Judge Extends Block On Trump's Government Layoffs

By Tim Ryan

A California federal judge has extended her block of President Donald Trump's executive order directing layoffs at federal agencies, saying a coalition of unions, nonprofits and cities has shown it is likely to succeed in showing the order exceeded the president's authority.

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Analysis

Takeaways For Benefits Attys After Parity Enforcement Freeze

By Kellie Mejdrich

A recent decision by President Donald Trump’s administration to stop enforcing regulations requiring employer health plans to analyze their coverage of behavioral health conditions compared with physical healthcare coverage has benefits attorneys uncertain about what's coming next. Here, Law360 talks to attorneys about the regulatory about-face.

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NJ Panel Revives Ex-Nursing Director's Discrimination Suit

By George Woolston

A New Jersey appeals court panel on Friday revived a former Capital Health nursing director's suit alleging the state nurses association discriminated against her for receiving treatment for alcoholism, finding that the trial court could hear her complaint.

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Southwest Flight Attendant Fights To Revive Nixed Sanctions

By Grace Elletson

A flight attendant urged the Fifth Circuit to reconsider its move to axe a contempt order against Southwest Airlines in her wrongful termination suit, arguing it shouldn't be scrapped just because the panel took issue with court-ordered religious liberty training for Southwest attorneys.

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Ex-Immigration Judge Fights To Keep Fla. Bias Suit Alive

By Emily Sawicki

A former immigration judge has urged a Florida federal court to reject U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi's bid for an early win against her disability bias claims, arguing she was denied a hardship transfer and reasonable accommodation due to her gender and age.

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Brief

DOL Picks New Acting Leaders For Wage Compliance Unit

By Emmy Freedman

The U.S. Department of Labor announced Friday a new acting administrator as well as four policy advisers to serve in the agency's division tasked with ensuring employers pay their employees in line with federal minimum wage and overtime laws.

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Mo. Says Starbucks Lacks Grounds To Escape DEI Bias Suit

By Grace Elletson

The state of Missouri urged a federal judge to reject Starbucks' bid to dismiss its suit claiming its diversity policies discriminate based on race and gender, arguing it has put forward enough evidence showing how the company's practices have harmed its citizens to keep the case in court.

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Roundup

Employment Authority: Pay Lessons From 'Mad Men'

Law360 Employment Authority covers the biggest employment cases and trends. Catch up this week with the pay lessons "Mad Men" provided; how a recent Fifth Circuit decision that not accommodating a disabled worker can violate the Americans with Disabilities Act, even if no harm results from that decision, deepens a split among appeals courts; and how a National Labor Relations Board charge accusing a legal aid union of discriminating against Jewish members tests the bounds of unions' obligations.

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Law360 Reveals Titans Of The Plaintiffs Bar

By Rachel Rippetoe

This past year, a handful of attorneys secured billions of dollars in settlements and judgments for both classes and individual plaintiffs against massive companies and organizations like Facebook, Dell, the National Association of Realtors, Johnson & Johnson, UFC and Credit Suisse, earning them recognition as Law360's Titans of the Plaintiffs Bar for 2025.

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Insurer Accused Of Firing Worker Out Of Pregnancy Bias

By Emmy Freedman

An insurance company reneged on its promise to provide its benefits adviser with paid maternity leave and then fired her not long after she raised several concerns about unpaid commissions, according to a lawsuit removed to North Carolina federal court.

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Service Members' COVID Vax Claims Sent To Military Boards

By Tom Lotshaw

A Court of Federal Claims judge said an executive order directing the reinstatement of service members discharged over a COVID-19 vaccine mandate warranted sending the claims of 10 people who refused to comply with the mandate to military records boards for consideration.

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Amended Ill. Temp Workers Law Survives Staffing Cos.' Row

By Irene Spezzamonte

An Illinois law mandating benefits for long-term temporary workers will stay in place as amended because the staffing agencies challenging it are not likely to succeed on their claims that the Employee Retirement Income Security Act preempted it, a federal judge ruled.

