Mealey's Employment : Mealey's : Legal News & Analysis

Mealey's Employment

October 06, 2025
U.S. High Court Won’t Consider Question On NLRB Impasse Decision

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 6 denied a distillery’s petition for a writ of certiorari that asked the justices to decide the scope of a court’s review of a decision by the National Labor Relations Board and to decide when an employer is excused from bargaining to impasse after a split District of Columbia Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed the NLRB’s determination that the employer committed six unfair labor practices when attempting to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement.
October 06, 2025
Groups Allege H-1B Visa Proclamation Is Unlawful, Will Harm Multiple Industries

SAN FRANCISCO — A Sept. 18 proclamation issued by President Donald J. Trump that conditions H-1B visas on employers making a $100,000 payment to the federal government is “unlawful” and transforms the visa “program into one where employers must either ‘pay to play’ or seek a ‘national interest’ exemption, which will be doled out at the discretion of the Secretary of Homeland Security,” Global Nurse Force and other groups allege in a complaint filed Oct. 3 in a federal court in California.
October 06, 2025
Union Sues U.S. Education Department Over Shutdown Of Out-Of-Office Messages

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Department of Education replaced workers’ federal government shutdown out-of-office messages “with partisan language that blames ‘Democrat Senators’ for the shutdown,” forcing those workers “to involuntarily parrot the Trump Administration’s talking points with emails sent out in their names,” alleges an Oct. 3 complaint filed by American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) in a federal court in the District of Columbia.
October 06, 2025
Employer Once Again Petitions High Court In Suit Over NLRB Complaint Withdrawal

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Unsatisfied with a divided Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel’s ruling on remand, a wholesale grocery company once again petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for review of a decision by the National Labor Relations Board that an acting general counsel may withdraw an unfair labor practice complaint that his predecessor issued against a union.
October 03, 2025
Requests To Hold Collective Bargaining EO Cases In Abeyance Denied, Withdrawn

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The District of Columbia Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals addressed two motions to hold in abeyance two cases concerning a March executive order (EO) that unions say eliminates collective bargaining for approximately two-thirds of the federal workforce; the motion in the case brought by National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) was denied, and the motion in the case by the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) was deemed withdrawn.
October 03, 2025
5th Circuit Denies Rehearing After Reissued Opinion In Amazon, NLRB Dispute

NEW ORLEANS — A Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel in an Oct. 2 per curiam opinion denied rehearing or rehearing en banc sought by Amazon.com Services LLC after a split panel dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction the appeal challenging the “constructive denial” of Amazon’s injunctive relief motion concerning two National Labor Relations Board proceedings to which it alleged that it was being subjected to in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
October 03, 2025
Medical Transport Worker, Hospital Agree To Dismiss COVID Screening Wage Case

CHICAGO — Pursuant to a joint stipulation of dismissal, an Illinois federal judge on Oct. 2 dismissed with prejudice a lawsuit brought by a former patient transport employee under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and state wage laws seeking compensation for time spent being screened and tested for COVID-19 before her shift and for a week she went unpaid because of an interruption in a payroll system.
October 03, 2025
9th Circuit Says Discretion Abused In Attorney Fee Award To Sam’s Club Worker

SAN FRANCISCO — Citing a U.S. Supreme Court opinion, a Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel found that a federal court in California “abused its discretion when it failed to provide a ‘concise but clear’ explanation for” an award of attorney fees to a Sam’s Club employee after she settled her claims that she was overworked and undercompensated while working for a six-week period in 2019.
October 03, 2025
Meta’s Motion To Compel Arbitration Granted In Civil Rights Act ‘Retaliation’ Suit

NEW YORK — A New York federal judge granted Meta Platforms Inc.’s (formerly Facebook Inc.) motion to compel arbitration and to stay the proceedings by in a former employee’s suit asserting claims for violations of New York human rights laws and the U.S. Civil Rights Act for complaining about Meta’s treatment of female employees, finding that the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act of 2021 (EFAA) “does not preclude enforcement of the arbitration agreement” the former employee signed because the “case does not involve conduct that is alleged to constitute sexual harassment.”
October 02, 2025
D.C. Circuit Won’t Reconsider Copyright Register Job Interference Ruling

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The District of Columbia Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals issued two per curiam orders Oct. 1 denying reconsideration and en banc reconsideration of a Sept. 10 order enjoining various federal government parties from interfering with Shira Perlmutter’s service as the register of copyrights and director of the U.S. Copyright Office pending appeal.
October 02, 2025
NCUA Board Members Seek High Court Review Of Removal Case

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Two members of the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) board who were purportedly removed from their seats by President Donald J. Trump in April and reinstated after a federal judge in the District of Columbia granted their motion for summary judgment ask the U.S. Supreme Court to grant their petition for a writ of certiorari before judgment and consider questions regarding the executive and judiciary authority.
October 02, 2025
9th Circuit: No ‘Bona Fide Religious Belief’ Shown To Justify COVID-19 Test Refusal

SAN FRANCISCO — A Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals majority opined that an Oregon medical center administrative employee fired for refusing to submit to weekly antigen testing for COVID-19 as an accommodation of a religious exemption from a company vaccine mandate failed to demonstrate “that she had a bona fide religious belief” that satisfied the prima facie burden required for a claim of religious discrimination pursuant to Title VII and Oregon state law in affirming a federal trial court’s dismissal of a lawsuit challenging her termination.
October 02, 2025
$2M Settlement Of California Federal Wage-And-Hour Class Action Gets Final OK

