Welcome to Labor of Law—I'm Mike Scarcella in Washington, and you can reach me at [email protected] and on Twitter @MikeScarcella. Thanks for reading!

Duke Settles 'No Poach' Class Action for $54.5M

In what could be the first settlement of its kind, Duke University this week agreed to pay $54.5 million to resolve class claims targeting an alleged employee-poaching agreement with the University of North Carolina after the U.S. Department of Justice intervened, my colleague Amanda Bronstad reports at Law.com.

“The settlement also sets forth an important and perhaps unprecedented role for the United States Department of Justice to monitor and enforce compliance with the settlement's injunctive relief provisions,” lead plaintiffs counsel Dean Harvey, of San Francisco's Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, said in court papers seeking preliminary approval of the settlement.

Gregg Levy, a partner at Covington & Burling in Washington, and Brent Powell, of Womble Bond Dickinson, represented Duke. A Duke representative said the university, which has denied the allegations, was settling to “avoid the wasteful cost and inconvenience of prolonged litigation.”

Makan Delrahim, head of the Justice Department's antitrust division, said in a statement: “The Antitrust Division will use all of its enforcement and advocacy tools to ensure that labor markets across the economy are free from anticompetitive conduct and that workers receive the benefits of robust competition for their labor.”

>> More reading here at The Wall Street Journal.

Seyfarth Launches Biometric Privacy Practice

Seyfarth Shaw is the latest firm to start a dedicated biometric privacy practice group, my colleague Dan Packel reports. The firm said it was dedicating 25 attorneys from such areas as litigation, labor and employment and policy.

The team, which will advise clients on compliance, class action litigation and lobbying, will be led by labor and employment attorneys Karla Grossenbacher and Thomas Ahlering. “We're seeing more of a demand for both compliance advice and getting more clients who are served with biometric litigation of all kinds,” Grossenbacher said.

Other firms building out their biometric privacy practices in recent months include Shook, Hardy & Bacon, which in February hired a pair of lawyers who previously led Baker & Hostetler's Biometric Information Privacy Act, and Chicago's Hahn Loeser & Parks, which opened a new practice group in March.

The Illinois Supreme Court's ruling in January in the biometrics privacy case Rosenbach v. Six Flags has generated significant attention. The ruling granted individuals a “right to privacy in and control over their biometric identifiers and biometric information.”

“In the past two years alone, more than 200 BIPA class actions have been filed—a number that will undoubtedly increase in the wake of Rosenbach,” a team from Blank Rome reported in March.

A recent advisory from Morgan, Lewis & Bockius pointed to ongoing state and local action across the country. “Companies should also stay informed of other biometric legislation developments,” the alert said.

Who Got the Work

>> Morgan, Lewis & Bockius partner Sara Bouchard in Philadelphia, co-leader of the whistleblower group, was counsel to Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. in a whistleblower-retaliation complaint at the U.S. Labor Department. An administrative law judge on May 15 approved a settlement and dismissed claims brought by a former systems project manager named Wane Goldstein, who alleged inadequate management and compliance. Patrick Boyd of the Boyd Law Group in Stamford, Connecticut, represented Goldstein. A representative from Brown Brothers was not reached for comment, and neither was Goldstein's lawyer.

 >> Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe partner E. Joshua Rosenkranz (at left) is counsel of record to Winston & Strawnon a new petition at the U.S. Supreme Court challenging a California state appeals ruling that invalidated an arbitration agreement involving a former partner named Constance Ramos. Ramos, who has alleged gender-bias claims, was represented in the state action by Noah Lebowitz, who runs his own employee rights firm in Berkeley, California. The Orrick team contends: “The broader context is the California judiciary's persistent defiance of this court's clear rulings on arbitration.” Bloomberg Law has more here on the Supreme Court petition.

>> “American Airlines Group Inc. said Monday that it is suing two unions representing its mechanics in an effort to end an alleged work slowdown that it said could exacerbate delays and cancellations during the coming summer travel season,” The Wall Street Journal reports. Lawyers from the firms O'Melveny & Myers and Kelly Hart & Hallman filed the suit—read the complaint—in the Northern District of Texas.

>> The Ninth Circuit has upheld a California trial judge's order compelling racial discrimination claims to arbitration in a case involving Tesla Motors Inc. Danielle Ochsof Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart advocated for Tesla and Noah Baron of California Civil Rights Law Group advocated for appellant Dewitt Lambert.

>> A team from Littler Mendelson, including Jonathan Beckerman and Miguel Morel, represented Amtrak in an appeal in the Eleventh Circuit. The court upheld the dismissal of race discrimination and retaliation claims. Robin Hazel and Ria Chattergoon of Hazel Law in Hollywood, Florida, represented the worker.

>> The prison health care services provider Corizon Health has agreed to pay $950,000 to resolve an EEOC disability discrimination suit. Tibor Nagy Jr., the office managing shareholder in Tucson for Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, represented Corizon. EEOC trial attorney Wasan Awad appeared for the agency. Read the consent decree here.

