US businesses lose $300 billion annually in stolen trade secrets; employees can steal thousands of documents with the push of a button; and the FBI acknowledges it cannot stop this hemorrhage on its own. In response, Congress just enacted the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) to give private litigants powerful new tools to combat this problem. What’s the import of these tools in practical terms? Federal court options: the game changer DTSA gives potential plaintiffs…

Connectivity is addictive. Managers text and email staff 24/7; workers check their phones incessantly 24/7. How often? Okay, here are the actual numbers from a recent Gallup poll: 11% check it every few minutes; 41% a few times an hour; and 20% of Americans claim once an hour. If you haven’t checked in last 60 minutes, you’ve probably taken a vow of some sort. So what? The key “what” is that checking email could be…

“First comes love, then comes marriage [or not – no judgment], then comes the baby in the baby carriage” and then – for nursing working mothers – comes expressing milk at the workplace. Nursing employees are currently afforded workplace protections under several major federal laws; plus, many state and local governments have expanded these federal protections, extending additional rights to nursing workers. Federal Protections for Breastfeeding Employees Under the pregnancy discrimination provisions of Title VII,…

Investigations of employment-related claims routinely require employee interviews. Reports of sexual harassment, picket line misconduct, or whistleblowing all trigger such investigative interviews. Conventional wisdom suggests that employers and their counsel should ask the interviewees to maintain what is covered in confidence and even to document that confidentiality commitment in writing. But, developments on multiple fronts invite a reconsideration of that conventional wisdom. The National Labor Relations Board. Recent case law at the NLRB holds that…

Charles Dickens and his characters lived in a pre-ADA world. Yet, those struggling with the definition of “disability” under the ADA share the same frustration as Mr. Bumble in Oliver Twist: “‘If the law supposes that,’ said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, ‘the law is a ass — a idiot.’” Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”), a “disability” includes “a [] mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major…

Aldous Huxley wrote in his novel Brave New World that “If one’s different, one’s bound to be lonely.” With increased visibility (Orange is the New Black’s Laverne Cox; Caitlyn Jenner), transgender people are both less different and less lonely. State anti-sex discrimination laws are expanding to include explicit protections for transgender employees. Currently, nineteen states and Washington, D.C. explicitly include “gender identity” in their anti-discrimination statutes: Equality Maps, “Non-Discrimination Laws“ (Jul. 9, 2015)…

Settling Rule 23 opt-out class actions is straightforward: the agreed-upon settlement is presented to the court for preliminary approval of a Rule 23(e) settlement class and — if the settlement is not approved — the parties return to their pre-settlement status: i.e., there is no class. But, following the conventional wisdom on FLSA opt-in rules makes it impossible to do that. Not only is the conventional wisdom wrong, it isn’t even uniform. There is no…