#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
In the final days of the Biden administration, the FTC and DOJ jointly issued antitrust guidelines on business practices that impact workers that replace the 2016 Antitrust Guidance for Human Resource Professionals, which...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
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
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
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
In another blow to the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) efforts to criminalize “no-poach” and “wage-fixing” agreements, a federal judge terminated the DOJ’s latest “no-poach” case mid-trial before jury deliberations....more
As featured in #WorkforceWednesday: This week, we examine the decision of a Texas district court to strike down an Affordable Care Act (ACA) mandate on preventive medical services and look at the U.S. Department of Justice’s...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
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
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
Each week, FP Weekly members receive a practical and cutting-edge checklist of issues to consider, action steps to take, and goals to accomplish to ensure you remain on the top of your game when it comes to workplace...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
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
The U.S. Department of Justice appears to be close to reaching a plea deal that would result in the nation’s first-ever successful criminal prosecution of a workplace-related antitrust matter – and it should send a clear...more
For this very special 100th episode of Taking the Pulse, we're joined by Nexsen Pruet attorney Marguerite Willis. Marguerite is a highly experienced litigator, and was featured on the cover of the latest Super Lawyers...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
Last month, the first two trials arising from the DOJ’s recent push to criminally prosecute wage-fixing and employee non-solicitation agreements both ended in acquittals on the antitrust charges. In United States v. Jindal,...more
Last week, the United States Department of Justice (“DOJ”) Antitrust Division suffered back-to-back trial defeats in its recent enforcement initiative to use the Sherman Act to stop employers from using allegedly...more