>> A Dallas-based litigation support company that works with the largest Am Law 100 firms was sued by a former sales representative who alleges the company discriminated against her because she was pregnant, and retaliated by firing her 10 days before she gave birth, my colleague Angela Morris reports. Read the complaint here. Clay Hartmann of The Hartmann Firm in Dallas represents the plaintiff.

Around the Water Cooler

>> Jones Day Presses Plaintiffs to Go Public in Gender Bias Case. “The Jane Does are not materially different from the countless employment discrimination plaintiffs who routinely file under their real names, including the named plaintiffs here who, rather than fearing publicity, have invited extensive media attention to themselves and their claims,” Jones Day lawyers said in a motion asserting the women misled the court in securing anonymity. [Law.com] More reading here from Alison Frankel at Reuters: Why Lawyers Shouldn't Use Pseudonyms to Sue Their Law Firms.

>> Building on Time's Up Work, Kaplan, Tchen Launch Anti-Harassment Training Firm. “Two litigators who have been outspoken in the #MeToo movement, Roberta Kaplan and Tina Tchen, are launching a new business to help organizations learn how to stop sexual misconduct before it happens. The name of the new entity, HABIT, is an acronym standing for Harassment, Acceptance, Bias and Inclusion Training. Among its listed services are anti-sexual harassment training, bystander intervention training and unconscious-bias training.” [The American Lawyer]

>> Biz Groups Move in for Kill on What's Left of Obama-era Injury-Reporting Rule. “The Trump administration has already wiped out the bulk of a Obama-era federal workplace safety rule requiring larger employers to provide detailed data about on-the-job injuries, but the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups are asking a federal judge to strike down the rest of the regulation.” [Reuters]

 >> Uber Foe Shannon Liss-Riordan Dials Back Employment Practice for US Senate Run. Shannon Liss-Riordan (at left), a partner in the Boston firm Lichten & Liss-Riordan who is derided by corporations and lauded by workers for her employment practice, has announced her bid to unseat Ed Markey in the 2020 election for U.S. Senate. She told ALM she will be stepping away from day-to-day activity at her 10-attorney firm to focus on the campaign. The firm itself will stay busy, she said, with ongoing matters against a roster of gig-economy companies that includes Uber, Lyft, Grubhub, Postmakes and Doordash, as well as newer cases such as an age discrimination suit against IBM. [The American Lawyer]

>> McDonald's Faces 25 New Sexual Harassment Lawsuits, Charges from Workers Groups. “In letters sent this week to Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth and 'Top Chef' host Padma Lakshmi, who is supporting the workers' cause, McDonald's Chief Executive Steve Easterbrook said the fast food chain has improved and more clearly defined its harassment policies, and trained most franchise owners.” [Reuters]

>> Caught in the Middle of #MeToo: Unions That Represent Accusers and Accused. “From the shop floors of factories to ballet's grandest stages, organized labor is struggling to balance a set of competing and sometimes conflicting interests as it grapples with the sharp uptick in #MeToo-related cases in recent years.” [NYT]

>> Factory Workers Become Coders As Companies Automate. “Attracting and retaining high-quality workers was the biggest concern of almost three-quarters of 466 respondents in a National Association of Manufacturers outlook survey released in March.” [WSJ]

>> Resistance to Noncompete Agreements Is a Win for Workers. “A national backlash is building against employers that make such movement harder with noncompete agreements that bar departing employees from taking jobs with industry competitors for certain periods of time. That's good news for workers, because eliminating barriers to job-hopping could help stir the kind of wage growth workers haven't seen since before the last recession.” [WSJ]

>> Labor Department Faces Blowback After Gig Economy Opinion Letter. “It would certainly be a welcome development if the agency began work on creating a sweeping regulatory framework to aid gig economy companies in adopting consistent workplace practices that can assure them of contractor relationships while reducing the chances of a misclassification conflict,” Fisher Phillps partner Richard Meneghello writes on a blog at the firm. [Gig Employer Blog]

Notable Moves & Announcements

>> The U.S. Labor Department has named Molly Conway the next chief of staff to Secretary Alex Acosta, Bloomberg Law reports. Conway, currently serving as deputy chief of staff, succeeds Nicholas Geale. Conway earlier served as labor and pensions counsel from 2014 to 2017 at the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. The American University Washington College of Law grad was a legislative assistant at Drinker Biddle & Reath in Washington from 2008 to 2009.

>> Beaumont Howard has joined the Atlanta office of Fox Rothschild as a labor and employment partner. Howard joins from Freed Howard LLC in Atlanta.

>> Liseanne Kelly has rejoined Littler Mendelson as a shareholder in in the firm's San Diego office. Kelly previously served as director of employment law compliance at Alliance Data. In addition, Jeremy Sosna has rejoined Littler as a shareholder in the Minneapolis office. Sosna joins from Maslon LLP. He practiced as an attorney at Littler from 1998 to 2003.

>> The EEOC has appointed Brett Brenner as the associate director of the Office of Communications and Legislative Affairs. Brenner formerly was the acting director of the office from January 2009 to August 2010, and again since January 2016 until this appointment, the EEOC said in a statement.