerning.” But even if there were conditions preventing Haitians from returning, DHS rests its decision upon the finding that “it is contrary to the national interest of the United States to permit Haitian nationals” to remain in the United States. The stress and anxiety from the unrelenting attacks on TPS have been devastating for Haitians, and Guerline Jozef, co-founder of a San Diego immigrant rights group called the Haitian Bridge Alliance, noted the cruelty of terminating TPS: “If Haiti doesn’t warrant TPS, which country does?”

            Finally, the Ninth Circuit may soon continue processing the appeal of Cemex Construction Materials Pacific, LLC, the NLRB’s consequential August 2023 decision expanding situations in which the NLRB could issue bargaining orders. Cemex was seen as a massive win for unions by making it easier to secure representation through card check and reducing the opportunities for employer interference in union elections. OnLabor has written extensively about Cemex here, here, here, here, and here. Cemex appealed the eponymous decision, and although the Ninth Circuit heard arguments in October 2024, it ultimately stayed the case in order to resolve another case, Macy’s Inc. v. NLRB, which dealt with an issue Cemex had raised. As Ajayan noted, the Ninth Circuit recently denied en banc review in Macy’s Inc., which held that Thryv was within the NLRB’s statutory authority. Law 360 reported that Macy’s filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to overturn the Ninth Circuit’s ruling on Wednesday. Anticipating this move, the NLRB had previously filed a motion to resubmit and resume processing the Cemex appeal, or in the alternative, sever the Thryv issue for a later date and resume processing the non-Thryv aspects of the case.