A federal district court in Florida recently declined to conditionally certify a nationwide collective action brought under the Fair Labor Standards Act because the plaintiff did not show sufficient evidence that she was similarly situated to other restaurant managers who wanted to join.
Continue Reading Federal Court Denies Conditional Certification of Collective Action Involving Restaurant Managers
A hotly contested ruling in a Fair Credit Reporting Act class action case will soon be appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States. The Ninth Circuit in Ramirez v. TransUnion LLC, Case No. 17-17244, recently granted the parties’ Joint Motion to Stay the Mandate, seeking to stay the Ninth Circuit’s mandate pending TransUnion’s filing of a petition for writ of certiorari in the Supreme Court. The Motion to Stay comes soon after the court denied TransUnion’s Petition for Rehearing or Rehearing En Banc regarding the Ninth Circuit’s decision in Ramirez v. TransUnion LLC, 951 F.3d 1008 (9th Cir. 2020).
Continue Reading TransUnion to Seek Supreme Court Review After Ninth Circuit Finds Class Members Had Standing and Partially Upholds Punitive Damages Award
For the first time in the Ninth Circuit, the Court of Appeals addressed the issue of whether every class member in a class action lawsuit needs “standing” to recover damages at the final judgment stage, and found in the affirmative. In Ramirez v. TransUnion LLC, No. 17-17244, 2020 WL 946973 (9th Cir. Feb. 27, 2020), a class of 8,185 consumers brought a class action against the credit reporting agency TransUnion LLC pursuant to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, alleging that TransUnion, knowing that its practice was unlawful, incorrectly placed terrorist alerts on the front page of consumers’ credit reports and later sent the consumers misleading and incomplete disclosures about the alerts and how to remove them.
Continue Reading For the First Time in the Ninth Circuit, the Court Finds That All Class Members in a Class Action Must Have Standing to Recover Damages
Dollar General and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recently settled a six-year-old Title VII lawsuit. The EEOC brought its race discrimination claim on behalf of a Charging Party and a class of Black job applicants, alleging that Dollar General’s use of criminal justice history information in the hiring process had a disparate impact on Black applicants.
Continue Reading The EEOC Settles Six-Year-Old Lawsuit Attacking Background Check Policy
The United States District Court for the Western District of New York recently granted an early dismissal of a class action lawsuit prior to class certification. According to plaintiffs in the case, the employer’s criminal background check policy for job applicants illegally discriminated against African-American job candidates.
Continue Reading Federal Court Finds That General Statistical Data Is Not Enough to Show That No-Conviction Hiring Policy Was Discriminatory
Two years after jointly issuing its 2016 Antitrust Guidance for Human Resource Professionals with the FTC, the DOJ is now taking active steps to clarify its stance on no-poaching agreements. On January 25, 2019, the DOJ filed a Notice of Intent to File a Statement of Interest in three different class action lawsuits brought by employees of fast-food franchises against their employers alleging that no-poaching agreements in franchise agreements violate antitrust law.
Continue Reading No-Poaching Agreements May Not Be Entirely Out of the Question
Employers failing to strictly comply with FCRA requirements in conducting background checks continue to face expensive consequences. On November 16, 2018, the United States District Court for the Southern District of California approved a $1.2 million settlement of a class action lawsuit alleging violations of the FCRA filed against the popular pet supplies chain Petco.
Continue Reading Failing to Properly Conduct Background Checks Continues To Be a Million-Dollar Mistake