The Supreme Court is likely to soon rule that majority-group plaintiffs must meet the same pre-trial evidentiary burden applicable to minority-group plaintiffs – and nothing more – in workplace discrimination claims under...more
The Supreme Court just rejected an employer’s argument that a whistleblower needs to show the employer acted with retaliatory intent to prove retaliation under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), a federal law that protects...more
Seven years after the Supreme Court's decision in Young v. UPS articulated the legal standard required to establish intentional discrimination in the context of pregnancy discrimination, the United States Court of Appeals for...more
The United States Supreme Court recently agreed to hear a case interpreting the False Claims Act (“FCA”) that may affect the government’s involvement in pending and future matters. To resolve a circuit split, the Court will...more
In Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986), the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prevents prosecutors in criminal cases from exercising peremptory challenges to excuse...more
On April 6, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court held that federal-sector plaintiffs in age discrimination cases brought under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) need not show that negative consideration of age is a...more
What does an age discrimination plaintiff have to prove to succeed? Federal employees may have an easier path for proving an age discrimination claim, if we are reading the tea leaves correctly on the Supreme Court’s oral...more
A U.S. Supreme Court decision expected to potentially change (or at least clarify) the rules on the hot-button issue of statistical modeling in class actions ended up turning much more on case law specific to the Fair Labor...more
As previously reported on this blog, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc., 135 S. Ct. 2507 (2015) adopted a burden-shifting approach to...more
The Federal Circuit affirmed a decision of obviousness, and that a patentee not be able to amend claims in an inter partes review proceeding, in an opinion handed down January 29th in Illumina Cambridge Ltd. v. Intelligent...more
The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Federal Trade Commission v. Actavis, Inc. triggered a flurry of judicial activity in relation to pharmaceutical patent settlements allegedly involving reverse payments from patent...more
Court rules that actions that disproportionally affect minority groups can support lawsuits under the Fair Housing Act. The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that certain actions that adversely affect minorities in poor...more
The U.S. Supreme Court recently declined to grant certiorari to review the Fourth Circuit’s decision in RJR Pension Investment, et al. v. Tatum, 761 F.3d 363 (4th Cir. 2014). As we previously reported, a divided panel of the...more
In 2013, the Supreme Court of the United States held that plaintiffs claiming retaliation under Title VII must prove that “but for” the retaliation they would not have been discharged. University of Texas Southwestern Medical...more
Last Wednesday the U.S. Supreme Court issued its much-anticipated decision in Young v. United Parcel Service, Inc. (UPS), which involves a claim of pregnancy discrimination under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA)....more
The U.S. Supreme Court vacated a Fourth Circuit decision Wednesday, reviving a pregnancy bias case against the United Parcel Service brought by a former delivery driver who was denied a light-duty work accommodation while...more