#WorkforceWednesday: ACA Preventive Coverage Mandate Blocked, Another No-Poach Loss for DOJ, and Employers Prepare for the End of the COVID-19 Emergencies - Employment Law This Week®
Taking the Pulse, A Health Care and Life Sciences Podcast | Episode 100: Marguerite Willis, Nexsen Pruet Attorney
On April 14, 2025, a federal jury in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada convicted the operator of a home healthcare staffing agency of a criminal violation of the federal antitrust laws. ...more
DOJ scores first victory in criminal antitrust labor market trial - A federal jury convicted a former home healthcare staffing executive in Las Vegas for orchestrating a three-year wage-fixing conspiracy targeting...more
As previously predicted, the new year and change of administration in the U.S. brought a series of notable developments in criminal antitrust enforcement. Recent actions indicate that the new antitrust leadership in the...more
In April 2025, a Nevada federal jury convicted Eduardo Lopez, a home healthcare staffing executive, for fixing the wages of home health nurses. The conviction marks the Department of Justice Antitrust Division’s (DOJ) first...more
On April 14, 2025, a federal jury convicted an executive in a wage-fixing conspiracy under the Sherman Act. This marks the first time, after many tries, that the US Department of Justice (DOJ) has secured a conviction in a...more
A federal jury in Las Vegas has convicted Eduardo "Eddie" Lopez, a former executive of a home healthcare staffing company, on charges of wage-fixing and wire fraud. The conviction marks the first successful jury verdict for...more
On April 14, 2025, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) obtained a high-profile “wage-fixing” conviction under the Sherman Act against a former executive of multiple home health care agencies (“HHAs”). A federal jury convicted...more
On April 14, 2025, after a three-week trial, a federal jury in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada returned a guilty verdict on all six counts for Eduardo Lopez, a home healthcare staffing executive. Lopez was...more
In October 2016, the Obama Administration announced that it would criminally prosecute no-poach and wage-fixing agreements among competitors for talent. Starting in December 2020, through the Trump and Biden Administrations,...more
On April 14, 2025, a federal jury in Nevada convicted a home healthcare nursing executive on one count of conspiracy to fix wages and five counts of wire fraud after a 15-day trial. The verdict represents the DOJ’s first...more
After several unsuccessful attempts to convict a company or individual at trial for wage-fixing or a no-poach agreement, the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Antitrust Division has secured its first conviction in a labor market...more
After many attempts, the Department of Justice Antitrust Division (DOJ or Division) has scored the first guilty verdict on a wage-fixing case. For years, the Division has prosecuted wage-fixing and no-poach agreements with...more
On Monday, April 14, 2025, a federal jury convicted Eduardo “Eddie” Lopez of conspiring to fix the wages for home healthcare nurses in Las Vegas and for fraudulently failing to disclose the criminal antitrust investigation...more
It’s been two years since the Antitrust Division brought its most recent — and only pending — criminal case involving labor markets. The two-year pause may be telling. It could indicate that prosecutors are picking and...more
2023 was a dramatic year for criminal antitrust enforcement in the United States. The Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) garnered big wins: three convictions at trial,1 $267 million in criminal fines...more
Nearly seven years after first announcing its intent to criminally prosecute employers and individuals for anticompetitive conduct in labor markets, the Department of Justice Antitrust Division (DOJ or Division) voluntarily...more
Summary - Following a string of unsuccessful prosecutions in the labor space, the DOJ Antitrust Division moved this week to dismiss its last indicted criminal no-poach case, which had been pending against Surgical Care...more
Previously relegated to purely civil enforcement, in the last year the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has increased its focus on pursuing criminal charges for anti-poach agreements between companies that attempt to...more
Two of the Department of Justice’s labor-market criminal antitrust prosecutions have seen interesting recent developments. (See our previous coverage of this prosecution trend, reported on: Feb. 9th; May 2nd; Sept. 22nd; and...more
At the end of last year, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) secured a guilty plea for wage fixing, resulting in its first criminal conviction with Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter saying: “[t]oday’s guilty plea...more
The Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust Division secured its first win in a criminal enforcement of labor market antitrust violations on October 27, 2022, when nurse staffing company VDA OC pleaded guilty to violating...more
It’s hard to keep up with all the recent changes to labor and employment law. While the law always seems to evolve at a rapid pace, there have been an unprecedented number of changes for the past few years—and this past month...more
A healthcare staffing firm in Nevada just pled guilty to conspiring with a competitor to fix wages for school nurses and agreeing not to solicit each other’s workers – the nation’s first-ever successful criminal prosecution...more
On October 27, 2022, VDA OC, LLC, (VDA) a Nevada health care staffing company, pleaded guilty to participating in a conspiracy to suppress and eliminate competition for the services of school nurses. According to the plea,...more
Despite back-to-back losses in the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) first-ever criminal no-poach and wage-fixing cases, the Antitrust Division (the Division) is not backing down from its enforcement focus on labor. In...more