Current Events

The Current Supreme Court Case Regarding the Drawing of Congressional Maps and the Voting Rights Act, May Subsequently Affect All Civil Rights Statutes and Employment Discrimination Laws.

On October 4, 2022, the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Merrill v. Milligan, et al., a case seeking to maintain a state’s discriminatory congressional map and undermine Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. In Merrill v.

Recently, the US Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, decided June 24, 2022 overturned the long-established precedent of a woman’s Constitutional right to an abortion, thereby returning the issue of abortion rights left to be decided by individual states. When important legal issues are left to individual states to decide, it gives rise to a vast discrepancy in the breadth of legal rights (or in some situations, no legal right) granted to an individual dependent on which state the person resides in, although the facts of two such individuals living in different states may otherwise be identical facts.

The Court in Dobbs overturned the 50-year-old legal precedent of Roe v. Wade, 410 U.

There are numerous federal and various state statues which mandate legal protection for an employee who complains about or refuses to participate in fraudulent activities of the employer. Each statute has different specific facts that must be pled and must be proven to ultimately prevail on a case filed under that particular statute. Some statutes are extremely detailed and specific as to what is required to file and prevail on a claim. New Jersey however has its own whistleblower statute, the Conscientious Employee Protection Act N.J.

Many employees want to complain to their employer about illegal acts or business practices, but they are not sure what their rights are when they cannot name the exact law or give a legal citation to the statute being broken, at the time they complain. This is quite common and understandable, because persons often may know there is illegality being committed even when they cannot cite to the exact statute, i.e., employees from restaurants are instructed to dump vats of used cooking oil in the Hackensack River rather than have employer pay to legally dispose of them; medical personal being instructed to change dates or data on medical reports to avoid medical malpractice suits; misrepresenting figures to defraud shareholders.

This firm has a long history of aggressively and successfully representing employee-whistleblowers and receiving multiple six-figure monetary compensation for whistleblowers.

All employees fear repercussions when they complain to their employers about what they believe to be the employer’s dangerous activities which they fear could lead to harm of other employees or to the public. This is particularly true for female executives who may not be taken as seriously when expressing their concerns as would be similarly-situated male executives due to inherent sex-based bias in our culture.

Recently, a female executive who was a policy official on a team for a major internet company, is an extreme example of a female executive having her concerns ignored by the employer. The female executive in her employment position was responsible for designing the company’s internet content moderation rules. She had growing concerns that the company’s practices were causing a public harm and could lead to grave future harm.

Many persons have been wondering about their federal and state employment and collective bargaining rights. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has a long history of issuing fair and balanced judicial decisions including those that effect employees’ rights and collective bargaining. Prior to her being appointed to the US Supreme Court, Judge Jackson had to decide in AFGE whether a President’s Orders were legitimate exercises of his authority. Part I on AFGE, may be read here for continuity. Her long history of issuing decisions that were both fair and balanced, was again displayed in this matter.

Some legal scholars are concerned that US Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, decided June 24, 2022 contains rationales that will stimulate the Court’s self-encouragement for overturning other legal precedents affecting non-binary and non-cisgender rights, such as the Supreme Court precedents legalizing same-sex marriage and employee LGBTQ rights. The Court in Dobbs overturned the 50-year-old legal precedent of Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S.

Many persons have been wondering about their federal and state employment and collective bargaining rights. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has a long history of issuing fair and balanced judicial decisions in all matters before her, including those that affect employees’ rights and collective bargaining. In one such case prior to her being appointed to the US Supreme Court, Judge Jackson had to decide whether a President’s Orders were legitimate exercises of presidential authority.

 In AFGE v. Trump, 318 F.

Institutional ageism is prevalent  in many tech companies and this has been true for at least decades with Mark Zuckerberg's widely-circulated "young people are just smarter" quote from 2007. IT workers experience more age discrimination than many other professions. However, this biased attitude toward older workers which persists across the IT sector, is not just limited to the private sector and Fortune 500 companies. IT Network administrators working for public entities such just as towns, counties and the state, experience the same prejudiced attitudes. They are all too frequently forced out of jobs and replaced by younger, though not more qualified, workers.

Some unscrupulous employers are becoming savvier about avoiding lawsuits when they fire an employee for an illegal reason. One of the ruses that devious employers may implement is telling their employees that they are undergoing a massive overhaul of their business structure so that it will be an all-new model. They then tell the employees that they are terminated but encourage them to apply for a position within the new business model.

A police officer in the City of East Orange in Essex County NJ, earlier this year sued the the City of East Orange Police Department and his supervisor under Conscientious Employee Protection Act (CEPA), N.J.S.