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Tag: U.S. Supreme Court

U.S. Supreme Court

NELA Amicus Brief: Graves v. Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc. (U.S. Supreme Court)

On July 28, 2014, NELA filed an amicus brief in support of a petition for certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court in Graves v. Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc., No. 13-1546. The petition was filed by NELA members Richard T. Seymour and Eric Schnapper on behalf of petitioner Daniel B. Graves. The issue in this age discrimination case is whether courts should grant summary judgment by relying on inferences that excuse all but the most egregious evidence of discrimination. NELA scrutinizes requests for amicus briefs at the petition stage closely. One was warranted here because this issue falls squarely within NELA’s current amicus priorities of combatting summary judgment abuse and challenging judicially created doctrines that erect barriers to jury trial access to plaintiffs alleging employment discrimination.

Plaintiff Graves held the positions of both director and managing director at defendant Deutsche Bank with responsibility for maintaining relationships with major corporate clients. Graves complained that some of his accounts being were re-assigned to younger bankers with the effect of significantly decreasing his annual bonus. He was terminated days before the bonuses were scheduled to be paid. Graves testified that his supervisor said that the dismissal was not performance based, but motivated because … Read More

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NELA Amicus Brief: Lawson v. FMR LLC (U.S. Supreme Court)

NELA and the Government Accountability Project argue in this amicus brief that the remedial nature of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) calls for broad and inclusive application, which is necessary to prevent a crisis in the mutual fund industry, such as the one that occurred in the banking sector in 2008. An interpretation of “employee” that limits coverage to employees of public companies would undermine SOX’s basic purpose. Publicly traded companies increasingly use a variety of contractual relationships to separate functions into organizations focused on those functions. These employees are in a position to expose corporate fraud. In the context of the mutual fund industry, all the employees would be without whistleblower protection under Section 806.

We further argue that an interpretation of the term “employee” to cover employees of private contractors and subcontractors is consistent with the plain text of the statute, the legislative history, the remedial purpose, and Department of Labor procedural regulations and policy implementing Section 806. A contrary interpretation would leave a significant number of employees unprotected.

Authors: R. Scott Oswald and Kellee Boulais Kruse (The Employment Law Group, Washington, DC), Richard R. Renner (Kalijarvi, Chuzi, Newman & Fitch, P.C., Washington, DC), Michael T. Anderson (Murphy Anderson … Read More

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NELA Amicus Brief: Heimeshoff v. Hartford Life & Accident Insurance Co. and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (U.S.Supreme Court)

Heimseshoff v. Hartford Life & Accident Insurance Co. and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (Case No. 12-729) involves the question of when a statute of limitations should accrue under ERISA for judicial review of an adverse disability benefit determination. In this case, the plaintiff brought suit to obtain long-term disability benefits to which she was entitled under the employee benefit plan. The lower courts, however, dismissed her cases time-barred by the three-year statute of limitations period set out in the benefit plan policy. If the Court were to adopt Hartford’s reading, the plan’s statute of limitation for judicial review of such adverse determinations would run before the employee even knew that his or her claim had accrued.

NELA and AARP’s amici brief argues that despite the Court’s decision last term in U.S. Airways v. McCutcheon, 569 U. S. ____ (2013), holding that clear plan terms are enforceable, here an implied term must be read into the long-term disability ERISA plan at issue in order to make the plan term surrounding the limitations period workable. In particular, amici urge the Court to allow for equitable tolling of the contractual limitations period during the time a claimant is unable to bring suit because … Read More

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NELA Amicus Brief: University of Texas Southwest Medical Center v. Nassar (Supreme Court)

Summary of NELA’s Amicus Brief:

  • The Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized that to effectively enforce Title VII’s substantive protections, Title VII’s antiretaliation provision must be broadly interpreted to ensure unfettered access to statutory remedial mechanisms.
  • The Court should reaffirm that while unlawful retaliation must prompt an employment decision, it need not be the sole factor.
  •  It is a workplace reality that adverse employment decisions can have multiple causes, and that Title VII is violated if an illegitimate motive plays a meaningful role in the ultimate decision made. Congress explicitly recognized that employment decisions involve multiple motives, but a discriminatory “motivating factor” should never be tolerated and must be purged from the employment process.
  • When the language of Title VII after the 1991 amendments is read in context with the Court’s broad protection of the right to be free from workplace retaliation and the legislative history of the Civil Rights Act of 1991, a fair reading compels the conclusion that the law is violated if an illegitimate motive is a “motivating factor” in an adverse employment decision.
  • Having different standards for proving intentional discrimination under the same statute would only create confusion for the parties, the trial courts, and the jury.
… Read More
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NELA Amicus Brief: Genesis Healthcare Corp. v. Symczyk (U.S. Supreme Court)

On October 26th, NELA, joined by AARP, The National Employment Law Project, The Legal Aid Society, the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, the DC Employment Justice Center, filed an amicus brief in support of the Respondent, Laura Symczyk, in Genesis Healthcare Corp. v. Symczyk, currently pending in the United States Supreme Court. Our brief was drafted by Richard J. (Rex) Burch (Houston, TX), with assistance from J. Derek Braziel (Dallas, TX) and Douglas M. Werman (Chicago, IL).

