#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
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
Four days before President Trump took office, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) (together, “the Agencies”) under the Biden administration released their “Antitrust Guidelines for Business...more
Less than a week before the administration change from former President Joe Biden to President Donald Trump, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released new guidance highlighting business...more
Despite the summer doldrums, cartel enforcers around the world had several notable enforcement actions and, perhaps more importantly, signaled a busy fall and winter. In the United States, the Department of Justice’s...more
As a new policy statement from the European Commission (EC) treats wage-fixing and no-poach agreements as inherently anticompetitive (restriction of competition “by object”) with few possible defences, companies should...more
Until now, the European Commission's (EC) antitrust focus on labour-related issues has been timid. This may soon change. The EC has recently published a policy brief on labour markets, explaining that in its view, wage-fixing...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
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas recently granted the U.S. Department of Justice’s (“DOJ”) motion to dismiss the criminal charges it had previously brought against Surgical Care Affiliates, LLC and...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
The year 2023 will be remembered as a milestone for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC, and, together with the DOJ, the “Agencies”) in their efforts to expand antitrust enforcement to labor...more
In a noteworthy upset last week, U.S. District Judge Victor A. Bolden dismissed the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division’s latest – and largest – anti-poach case brought to trial yet, opting to decline sending the...more
The Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust Division — for the third time in the span of a year — recently failed to convince a jury that alleged agreements to fix or stabilize labor markets should be punished criminally. It...more
In late March, attendees gathered in Washington, D.C., for the ABA Antitrust Law Section’s 71st Annual Spring Meeting, including officials from state, federal and international antitrust enforcement agencies. These enforcers...more
The Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust Division recently suffered another setback in its most recent effort to secure criminal convictions for labor-side violations of Section 1 of the Sherman Act. Having finally secured a...more
The Government Continues to Seek Criminal Sanctions in Cases Regarding Wage-Fixing and No-Poach Agreements - On Wednesday, March 22, a Maine federal jury acquitted four operators of home health agencies who were accused of...more
On March 16, the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division (“DOJ Antitrust Division”) announced that a federal grand jury returned an indictment charging a former health care staffing executive of fixing wages for nurses....more
Last year, the Competition Act was amended to make it a criminal offense for two or more unrelated employers to enter into wage-fixing or no-poaching agreements. As we discussed last summer, these new provisions come into...more
It has been a tumultuous year for the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and its recent no-poach criminal prosecution strategy. No-poach agreements, which are arrangements between companies that place restrictions on the hiring...more
In 2022, antitrust authorities around the world were pursuing more investigations, bringing new types of cases, and making policy changes to spark even more enforcement actions. In the United States, the Department of...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 is no secret that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has been largely unsuccessful in the criminal no poach cases it has brought to trial to date. Its most public loss came with the acquittals earlier this year of DaVita, a...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
On August 17, 2022, Canada's Federal Court of Appeal agreed with a growing consensus of lower courts that section 45 of the Competition Act does not apply to "buy-side" conspiracies, such as agreements between employers with...more
The U.S. Department of Justice’s recent criminal prosecutions of health care executives for no-poach and wage-fixing conspiracies have been met with not-guilty verdicts. Despite these losses, the Department continues to...more
Since the last edition of the QCC, there has been a series of dramatic developments in the criminal antitrust enforcement space in the U.S. from the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division (Division)....more