Blog

All interesting and complicated cases involve battles of the experts, persons whose education, experience, skill, and training provides knowledge not within the ken of the common man. For a plaintiff, a skilled expert can illuminate a pathway of causation that is both manifest and clear. For a defendant, a skilled expert can reveal the fallacies…

After a two-year delay, President Trump’s nominee, Janet L. Dhillon, has finally been sworn in as Chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in Washington, D.C. Dhillon, 57, was first nominated by President Trump on June 29, 2017, to one of the Republican seats on the Commission. She finally was confirmed by the…

A federal judge has ordered private employers with one hundred or more employees to start reporting for the first time their employees’ W-2 annual earnings and hours worked. The new requirement is part of a government campaign to improve the enforcement of federal laws prohibiting pay discrimination. The employers’ reports for 2018, reporting the pay…

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has finally issued its long-awaited proposed replacement of the Obama administration’s prior and controversial overtime rule. In a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking made public on March 7, the DOL proposes to increase the minimum salary threshold required for workers to qualify for the Fair Labor Standards Act’s “white collar”…

The dream of former Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine that the city should have its own, higher minimum wage law has finally crashed and burned at the newly reconstituted Florida Supreme Court in Tallahassee. By a 4-3 vote on August 29 last year, the justices had agreed to consider a discretionary appeal by Miami Beach…

While the Federal minimum wage of $7.25 hasn’t moved in nearly a decade, several states and cities have set their own higher minimum wages, and many of those are planning increases in 2019. In the District of Columbia the new minimum wage is $14.00 an hour. In Florida, the minimum wage is going up 21…

The “#MeToo” national wave of women’s sexual harassment complaints has left a noticeable mark on the workload of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Charges filed with the EEOC regarding sexual harassment by both men and women alleging workplace discrimination increased by 13.6 percent during fiscal year 2018, which ended on September 30, over the…

The Florida Supreme Court has agreed in a split decision, by a 4-3 vote, to decide the City of Miami Beach’s second appeal of a lower court’s decision declaring invalid the city’s proposed local minimum wage law. Florida Supreme Court Justices Barbara J. Pariente, R. Fred Lewis, Peggy A. Quince, and Jorge Labarga voted on…

Fifty years after Congress prohibited discrimination in the workplace on the basis of age, more than three-fourths of older American workers surveyed have reported that their age was an obstacle in getting a job. Six out of every 10 older workers have seen or experienced age discrimination in the workplace, and 90 percent of those…

In a much awaited decision, the United States Supreme Court has decided, by a 5-to-4 vote, that employment agreements requiring out-of-court private arbitration of workplace wage disputes, and prohibiting group class lawsuits in court, are valid and enforceable. More than half of private-sector employers have mandatory arbitration procedures, and 30 percent of these include class…