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A federal magistrate judge in California granted final approval to a $2 million class action settlement to resolve long-running claims that the owners of facilities that supply forage products violated the California Labor Code and the California unfair competition law (UCL) by, among other things, failing to pay nonexempt employees minimum and overtime wages and failing to comply with rest and meal period requirements.
October 01, 2025
U.S. High Court Defers Trump’s Stay Request In Federal Reserve Seat Case

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 1 deferred pending oral argument in January an application for stay filed by President Donald J. Trump after Federal Reserve Governor Lisa D. Cook was granted a temporary restraining order (TRO) in her case challenging her purported removal in August.
October 01, 2025
Mass. Appeals Panel Reverses Judgment In Fired Surgical Tech’s COVID-19 Shot Suit

BOSTON — A Massachusetts Appeals Court panel opined that a lower court was not correct in granting a summary judgment order to a state health care system that was sued for religious discrimination by a surgical tech who worked at one of its hospitals after she was fired for failing to get a COVID-19 vaccine, finding that the employee’s belief that “her body is a temple of God” and that she determined through prayer that she could not get the vaccine could be considered religious for the purpose of an exemption, that the accommodation would not create an undue hardship and that the health care system and hospital could be classified as joint employers.
October 01, 2025
Amazon Workers Who Sued Over Off-The-Clock Work Fail To Disqualify Counsel

DENVER — Amazon.com Services LLC workers who brought a class complaint in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic alleging that they were wrongly denied pay for off-the-clock work before and after shifts, including long wait times for health screenings due to the pandemic, failed to show that Amazon’s counsel should be disqualified or that Amazon should be sanctioned, a federal judge in Colorado ruled.
September 30, 2025
$49.25M Settlement OK’d In College Baseball Coaches’ Conspiracy To Deny Pay Suit

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A federal judge in California granted final approval of a $49.25 million settlement for a class of college “volunteer” baseball coaches who accused the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and its member schools of conspiring to ensure they were paid nothing for what they said were full-time jobs.
September 26, 2025
Federal Reserve Governor, Amici, Trump File High Court Briefs Over TRO Stay

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Federal Reserve Governor Lisa D. Cook, who was purportedly removed from her post by President Donald J. Trump in August, filed an opposition in the U.S. Supreme Court to Trump’s application for a stay of a trial court’s temporary restraining order (TRO) pending appeal, arguing that the president failed to show that a stay was appropriate, while Trump filed a reply on Sept. 26 asserting that multiple factors support a stay.
September 25, 2025
$425,000 Religious Bias Award In Vaccine Refusal Case Reduced To $300,000

CHICAGO — Pursuant to federal law governing damages in cases of intentional employment discrimination, an Illinois federal judge reduced to $300,000 a $425,000 jury verdict in favor of a former transit authority employee for his employer’s violations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act in refusing him a religious exemption from its mandatory vaccination policy.
September 25, 2025
Labor Secretary Answers High Court Integral Activities Measurement Petition

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) contends in a response filed Sept. 24 to a U.S. Supreme Court petition for a writ of certiorari that a Third Circuit appellate panel “correctly understood the Fair Labor Standards Act to require compensation for hours actually worked” when ordering a Pennsylvania battery manufacturer to pay its workers for the actual time they spend completing tasks required for their jobs rather than the “time the employer estimates the employees’ work should take.”
September 25, 2025
4th Circuit Issues Overtime Payment Ruling Mandate In Nurse Classification Case

RICHMOND, Va. — A formal mandate was issued Sept. 24 in the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals for a divided panel’s opinion affirming that a Virginia medical staffing company is liable under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) for millions in unpaid overtime compensation and liquidated damages to nurses wrongly classified as independent contractors following denial of a petition for rehearing and rehearing en banc.
September 24, 2025
5th Circuit Affirms Rejection Of Damages Verdict In IT Workers’ Race Bias Case

NEW ORLEANS — The Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals determined that a Texas federal judge’s rejection of a jury verdict that awarded millions of dollars in damages to several IT employees who alleged race discrimination and retaliation claims against their employer was mostly correct, finding that their claims lacked sufficient evidence.
September 24, 2025
Government Seeks Rehearing On Discovery Ruling In Federal Worker RIF Appeal

SAN FRANCISCO — The federal government on Sept. 23 filed a petition for rehearing or rehearing en banc concerning the discovery portion of a split Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals order in which the appellate panel majority, in a ruling addressing two appeals in a case challenging the large scale reduction-in-force (RIF) of federal workers, denied the government’s petition for a writ of mandamus seeking to require the trial court to vacate a discovery order and vacated a preliminary injunction and remanded for further consideration.
September 23, 2025
U.S. High Court Denies MSPB, NLRB Members’ Petitions Challenging Removals

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Sept. 22 denied conditional petitions for writs of certiorari before judgment filed by a member of the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) and a member of the National Labor Relations Board who were each purportedly fired by President Donald J. Trump within the first few weeks of his second term; on the same day, a divided high court granted a request by the federal government to consider statutory removal protections in an appeal over the president’s purported removal of a Federal Trade Commission commissioner.
September 23, 2025
High Court Stays Judgment For FCC Commissioner, Will Revisit Humphrey’s Executor

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A divided U.S. Supreme Court on Sept. 22 stayed a trial court’s summary judgment for Rebecca Slaughter, one of two Federal Trade Commission commissioners purportedly removed in March without cause, and the justices, treating the government’s application as a petition for a writ of certiorari before judgment, agreed to consider overruling Humphrey’s Executor v. United States and “[w]hether a federal court may prevent a person’s removal from public office.”