Welcome to Labor of Law, our weekly summary of news and trends affecting the L&E community. On the clock:

• Meet the lawyers arguing the Title VII cases next week
• Delaware chief justice: 'Corporations are not playthings'
• Big Law partner claims sexual assault; Judiciary reprimands Kansas federal judge
• Who Got the Work: Littler for Walmart, Sheppard Mullin for Tesla

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

SCOTUS Title VII Cases: Meet the Lawyers

Next week, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear two arguments testing the scope of Title VII protections against discrimination over sexual orientation and gender identity. The cases will feature a mix of veteran advocates and lawyers making their debuts.

Among the veterans: Stanford Law's Pamela Karlan will argue that Title VII prohibits sexual orientation bias. She's up against Washington-based Consovoy McCarthy partner Jeffrey Harris, who will make his debut in arguments against sexual orientation being included under Title VII. The ACLU's David Cole will oppose John Bursch of Alliance Defending Freedom in the gender identity case, where Aimee Stephens, a transgender woman, filed claims against a Michigan funeral home. U.S. Solicitor General Noel Francisco will argue for the federal government.

>> David Cole, ACLU national legal director: "Just as employers had to accommodate women in what were previously male-only workplaces, so, too, sex equality demands accommodation of transgender people. But it does not require elimination of all sex-specific rules." And more: "To insist that men should love only women, or that those assigned a male sex at birth should identify as men is, literally, to enforce a sex-specific rule. And to fire someone for contravening such a rule is to discriminate "because of sex." [The New York Review of Books]

>> John Bursch, vice president of appellate advocacy at ADF: "The heart of this case is whether the government can change the law out from under law-abiding citizens. Hanging in the balance is far more than the fate of a century-old Detroit institution, it's the right of every American to rely on what the law says." And more: If the ACLU succeeds, it would punish Harris Funeral Homes and other businesses for relying on the law as it is written. And the court would create unfair situations for women in the workplace, in athletics, and even in places like women's shelters that serve abuse victims." [The Detroit News]

A snap takeaway from Fisher & Phillips partners Randy Coffey (Kansas City) and Rich Meneghello (Portland), writing in the firm's On the Front Lines newsletter:

"The rulings in all three cases could forever reshape the nation's primary antidiscrimination statute. And while almost half of the states in the country and many local governments already have laws prohibiting sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination in employment, millions of employers and workers in the other half of the country will need to pay close attention to these rulings."

Delaware Chief Justice: 'Workers Must be Given Far More Priority'

Delaware Chief Justice Leo Strine Jr. (above) is getting some attention for a paper he wrote—"Toward Fair and Sustainable Capitalism"—that was prepared for the "New Deal" conference today and Friday in Washington, D.C. Strine separately published a related op-ed at Financial Times that was headlined "Workers Must Be at the Heart of Company Priorities." Both are worth a read.

Some of Strine's points from his paper:

>> "Human investors benefit from sustainable, long-term economic growth and gainsharing between shareholders and workers, but companies have increasingly failed to deliver on that promise."

>> "Workers must be given more voice within the corporate boardroom, and top managers and directors must give greater thought to how they treat their employees. Companies should have board-level committees that ensure quality wages and fair worker treatment. Labor law reforms should make it easier for employees to join a union and bargain over wages."

>> "The bottom line is that America's corporations are not playthings. They create jobs, produce goods and services that consumers depend on, affect the environment we live in, and build wealth for human investors to save for retirement and their kids' education. That is, corporations are societally chartered institutions of enormous importance and value. Those who govern them ought to be accountable for the generation of durable wealth for workers, consumers, and human investors."

More at Reuters here: As Strine Prepares to Leave Bench, a Call for Institutional Investors to Push for Change

Around the Water Cooler

Workplace culture

DLA Piper Partner Accused of Sexual Assault in EEOC Claim, Open Letter. A junior partner at DLA Piper has accused the co-managing partner of the firm's Silicon Valley office of sexually assaulting her multiple times in the months after he recruited her to join the firm. Vanina Guerrero lodged the allegations against Louis Lehot, who also co-chairs the firm's U.S. emerging growth and venture capital group, in an open letter to DLA Piper U.S. co-chairs Roger Meltzer and Jay Rains, asking them to release her from her mandatory arbitration agreement with the firm. Jeanne Christensen of Wigdor represents Guerrero. A spokesman from DLA Piper did not immediately respond to a series of questions Tuesday. [Law.com]

