Welcome to Labor of Law. The Ninth Circuit's getting a major pay equity case back from the U.S. Supreme Court—what can we expect now? Plus, Wynn Resorts is paying $20M to a regulatory agency resolving claims ties to a sexual harassment scandal. Scroll down for Who Got the Work, notable moves and more.

I'm Erin Mulvaney in Washington, covering labor and employment from the Swamp to Silicon Valley. Follow this weekly newsletter. If you have a story idea, feedback or just want to say hi, I'm at [email protected] and on Twitter @erinmulvaney.

Pay Equity Case Returns to Ninth Circuit

We've been waiting to see whether the U.S. Supreme Court would take up the closely watched pay equity case Yovino v Rizo. We got an answer this week—but we're no closer to clarity. The justices kicked the case back to the Ninth Circuit after concluding Judge Stephen Reinhardt's opinion—written shortly before his death—was invalid. The court didn't touch the merits of the dispute, which confronts whether employers can use prior salary history to justify paying men and women differently for the same job.

>> Business advocates are disappointed because they wanted the justices to take up the case. At the heart of the case is a common business practice: companies base salary decisions on what an employee had been making at a previous job. Aileen Rizo, a math consultant in Fresno County, California, sued her employer after she discovered she was paid as much as $10,000 less than men in similar positions.

>> The en banc Ninth Circuit last year ruled in Rizo's favor, and Reinhardt issued a sweeping majority decision. “The Equal Pay Act stands for a principle as simple as it is just: men and women should receive equal pay for equal work regardless of sex,” Reinhardt wrote. “The question before us is also simple: can an employer justify a wage differential between male and female employees by relying on prior salary? Based on the text, history, and purpose of the Equal Pay Act, the answer is clear: No.”

>> The Ninth Circuit hasn't yet said how it will handle the case, now that it's returned to the appeals court. Jones Day partner Shay Dvoretzky, representing Fresno County, declined to comment. Daniel Siegel of Siegel, Yee & Brunnerrepresents Rizo.

Siegel said he does not anticipate the case will be reargued, and he was optimistic Rizo would prevail the second time around based on the appeals court's prior rulings. “I would also like to see a strong Ninth Circuit decision that helps move the law on this issue,” he said.

In the short term, uncertainty persists. Employers should not rush to respond to the court's decision, as the outcome may likely be the same, said Lara de Leon, co-chair of the pay equity practice at Ogletree Deakins Smoak & Stewart.

“The move will not drastically change what I recommend, but it makes the issue in the forefront of people's minds,” De Leon said. “Most clients want some kind of guidance from the Supreme Court on the federal law. It's a challenge for employers to deal with a patchwork of regulations. Getting that clarity will be very much welcome.”

Lessons from Wynn Resorts' $20M Penalty

The $20 million regulatory fine this week against Wynn Resorts tied to the sexual harassment scandal that ousted chairman and CEO Steve Wynn last year was the largest imposed against a gambling licensee—and marked a rare instance in the #MeToo era of a company being held accountable.

Wynn Resorts initiated an “enhanced” workplace compliance and sexual harassment training program for all employees, and the company commissioned pay and promotion equity studies, the Nevada Gaming Commission said in the settlement agreement. Wynn Resorts has “undergone extensive self-examination over the last 12 months, intended to reinvigorate and implement meaningful change across all levels of the organization,” the agency said. Read the agency's complaint here.

More from the settlement: “Since its creation almost two decades ago, [Wynn Resorts] have prided themselves on their culture of compliance and commitment to their employees. Over the last year, respondents have released, through the board's investigation as well as its own, that respondents fell short of their culture and commitment in perhaps one of the most important areas for an employer—focusing on its employees. Respondents have focused on a single man, rather than the company's greatest asset, its 25,000 employees.”

