Legal Alerts
December 13, 2018
Over a year since a number of sexual harassment scandals shook Congress, lawmakers in the House and Senate appear to have agreed on legislation that updates the old Congressional Accountability Act, by streamlining the reporting process, expanding coverage, and holding harassers personally and financially accountable.
The new...
July 20, 2018
City Controller Rebecca Rhynhart released a report this week outlining several recommendations to the city’s current sexual harassment policy. Among the suggested changes are reforms for training and altering the way that complaints are handled.
The report concluded that the city too often has handed the reins of an...
July 13, 2018
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) approved its fifth, and to date largest, whistleblower award on Thursday when it awarded $30 million to a former JPMorgan employee. This is the last step in a process that began publicly in 2015, when the bank settled with the CFTC for $367 million for suggesting certain...
June 28, 2018
On Thursday, the Securities and Exchange Commission voted on proposed amendments to rules governing its whistleblower award program. The program was established in 2010 by the Dodd-Frank Act and allows for individuals who provide information about fraud and securities violations to receive an award equal to 10-30% of the...
May 24, 2018
President Donald Trump signed into law a bill which will roll back and loosen significant portions of the Dodd Frank Act of 2010. Mainly, the threshold for tighter federal oversight of U.S. banks is raised from $50 billion to $250 billion in assets.
Unaffected are the Dodd-Frank Whistleblower Programs, which reward ...
May 21, 2018
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) does not bar employers from subjecting employees to mandatory arbitration agreements that prohibit employees from bringing collective actions. As many as 60 million American workers may be subject to such mandatory arbitration agreements. Such...
April 25, 2018
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced on April 24, 2018, that Altaba – the company formerly known as Yahoo! Inc. – had agreed to pay the SEC $35 million to resolve claims that it misled investors by failing to disclose the cybersecurity breach that enabled hackers to steal the personal data of hundreds of...
April 20, 2018
The 11-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court ruled that an employer illegally discriminated against plaintiff Aileen Rizo, a California math consultant, by paying her thousands of dollars less than her male counterparts due to the employer’s practice of paying employees based on previous salaries.
Under the Equal Pay Act,...
March 28, 2018
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court unanimously ruled Tuesday that the state’s whistleblower law allows for noneconomic damages to be classified as “actual damages,” thereby increasing the amount successful whistleblowers can receive under the law.
Former Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission employee Ralph Bailets was fired in 2008...
March 15, 2018
The U.S. Appeals Court for the Sixth Circuit held today that R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act when it fired a funeral director after she told her boss that she planned to transition from male to female.
Title VII prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of sex, among other...
