Blog

The COVID-19 pandemic poses a dire public health emergency for the world. The unprecedented worldwide efforts to slow the spread of the disease are causing a deep economic crisis that threatens to be with us even longer than the coronavirus itself. We are all—worldwide—very much in this together. But [...]

On Friday, February 7, 2020, President Donald Trump fired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, Ambassador Gordon Sondland, and—as an added bonus—Lt. Col. Vindman’s twin brother, Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman. The three were clearly fired because Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and Ambassador Sondland testified in the U.S. House of Representatives’ impeachment [...]

Each year, Congress is called upon to provide for the nation’s military spending through a National Defense Authorization Act. Since it is viewed as a must-pass piece of legislation, Congress is often willing to include unrelated programs and expenditures to ensure its passage. This year’s law included a significant [...]

Retaliation undermines the goals of anti-discrimination laws including:Fair pay requirementsSafety protectionsAccounting regulationsEnvironmental safeguardsHow can employees invoke the rights provided by these laws if they know they will be retaliated against for reporting misconduct?How can they speak up without fear of repercussions to help the government stamp out fraud?They can’t.Retaliation is [...]

“Seeking justice often involves enduring tedium.” It’s fitting that North Carolina’s first big legal decision on electronically stored information (“ESI”) begins with this observation. Employment lawyers often lament the tediousness of discovering ESI. But the world of paper discovery has long passed, and the fight is now firmly in [...]

We often hear of companies citing the “at-will” employment rule when terminating an employee. But what does this really mean? The most common definition of this term is that it describes an arrangement where the employer or the employee can terminate the employment relationship for no reason at all, [...]

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals (covering North Carolina and South Carolina) recently upheld a jury verdict for plaintiff Glenda Westmoreland in  Westmoreland v. TWC Admin. LLC, No. 18-1600 (4th Cir. May 22, 2019). One judge’s fiery dissent has people talking about more than the typical employment discrimination case. [...]

On May 9, 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation carving out the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day. The proclamation called upon Americans to display Old Glory on public buildings and their homes in “a public expression of our love and reverence for the mothers of our [...]

International team sports have long been plagued by gender discrimination, and US soccer is no exception. The US Women’s National Soccer Team’s (“WNT”) recently-filed lawsuit gets directly at this issue and confronts some difficult questions. The US Senior Men’s National Soccer Team (“MNT”) hasn’t exactly been setting the world [...]

North Carolina law imposes a detailed list of requirements on employment-related drug testing. But the courts have long held that employers who fire employees on the basis of false positive  drug tests are not liable for the harm inflicted on these innocent employees. However, on Wednesday, the South Carolina [...]

Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit recognized that “the way we work in America is changing. The relationships between companies and their workers are more fluid and varied than in decades past.” Acosta v. Off Duty Police Services, Inc., Nos. 17-5995/6071 (6th Cir.  Feb. [...]