NYC Enacts Law Allowing Lawsuits for Violations of Earned Safe and Sick Time Act
On January 20, 2024, New York City enacted a law allowing employees to sue for violations of the City's Earned Safe and Sick Time Act ("ESSTA"). Until now, the only way to enforce rights under the ESSTA was to file a complaint with the NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection ("DCWP"). The DCWP would investigate the complaint and, ...
SEC Approves 11 Exchange-Traded Products Holding Bitcoin In Landmark Order
On January 10, 2024, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") approved 11 exchange-traded products ("ETPs") holding bitcoin, known as spot bitcoin ETPs, in a landmark decision for crypto advocates. ETPs are investment instruments that track underlying securities, commodities, or other financial products, and trade on exchanges just ...
New Jersey Passes Legislation Affording Domestic Workers $15.13 in Minimum Wages and Other Protections
On January 12, 2024, New Jersey Governor, Phil Murphy signed the New Jersey Domestic Worker Bill of Rights, which guarantees New Jersey's approximately 50,000 domestic workers, including childcare providers, home caretakers, and caregivers, a minimum wage of $15.13 along with other protections. Previously, domestic workers were exempt from ...
Southern District of New York Concurs with SEC Finding That Terraform Cryptocurrencies Are Securities
On December 28, 2023, the Southern District of New York granted summary judgment in favor of the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") on their claim that Terraform Labs Pte Ltd. and DO Hyeong Kwon ("Defendants") offered and sold unregistered securities in violation of Section 5(a) and 5(c) of the Securities Act of 1933[1] ("Securities ...
Securities And Exchange Act Claims Against TaskUs, Inc. Survive Motion To Dismiss
Recently, the Southern District of New York affirmed that repeated assertions conveying a false impression—i.e., a positive workplace culture backed by "low attrition" and Glassdoor ratings—were actionable. Although the analysis was not in favor of Plaintiffs in this case, the District Court tacitly supported the "core operations" doctrine ...
FTC Considering Significant Expansion of Children’s Online Data Privacy
The Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") is poised to open its updated rulemaking for the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) open for public comment. First adopted in 2000, the Rule forbids online service providers and websites from collecting the personal information of individuals under the age of 13 absent verified consent from ...
FTC Bans Rite Aid from Using AI Facial Recognition
On December 19, 2023, the Federal Trade Commission and Rite Aid agreed that Rite Aid will be banned from using facial recognition technology for surveillance purposes for five years to settle FTC charges that the retailer failed to implement reasonable safeguards to prevent its consumers from being falsely identified as shoplifters. In a complaint ...
NYC Enacts Law Requiring Employers to Provide “Workers’ Bill of Rights” to Employees
On December 3, 2023, NYC enacted a new law, Int 0569, requiring employers to provide a yet-to-be-drafted "workers' bill of rights" to employees, beginning July 1, 2024. NYC's Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) will write the workers' bill of rights in coordination with the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs (MOIA), the NYC ...
NYC Law Prohibiting Height and Weight Discrimination Goes Into Effect
On November 22, 2023, the New York City law prohibiting employment discrimination based on a person's height or weight went into effect. The law amends the NYC Human Rights Law ("NYCHRL") to include height and weight as classes or characteristics protected against employment discrimination. Prior to the amendment, the NYCHRL protected the ...
Recent Second Circuit Decision Blunts Protections Afforded by the Equal Pay Act by Making it Easier for Employers to Prove the Act’s Catch-All Affirmative Defense
The Second Circuit's recent decision in Eisenhauer v. Culinary Institute of America made it easier for employers to defeat pay-discrimination claims under the Equal Pay Act ("EPA"), the federal law that makes pay discrimination based on sex unlawful. Specifically, the Second Circuit made it easier for employers to establish the "factor other ...
Walmart App-Based Delivery Driver Accuses Company of Wage Theft
On November 27, 2023, a class action complaint filed in Washington State court was moved to federal court alleging Walmart improperly misclassified its app-based delivery drivers as independent contractors as opposed to employees, who must receive minimum and overtime wages and other benefits depending on which State an individual resides. ...
Biden Executive Order Makes a Head Start on AI Regulatory Framework
In the past few years, the presence of artificial intelligence has boomed in the workforce with little to no formal regulation directly addressing its impact. This week, President Biden signed a broad executive order aiming to provide a framework for protecting consumers and workers from the potential downsides presented by artificial intelligence. ...
FLSA Pleading Standard Is Specific But Not Strict, Says Court of Appeals
The New York Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has issued new guidance on how to properly plead wage and hour claims against employers. On October 16, 2023 the Court in Abbott v. Comme Des Garcons, Ltd. reversed a district court decision that required an excessively strict level of detail in pleading overtime claims, ruling that so long ...
District Court For The Southern District of New York Declines To Extend Securities Liability To Defendants Involved In The Uniswap Lab Crypto Exchange Because They Are Not Issuers Or Sellers Under The Statutes
On August 29, 2023, the court in in Risley v. Universal Navigation Inc. et al, Case No. 1:22-cv-02780 (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 4, 2022), dismissed claims under Section 12(a)(1) of the Securities Act of 1933[1] and Section 29(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934,[2] against Defendants running a decentralized cryptocurrency trading platform called ...
Nurse Sues Rehab Center for Unpaid, Interrupted Meal Breaks on 12 ½ hour Shifts
Last week, a nurse sued a rehabilitation center for automatically deducting 30-minute meal breaks from her and other employees' wages, even though their breaks were routinely interrupted to care for patients. The Center at Lincoln, a rehabilitation center in Colorado, "serves patients needing physical rehabilitation and/or complex nursing ...
New Lawsuit Alleges Costco Disclosed Consumers’ Medical Information to Meta
On October 25, 2023, a California resident filed a lawsuit against Costco Wholesale Corporation ("Costco") for allegedly disclosing consumers' confidential medical information to unauthorized third parties such as Meta, Google, and Adobe. The plaintiff alleges that Costco installed on its pharmacy website various tracking tools – including ...
California Increases the Minimum Wage for Health Care and Fast-Food Workers
On October 13, 2023, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law that will raise the minimum wage for hundreds of thousands of Californian health care workers to $25.00 per hour by June 2028. Specifically, the law will gradually increase the hourly wage of medical technicians, nursing assistants, custodians, and other support staff ...
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Releases Proposed Updated Enforcement Guidelines on Workplace Harassment
On September 29, 2023, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission released a long awaited draft of updated enforcement guidelines regarding workplace harassment. The draft is the first document the EEOC has issued on harassment since it issued "Enforcement Guidance on Vicarious Liability for Unlawful Harassment by Supervisors," in 1999, ...
NY State Court Allows $17.96 Minimum Wage for App-Based Food Delivery Workers to Go Forward – First Law of Its Kind In U.S. – Denying Motion for Preliminary Injunction By Uber, DoorDash and Grubhub
Last week, a New York State Court rejected a motion by Uber, DoorDash and Grubhub for a preliminary injunction to stop a minimum wage of $17.96 from taking effect for those companies' app-based food delivery workers in NYC. This minimum wage was previously set to take effect on July 12, 2023 and is scheduled to rise by $1 per year, up to $19.96, ...
New York Enacts New Criminal Penalties for Wage Theft
Despite a range of civil penalties in New York, employers continue to engage in widespread wage theft of employee's earned wages amounting to, according to one estimate by Cornell University's Worker Institute, nearly $1 billion dollars in lost wages per year. New York's Wage Theft Accountability Act (S2832-A/A154-A), signed by Governor Kathy ...