The B&B Docket Blog:

Bennett & Belfort, P.C. is pleased to announce that Michaela May, a partner of the firm, has been elected President of the Massachusetts Employment Lawyers Association (MELA). MELA is comprised of approximately 230 attorneys in Massachusetts who primarily represent employees, and is an affiliate of the National Employment Lawyers Association, a nationwide network of employee-side attorneys. “MELA and their members…

B&B Founding Partner, Todd J. Bennett, was quoted in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly recently about a decision of the Massachusetts Appeals Court, holding that a plaintiff who had not initially disclosed a sexual harassment case in her bankruptcy filings was not prevented from bringing her sexual harassment claim in court. The defense argued that the alleged sexual harassment plaintiff should be…

In a recent decision, the U.S. Supreme Court held that an employee who was transferred even without a loss of pay or seniority because of her sex nonetheless may have experienced illegal discrimination. In Muldrow v. St. Louis, Sergeant Jatonya Clayborn Muldrow sued the City of St. Louis under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1965 for sex…

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) published new guidance on harassment in the workplace on April 29, 2024. The EEOC’s new guidelines cover not only sexual harassment, but a wide range of illegal harassment, including on the basis of race, disability, sexual orientation, gender identify, age, and religion. The guidance supersedes guidance going back as far as 1987. Under…

Bennett & Belfort partner, Michaela May, is scheduled to speak on “Employment Law Updates” at the Massachusetts Bar Association’s annual Labor & Employment Spring Conference on May 9, 2024. The panel, which is comprised of employee- and management-side practitioners and in-house counsel, will discuss developments in discrimination, wage-and-hour, restrictive covenants, trade secrets and artificial intelligence.  May will be focusing on…

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced a final rule on April 23, 2024, that, if it goes into effect, will ban almost all employee non-competition agreements. The rule would not bar non-competition agreements entered into as part of the bona fide sale of a business, and would not affect existing agreements for a narrow class of “senior executives,” as defined…

It was recently reported by Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly in an article entitled “Responding to threat of lawsuit, MCAD begs patience.” that the Lawyers For Civil Rights (“LCR”) and The Urban League of Eastern MA (“ULEM”) wrote the Commission a demand letter (“Demand”) seeking immediate action to address delays in taking in and processing discrimination claims filed at the Massachusetts Commission…

In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court delivered a significant clarification regarding the applicability of the Federal Arbitration Act’s exemption for transportation workers in interstate commerce. Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the Court, emphasized that what matters is whether a worker is a transportation worker, not whether they work in the transportation industry. See Bissonnette v. LePage Bakeries Park St.,…