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Ruby Tuesday Fired Bartender On Medical Leave, Court Told

By Emmy Freedman

Ruby Tuesday fired a bartender while she was out on medical leave recovering from a broken hip that she sustained in a car accident and refused to let her return to her former role, she said in a suit filed in North Carolina federal court.

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DC DHS Guards Forced To Work Through Breaks, Court Told

By Jack McLoone

A contractor that provides guards for a U.S. Department of Homeland Security facility in Washington, D.C., forces them to take meal break pay deductions despite such breaks rarely occurring, employees said in a proposed class and collective action.

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Cannabis Co.'s Layoffs Were Illegal, NLRB Judge Says

By Celeste Bott

Cannabis company Curaleaf violated federal labor law by laying off store associates at its Illinois facilities without bargaining with their union and must reinstate them, a National Labor Relations Board judge has held.

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Atty, Stepdaughter Face $600K Workers' Comp Fraud Charges

By Craig Clough

The Orange County District Attorney's Office has charged a California attorney and his stepdaughter with conspiring to defraud a police department she was employed at by filing fraudulent workers' compensation payments.

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Pest Co. Seeks To Stamp Out Workers' Tobacco Fee Case

By Patrick Hoff

Global pest control company Rentokil urged a Pennsylvania federal court to toss a proposed class action claiming it unlawfully charged tobacco users more for health benefits without providing a reasonable way to avoid the fee, arguing it's not the company's fault the workers refused to quit the habit.

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Ohio Pest Co. Says Ex-Director Is Unfairly Competing

By Ryan Harroff

An Ohio-based pest control company took a former regional director of operations to federal court, claiming he formed his own pest control firm in violation of his noncompete agreement and is unfairly cutting in on the company's business.

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Disney Accuses YouTube Of Poaching Ex-Distribution Exec

By Rae Ann Varona

Disney has hauled YouTube and freshly resigned Disney executive Justin Connolly into California state court, accusing YouTube of poaching Connolly, who it said was leading license renewal negotiations with the Google-owned video sharing company.

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AIG, Insurance Startup Resolve Trade Secrets Feud

By Isaac Monterose

American International Group Inc. has settled and permanently dismissed its trade secrets lawsuit brought in New Jersey federal court against an insurance startup that was created by former senior executives at AIG.

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Insulet Foe Rips $30M Atty Fee Ask As 'Over-Lawyered'

By Elliot Weld

A South Korean medical device maker told a Massachusetts federal judge that rival Insulet's request for $30 million in attorney fees following a $60 million trade secrets judgment should be denied, calling that amount "exorbitant" and saying Insulet "consistently over-lawyered disputes."

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Group Asks 5th Circ. To Clarify Freight Broker Negligence

By Linda Chiem

Truck safety advocates asked the Fifth Circuit on Friday to preserve state-law personal-injury claims against freight brokers, weighing in on a dispute that alleges Penske Logistics LLC is liable for negligently hiring an unsafe motor carrier that caused a fatal 2018 accident in Texas.

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Cooley Hires 'Next-Gen' Boston Labor & Employment Partner

By Tracey Read

A Choate Hall & Stewart LLP partner has joined Cooley LLP's labor and employment practice and global litigation department in Boston.

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Collective Cert. In Age Bias Suit Shows AI Hiring Tool Scrutiny

Following a California federal court's ruling in Mobley v. Workday, which appears to be the first in the country to preliminarily certify a collective action based on alleged age discrimination from artificial intelligence tools used for hiring, employers should move quickly to audit these technologies, say attorneys at Davis Wright.

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Series

Power To The Paralegals: An Untapped Source For Biz Roles

Law firms looking to recruit legal business talent should consider turning to paralegals, who practice several key skills every day that prepare them to thrive in marketing and client development roles, says Vanessa Torres at Lowenstein Sandler.

