Happy Friday, another week down and another great Best of Law Blogging made up of outstanding posts from the LexBlog Community. This week, we have posts on topics including the dark web, pay transparency in New York City and a rather unique domain name. Posts curated, as always, by our publishing team’s Alec Downing and Michelle Newblom.
Michelle’s Picks
Religious Accommodation & Vaccination – What’s the deal?
With vaccine mandates on the rise, it’s important to know what accommodations must be granted. When it comes to religious accomodations, Hilary Page notes what employers in Canada must accommodate specifically. It’s also good practice to accept these accommodations at face value, though employers can ask some questions if they truly believe the request is being made in bad faith. Page’s post is organized neatly and ends off with a great section full of takeaways that’s sure to be helpful to any employer unsure of what to do when met with these accommodation requests. Available at Spring Law’s Employment & Human Rights Law in Canada.
Update on Environmental Justice Initiatives Under the Biden Administration
Where are we at one year into Biden’s presidency when it comes to environmental justice initiatives? Kendra Sherman does a great job walking us through the past year and what exactly has or hasn’t been accomplished. We’ve seen a number of bloggers author posts like this in their respective industries, and it’s still not too late to write one of your own if you haven’t already. Sherman illustrates how to do a great job writing this retrospective piece and caps off the post by taking a look at what is expected next for environmental justice initiatives under the Biden Administration in 2022. Available at Squire Patton Bogg’s frESH.
Alec’s Picks
.SUCKS’ Luck Sucks: Federal Circuit Affirms Refusal to Register .SUCKS for Failure to Function
First off, that’s just a great title. Lesley Grossberg grabbed my attention with that alone. She follows up her witty title with an in-depth explainer post on the failure of the domain .SUCKS to be registered as a trademark. The blog post gets into the nitty-gritty of this and is a great read if you’ve got some baseline knowledge of the topics covered. Available at Baker & Hostetler’s IP Intelligence blog.
New York City to Require Employers List Salary Ranges in Job Advertisements (US)
We already gave this post a shout-out on our social media accounts this week, but I thought it was worth highlighting again. Katharine Liao and Scott Held give us a concise and informative blog post on NYC’s salary transparency law. But that’s not the only thing they did well here. The aforementioned law doesn’t come into effect until mid-May, but that’s all the more reason to get this published ASAP. This may seem like common sense, but employers will be seeking information and advice around this topic before this law goes into effect. Now, thanks to this post, Liao and Held have firmly positioned themselves and their firm as thought leaders on this topic months in advance. That’s how you turn blogging into business. Available at Squire Patton Boggs’ Employment Law Worldview.
The Ethics of Handling Stolen Data from the Dark Web
I found this post from Philip Segal utterly fascinating. There’s no way any summary I attempt to give will do this post justice, so seriously just go read it for yourself if you’ve ever been curious about the deep web and the dark web. This post is packed with information and interesting discussions of ethics. As a former journalist my ears perked up at the mention of New York Times v. Sullivan—it’s always fascinating to see how the precedent it set has played out in the era of the internet. Once again, I must commend Segal for crafting just an all-around great post here. Available at Charles Griffin Intelligence’s The Ethical Investigator.