Judiciary Reprimands Kansas Federal Judge for Sexually Harassing Court Employees. The Judicial Council of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit held that U.S. District Judge Carlos Murguia sexually harassed employees, engaged in an extramarital relationship with a felon who was then on probation, and was "habitually" tardy for court engagements. Murguia admitted the misconduct allegations, apologized for his behavior and promised he would not engage in any inappropriate conduct in the future. [Law.com]

#MeToo Legal Developments: No Signs of Slowing. "Executives must take the lead in creating an environment in which employees feel comfortable reporting sexually inappropriate conduct. After all, the laws set only the minimum standards of conduct. Each organization must work to cultivate a culture that neither tolerates nor facilitates workplace sexual misconduct," King & Spalding partner Jade Lambert and counsel Abigail Bortnick write. [NYU Law]

Goldman Sachs, Dell Settle Pay Bias Allegations for Millions. "Goldman Sachs and Dell Technologies will pay a combination of almost $17 million to settle separate Labor Department allegations of pay bias based on gender and race. The two settlements are the largest ever obtained by the DOL's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs." [Bloomberg Law] Read the Goldman Sachs agreement here, and the Dell agreement here.

Future of work

Workplace Automation: How AI Is Coming for Your Job. "Ben Allgrove, head of global research and development for Baker McKenzie, the law firm, says that, in insurance, only operators dealing with high volumes of routine, low-level claims have so far found the technology useful. A number of insurers—including Japan's Fukoku Mutual Life—have said they are handling routine claims processing to machine-learning systems. Walmart, the US retailer, uses the technology to handle personal injury claims. 'What is common about those two fact patterns is high volume, highly standardised,' Mr. Allgrove says. "Yes, you can automate. How much you can automate probably depends [on what standard you want to achieve].'"[Financial Times]

Why WeWork Was Destined to Fail. "Who is the we who works in WeWork, anyway? If it's the billionaires and the kings whose work is carried out by their capital, then they're hardly getting a comeuppance. But if it's us relatively normal people—you and me—then we should learn an important existential lesson from The We Company's rise and, well, ebb: WeWork, dear reader, is really just office space. It's the place you go for a job." [The Atlantic]

Unions, worker classification

California Has a New Law for Contract Workers. But Many Businesses Aren't Ready for Change. "But the upheaval extends far beyond Silicon Valley. Businesses in dozens of sectors, including trucking, entertainment and translating, are scrambling to figure out how the law affects them, whether they must adapt to it, and, especially, whether they can persuade lawmakers next year to add them to a score of carved-out occupations such as doctors and fine artists."[Los Angeles Times]

Who Got the Work

>> A team from Sheppard Mullin—including special counsel Mark Ross and associate Keahn Morris—is representing Tesla in a labor dispute at the National Labor Relations Board. Reuters reports: "Electric carmaker Tesla Inc interfered with legitimate union organizing and must read a notice to workers explaining their rights in a meeting requiring attendance from Chief Executive Elon Musk, a U.S. labor judge ruled on Friday. The company committed a series of violations of the National Labor Relations Act in 2017 and 2018, Amita Baman Tracy, a California administrative law judge ruled in a court filing." Margo Feinberg, Daniel Curry and Julie Alarcon represented the charging party. Read the ALJ's ruling here.

>> Littler Mendelson's Carey Ann Denefrio was identified as counsel to Walmart in a new EEOC case in the Western District of New York that alleges sexual harassment. Walmart said in a statement: "We don't tolerate harassment or discrimination of any kind. We take this serious and will respond as appropriate with the court." EEOC trial attorney James Bobseine and supervisory trial attorney Nora Curtin are counsel for the agency.

>> Sanford Heisler & Sharp is representing the family of a Facebook employee who died by suicide about a week ago at the social media site's California headquarters, my colleague Amanda Bronstad reports at Law.com. "Our firm is conducting an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death," said the announcement, signed by the Washington, D.C., firm's chairman, David Sanford, and Qiaojing Ella Zheng, senior counsel in the firm's San Francisco office.

Notable Milestones & Announcements

>> "Morgan Lewis & Bockius chair Jami McKeon is on the cusp of starting a new term as the head of one of the nation's highest-earning firms, tasked with keeping it successful in a ferociously competitive legal market while balancing growing demands that firms make Big Law less stressful," Bloomberg Lawreports. McKeon (above) said: "CEOs tell me that they are surprised that firms still come in to pitch with non-diverse teams. At least one client told me that having a woman head was the reason they hired us."

>> Ogletree Deakins said it has hired Shelley Ericsson and Claudia Tran as a shareholder and associate, respectively, in Kansas City. Ericsson joins from Armstrong Teasdale, and Tran arrives from Martin, Pringle, Oliver, Wallace, & Bauer.