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Trump's WilmerHale Order Struck Down In Forceful Decision

By Dorothy Atkins

A D.C. federal judge struck down President Donald Trump's executive order targeting WilmerHale in an impassioned opinion Tuesday, writing that Trump's entire order is unconstitutional, and "to rule otherwise would be unfaithful to the judgment and vision of the Founding Fathers!"

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Feds Ask Justices To Lift Due Process Order For Migrants

By Julie Manganis and Chris Villani

The Trump administration on Tuesday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt a Massachusetts federal judge's order requiring the government to provide due process to deportees sent to countries where they have no ties, arguing that the ruling is "wreaking havoc" on the removal process.

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Atty Avoids Sanctions After Adding AI Hallucinations To Brief

By Lauraann Wood

A California attorney who represented a software company in a trade secret dispute will not be sanctioned for filing a brief that included two ChatGPT-hallucinated case citations under circumstances so unusual they "couldn't have been made up," an Illinois federal judge said Tuesday.

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ArentFox Schiff Says Workers' 'Antics' Should Get Suit Tossed

By Lauraann Wood

An Illinois federal judge handling age discrimination claims from two longtime former ArentFox Schiff LLP information technology contractors should permanently dismiss their lawsuit as a consequence for routinely destroying case evidence and discarding their mobile phones while the litigation has been pending, the firm says.

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CFTC Member Speaks On Agency Exits: 'Not A Great Situation'

By Jessica Corso

Departing U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission member Christy Goldsmith Romero said Tuesday that a possible leadership void at the agency could do a "great disservice to regulation" at a time when Congress is thinking of handing the agency the keys to the cryptocurrency industry.

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'I Need To Be Careful': Judge Wades Into Musk-Firm Conflict

By Jessica Corso

A New York federal judge questioned his authority to weigh in on Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann LLP's hiring decisions after it sought permission to employ a former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission attorney who Elon Musk claims could disadvantage him in a shareholder lawsuit, asking the firm and Musk to brief him on what may be an issue of first impression.

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Trump, Ex-Copyright Head Duel Over Her Firing

By Adam Lidgett

Former U.S. Copyright Office director Shira Perlmutter on Tuesday said a Washington, D.C., federal judge should ignore the Trump administration's argument that her recent firing was legal, the latest salvo in her lawsuit against the federal government as she seeks to block her removal.

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Trump To Pardon 'Chrisley' Stars Convicted Of Tax Evasion

By Anna Scott Farrell

President Donald Trump is planning to pardon reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley, the Georgia duo sentenced to prison after being convicted of running a yearslong bank fraud scheme and dodging federal taxes, according to a post Tuesday on X by Trump's communications adviser.

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Crypto Industry Urges CFTC Action On Perpetual Contracts

By Aislinn Keely

Derivatives marketplaces and cryptocurrency firms told the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission that setting rules for so-called perpetual derivatives would bring significant crypto trading activity onshore, but the regulator will have to contend with round-the-clock trading, novel risks and characteristics that don't fit neatly into existing classifications.

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Tort Report: 'High-Low' Deal Nets Plaintiff Extra $10M

By Y. Peter Kang

A last-minute "high-low" agreement that turned out to be a stroke of genius by lawyers for an injured motorcyclist and a $26 million verdict for a crash caused by a postal worker lead Law360's Tort Report, which compiles recent personal injury and medical malpractice news that may have flown under the radar.

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Calif. Bar Seeks More Remedies After Problematic Feb. Exam

By Emily Sawicki

The state bar of California has formally asked the state Supreme Court to approve measures including a limited provisional licensure program and a more direct pathway to admission for out-of-state attorneys, in the state bar's latest attempt to seek equitable remedies amid the fallout from the bungled February 2025 California bar exam.

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Titan Of The Plaintiffs Bar: Slater Slater's Adam Slater

By Jonathan Capriel

Securing multibillion-dollar settlements against major institutions like the Boy Scouts and Catholic dioceses on behalf of thousands of victims who were sexually assaulted as children has become Adam Slater's life work, but at least some of the skills he's used to secure this monetary justice comes from his years as a poker player.

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