Recently in HR & Employment Law Category

The Gang of Eight just got one step closer to creating more paths for workers of all levels to come to the U.S. legally. The comprehensive immigration reform bill is set to head to the full Senate after the Judiciary Committee approved the bill 13-5 on Tuesday night.

As a nation and as lawyers representing many small and large U.S. companies, we are closely watching the developments of this controversial bipartisan bill that will affect our businesses.

Ah, the life of in-house counsel. You were hired after a decade in a BigLaw, tackling transactional work. Now, in addition to structuring your company’s big moves, you handle everything else, from IP protection to litigation, including employment disputes.

Now consider your Human Resources personnel. They probably aren’t lawyers, yet everything they do is governed by some important law. Heath plan administration? HIPPA. Hiring and on-boarding? More laws than we care to list. Discipline and termination? Ditto, both at the state and the federal level.

They aren’t lawyers. You are. Even if you aren’t an employment law guru, you’ve got your work cut out for you. A great place to start is the brief (and free) FindLaw Guide to Counseling the Human Resources Department.

The Third Circuit boldly went where the D.C. Circuit had gone before, and invalidated President Obama’s intrasession recess appointment to the National Labor Relations Board.

In doing so, they also invalidated the board’s pro-union ruling in New Vista, and shed doubt on all of the NLRB’s decisions since the disputed appointment of Craig Becker in March 2010 (he stepped down in 2012). As the Wall Street Journal notes, this is a greater time period, and therefore more decisions in jeopardy, than the appointments axed by the D.C. Circuit’s opinion in Noel Canning.

It also presumably adds additional urgency to the pending writ for certiorari to the Supreme Court in the appeal of the D.C. Circuit’s landmark ruling.

Last week's Hearst decision may have been a victory for employers, but it doesn't mean all unpaid internships are legal.

The unpaid interns lost on a procedural note -- class certification -- before the case even reached the merits. And while the reverberations from that decision, as well as the Supreme Court's decisions in Comcast and Dukes, will be felt for years by class-action plaintiffs, your company still needs to review its unpaid internship policy.

As a wise man once told me, "Expect the worst -- you'll never be disappointed."

"To mix a metaphor, while half a loaf is better than none, plaintiffs' argument here just doesn't cut the mustard."

While we don't know what Judge Harold Baer meant by that, nor why he made references to "meat on the Walling bones" and "make the cheese more binding" (somebody skipped lunch), we do know one thing: class action law in a post-Dukes and post-Comcast world is a dying field.

The Hearst Magazine unpaid interns, led by plaintiff Xuedan Wang, who were seeking minimum wage back-pay for more than 3,000 students were brought on to work at the magazine, without pay, in the name of "valuable experience."

Many policies that are meant to help working mothers end up being double-edged swords: they improve mothers' work-life balance at the expense of career advancement. Telecommuting, for example, is a great way for moms to spend more time with their kids, but it can also put them at a disadvantage when a promotion is up for grabs.

With Mother's Day coming up this weekend, it's the perfect time to review your company's policies regarding working moms. To help you get started, below, we've covered a few common policies and how they can adversely affect working moms.

Is there anything more annoying than being accosted by solicitors outside of a grocery store? Your skin is charred by a sunburn, you are in pain, and in a desperate need of Aloe gel. Instead, there are three charities, four chirping Girl Scouts, and a representative of a cult-like institution clamoring for your attention as you run, red-faced, into the store.

It's enough to make you want to shop elsewhere. This is why many stores now have non-solicitation policies. Of course, some say that the purpose of these non-solicitation policies goes beyond commercial solicitation or annoying beggars. They argued that the true purpose was to block out unions, reports Reuters.

"Principles of fairness" won't come between an employer health insurance plan and its chance to recover damages from a third party.

In a 5-4 decision this week, the Supreme Court ruled that equitable rules cannot override the clear terms of an ERISA plan, Thomson Reuters reports. If a contract gives a health plan administrator the right to full reimbursement from funds recovered from third parties, federal courts cannot use principles of fairness to rewrite the contract terms to reserve the reimbursement for the plan participant.

In what universe does Mike Rice's conduct not warrant a full investigation and swift and severe sanctions? Only in New Jersey, apparently, and some of those responsible for the wrist-slapping turned PR nightmare are getting the axe. Meanwhile, we can only hope that the university has learned a lesson in governance from this mess.

Mike Rice flung basketballs at players, berated them, physically struck them, and hurled homophobic insults constantly. His conduct only came to light after a disgruntled former employee, who is suing under a state whistleblower statute, leaked the tape to ESPN. Internally, however, Rutgers University was well-aware of the abuse - and responded with a short suspension and a fine.

If you've ever read PerezHilton.com, you may have seen the blog publish an email message with anti-gay slurs, complete with the sender's name and email address. The idea is simple and effective. The site's large fan base, enraged by the sender's offensive remarks, will flood the sender with responses.

The man behind the Perez persona -- Mario Lavandeira -- has been fighting a lawsuit over one of these posts for five years. This week, an arbitrator resolved the claim in favor of Perez, The Hollywood Reporter reports.

A tiff between a gossip blog reader and the "Queen of All Media" may not be the type of topic that usually concerns corporate counsel, but it's relevant in this case because the plaintiff, Diane Wargo, sent the email in question from her work email account at Menorah Park Center for Senior Living.