Emily Martin, the vice president for education and workplace justice at the National Women's Law Center, told The New York Times: “It demonstrates a recognition that papering over sexual harassment and assault is a form of corporate corruption that is within the scope of regulators' jurisdiction. It is an important reflection of the fact that, while harassment and assault harms victims and they need to be compensated, it also has broader harms.”

Martin said the gaming commission's role in probing Wynn Resorts shows “the cultural shift that has caused these matters to be taken seriously as issues of corporate governance as well as individual behavior.”

Lead counsel for Wynn Resorts before the Nevada commission was Greg Brower, formerly a top lawyer at the FBI who joined Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck last year. Brower is a former U.S. Attorney for the District of Nevada. He was not reached for comment.

A team from Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher was hired by a special committee of the Wynn Resorts board of directors to investigate the allegations against Wynn, who denied the misconduct claims.

Who Got the Work

>> Alva Johnson (above), who worked for President Donald Trump's campaign, is suing the president in Florida federal court for allegedly forcibly kissing her and paying her less than her white colleagues. Hassan Zavareei, a Washington lawyer with Tycko & Zavareei, is on the team representing Johnson, my colleague Ellis Kim reports. Zavareei also brought on a team of lawyers from Florida, led by Janet Varnell of Varnell & Warwick. Paul Bland, the executive director at Public Justice, is also on the plaintiffs team. The New York Times has more on the case. A White House spokesperson denied Johnson's claims.

>> A new federal suit alleges a raid on a meatpacking plant in Tennessee by two U.S. Department of Homeland Security agencies—Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Homeland Security Investigations—violated the rights of 100 Latinos workers there. The National Immigration Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center are representing the workers, along with a team from Sherrard Roe Voigt & Harbison. Read the complaint here in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee.

Notable Moves & Announcements

>> Shook, Hardy & Bacon's Chicago office has added two former Baker & Hostetler lawyers—partner Melissa Siebert and of counsel Erin Bolan Hines—to handle a recent surge of class action complaints against Illinois businesses for collecting biometric data like fingerprint scans from their employees, my colleague Roy Strom reports. Siebert and Hines previously co-led Baker & Hostetler's Biometric Information Privacy Act practice.

>> Littler Mendelson has hired Chris Gokturk as a principal in its Tysons Corner, Virginia, office. Gokturk has spent more than 20 years in compliance, enterprise risk management and statistical analyses. “Chris brings a unique skill set in conducting risk assessments, analyzing employment data and advising on compliance with requirements enforced by the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP),” Michael McIntosh, Littler's office managing shareholder in Tysons Corner, said in a statement.

>> Morgan, Lewis & Bockius has hired Michelle McCarthy as a partner in Los Angeles. McCarthy, who focuses on multiemployer and single employer pension and welfare plans, arrives from Fox Rothschild.

>> Brian Christensen has been appointed office managing principal of the Jackson Lewis office in Milwaukee. Christensen joins the new office from the firm's Kansas City area, where he was the office managing principal since 2014.

Around the Water Cooler

• Calls for the resignation of U.S. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta (above) are rising as the former federal prosecutor faces fallout from a Florida judge's ruling in the Jeffrey Epstein sexual abuse case. Acosta, formerly the U.S. attorney in Miami, was the lead prosecutor in a plea deal for Epstein that skirted federal laws concerning victim notification, the judge concluded. [NYT]

• Claims from an emergency medical technician in the Eleventh Circuit are the latest to test the scope of a 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision that confronted the contours and requirements of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. [Law.com]

• A union drive on behalf of adjunct professors from Florida's Miami Dade College is part of a wave of on-campus organizing by SEIU and other unions accusing colleges of leaning on contractors to save money. [Bloomberg]

• The California Supreme Court decision that made it harder for workers to be classified as independent contractors affected a broad swath of industries, including construction, music education and entertainment. [LA Times]

• How did labor unions leverage power in New York to help scuttle the Amazon deal in Long Island City? [NYT]

• Google announced it would end forced arbitration to resolve all workplace disputes, not just those involving sexual harassment. [NYT]