Our brief discusses the importance of collective actions in remedying violations of our wage and hour laws. The brief points out that wage theft continues to be a serious problem for many American workers, particularly those employed in relatively low-wage positions. In order to attract legal representation and avoid retaliation, low-wage workers must be allowed to band together and collectively challenge unlawful wage policies and practices. Allowing employers to “pick off” individual plaintiffs before other aggrieved workers are allowed to join a case would permit a wide range of unlawful behavior to proceed unchecked. Moreover, an adverse ruling in this case could affect the other statutes that use the FLSA’s collective action procedures, such as the Age Discrimination in Employment Act and the … Read More

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NELA Amicus Brief: US Airways v. McCutchen (U.S. Supreme Court)

On Thursday, October 25th, NELA joined AARP in filing an amicus brief in U.S. Airways v. McCutchen, an ERISA case currently pending in the United States Supreme Court. While the underlying cause of action in this case was a tort claim, an adverse ruling in this case could have profound consequences for any employees who currently participate in employer-sponsored benefit plans. The brief was drafted by Mary Ellen Signorille of AARP, with the assistance of NELA ERISA experts Jeffrey Lewis (Lewis, Feinberg, Lee, Renaker & Jackson P.C.) and Ronald Dean (Ronald Dean, A Law Corporation).

The amicus brief seeks to refute the claim made by the Petitioner and their amici in this case that reimbursement rights are essential to preserving the stability of employer-sponsored benefit plans. AARP’s brief argues persuasively that all available data undermines the employers’ claims about the importance of reimbursement to the financial integrity of benefit plans. Moreover, the brief points out that employees would be deterred from pursuing claims against third parties if they knew that not only would they not get to keep any portion of their recovery, but also that they would have to pay additional money to their employer for the privilege … Read More

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NELA Amicus Brief: Vance v. Ball State University (U.S. Supreme Court)

On September 5, 2012, NELA, joined by AARP, filed an amicus brief supporting Petitioner Maetta Vance in Vance v. Ball State University, currently pending in the United States Supreme Court. Our brief was drafted by Professor Michael L. Foreman of the Penn State University Dickinson School of Law, with support from his students in the Civil Rights Appellate Clinic. The issue in this case concerns the appropriate definition of “supervisor” under Title VII.

Ms. Vance was the only African-American employee in her department, which provided banquet and catering services to the Ball State University campus community. She alleged numerous instances of fairly egregious, racially-motivated conduct in support of her hostile work environment and retaliation claims. Some of this conduct was engaged in by employees who arguably directed at least some of her day-to-day work activities. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, in an opinion by Judge Diane Wood, affirmed summary judgment in favor of the defendant. In so doing, Judge Wood held that the definition of supervisor is limited to those who possess the power to “hire, fire, demote, promote, transfer, or discipline an employee.”

By contrast, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) developed guidance in response to the … Read More

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NELA Amicus Brief: Coleman v. Maryland Court of Appeals (U.S. Supreme Court)

On September 27, 2011, NELA and ten other organizations joined an amicus brief, written by the National Partnership For Women & Families, in the U.S. Supreme Court case of Coleman v. Maryland Court of Appeals (Case No. 10-1016). The question presented in Coleman is “whether Congress constitutionally abrogated states’ Eleventh Amendment immunity when it passed the self-care leave provision of the Family and Medical Leave Act.” The petitioner, Daniel Coleman, was an employee of the Maryland state court system until his termination after requesting leave due to a serious medical condition. The Fourth Circuit dismissed his FMLA claim, concluding that the state of Maryland was immune from suit, because Congress did not validly abrogate states’ Eleventh Amendment immunity with respect to the FMLA’s self-care provision.

The amicus brief argues that Congress validly abrogated state sovereign immunity for self-care claims in response to unconstitutional sex discrimination. In particular, we highlight the Congress’ intent in adopting the FMLA self-care provision to address discrimination against women of child-bearing age by providing leave for pregnancy-related disability and recovery from childbirth. The brief also explains that the FMLA ultimately provided self-care leave on a gender-neutral basis to avoid establishing special rights to leave for women, … Read More

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