Insights

Washington – August 17, 2023: The 2024 edition of The Best Lawyers in America® has recognized 47 firm lawyers as "Best Lawyers" and 41 lawyers as “Ones to Watch.”

Washington – June 1, 2023: Crowell & Moring earned 82 rankings for 68 lawyers across 48 categories, as well as 37 national and statewide practice area rankings, in the Chambers USA 2023 guide. The rankings are driven by independent interviews of clients and lawyers at peer firms.

Washington – August 18, 2022: The 2023 edition of The Best Lawyers in America® has recognized 54 firm lawyers as "Best Lawyers" and 32 lawyers as “Ones to Watch.”

On April 23, 2024, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC” or “the Agency”) voted 3-2 along partisan lines in a special public meeting to adopt the “Non-Compete Clause Rule” (the “Final Rule”), which will prohibit most employee non-competes with retroactive effect, except existing non-compete provisions of “senior executives.”  The Final Rule will also ban future non-compete agreements, including for senior executives, with limited exceptions.  The rule will not become effective until 120 days after publication in the Federal Register, and covered employers will be required to comply with the Final Rule by that effective date, which could come as early as August this year.  By the FTC’s own estimate, this ban could affect up to one-in-five American workers.

On April 17, 2023, the Supreme Court handed down a unanimous decision in Muldrow v. City of St. Louis, Missouri, No. 22-193, holding that transferees alleging discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 need only show that a transfer caused harm with respect to an identifiable term or condition of employment.  The Court’s decision upends decades of lower court precedent applying a “significant harm” standard to Title VII discrimination cases.  As a result, plaintiffs claiming discrimination under Title VII will likely more easily advance beyond motions to dismiss or motions for summary judgment. In the wake of the Court’s decisions in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (6-2), No. 20-1199, and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Univ. of North Carolina (6-3), No. 21-707 (June 29, 2023), Muldrow will also likely continue to reshape how employers conceive of, implement, and communicate workplace Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (“DEI”) efforts.  The decision may be used by future plaintiffs in “reverse” discrimination actions to challenge DEI or affinity programs that provide non-economic benefits to some – but not all – employees.  For example, DEI programs focused on mentoring or access to leadership open only to members of a certain protected class could be challenged under Muldrow by an employee positing that exclusion from such programs clears this new, lower standard of harm. 

On January 30, 2024, the FAR Council issued a proposed rule entitled “Pay Equity and Transparency in Federal Contracting” (“Proposed Rule”). The Proposed Rule would: (1) prohibit contractors and subcontractors from seeking and considering information about job applicants’ compensation history when making employment decisions about personnel working on or in connection with a government contract; and (2) require contractors and subcontractors to disclose, in all advertisements for job openings involving work on or in connection with a government contract placed by or on behalf of the contractor or subcontractor, the compensation to be offered to the hired applicant for any position to perform work on or in connection with the contract.

The issue of pay equity between women and men has been garnering a growing amount of attention from a variety of quarters, making litigation of pay-equity claims—from class actions to individual cases—an increasingly common occurrence.

This retailer-only roundtable discussion provides a safe space to take a deeper dive into the issues discussed in the morning’s plenary session on union organizing. We will provide attendees an opportunity to share experiences and exchange best practices on responses to the current wave of union organizing and more aggressive union demands, including an increased willingness to engage in economic strikes. Are you contemplating a different strategy regarding union organizing and, if so, what are the core principles? How are we, as employers in a time of dramatic change and economic uncertainty, able to address concerns that are front of mind to employees? 

Please join us for the next edition of Third Thursday – Crowell & Moring’s Labor and Employment Update, a webinar series dedicated to helping our clients stay on top of developing law and emerging compliance issues. Only five months in, 2014 has already been a very busy year for the Office of Federal Compliance Programs (OFCCP).  This month’s program will focus on recent developments in affirmative action and OFCCP enforcement initiatives. 

Please join us for the next edition of Third Thursday – Crowell & Moring's Labor and Employment Update, a webinar series dedicated to helping our clients stay on top of developing law, emerging compliance issues, and best practices.

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) considerations are being elevated in corporate, corporate stakeholder, and regulator discourse as never before. Many companies are experiencing ESG pressures for the first time, and indeed they may seem new to entire industries. However, ESG has become an essential institutional investor criteria and will increasingly need to be integrated into the supply and value chains of public and private corporations as financial and other regulators catch up.