August 11, 2020

New York State Human Rights Law Invoked in Sexual Harassment Arbitration Case

A split has appeared in how to handle sexual harassment cases with a New York trial judge ruling recently that the state’s Human Rights Law prevents companies and employees from entering arbitration over sexual harassment. This contradicts an earlier ruling in New York’s Southern District where a judge ruled that arbitration under the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) supersedes New York’s statutory prohibition against arbitration. 

There is a useful summary of the most recent decision at Mintz, but the quick takeaways are that when statutory law changed in 2018, which allowed plaintiffs to seek relief in court rather than through arbitration, employers, even those who had previous employment agreements that stipulated arbitration, were arguably no longer able to seek arbitration under the FAA laws; furthermore, the judge argued that any mandatory arbitration clauses were invalidated by the new state law. 

Confounding matters further, in February another trial judge in New York ruled that changes in the law do not invalidate previous arbitration agreements. At the moment, it remains unclear whether employers’ mandatory arbitration clauses regarding sexual harassment complaints are valid any longer. As there are sure to be appeals, this is a case we will be watching.

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COVID-19 and Work

March 9, 2020
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Employers and employees have questions about what steps they should be taking to help protect against COVID-19, the infectious disease caused by the most recently discovered coronavirus in the workplace. We have compiled some useful resources to help you understand what actions to take at this time related to work.

With Michael Bloomberg in the Race, It's Time We Talk About NDAs (again)

February 25, 2020
Pregnancy Discrimination
Sexual Harassment
In 2018, Governor Cuomo signed a law that banned many NDAs and mandatory arbitration for complaints, but some activists and policymakers argued that the state had focused too narrowly on sexual harassment, and the 2019 laws expanded the 2018 laws to include protections against NDAs in other forms of workplace discrimination.

The Postpartum Ad the Oscars Wouldn't Run

February 24, 2020
Pregnancy Discrimination
Paid Family Leave
Sometimes reality is too real for Hollywood and the culture machine, as was demonstrated when ABC and the Academy decided not to air an ad dealing straightforwardly with the reality of postpartum life. The ad for Frida Mom, a retailer in the baby and new mother field, depicted a women confronting in a realistic manner the stress and changes that occur for new mothers.

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