Welcome to Labor of Law, our labor and employment dispatch on the big cases, issues and trends. On the clock: Commentary about the US Supreme Court's landmark LGBT rights ruling; what's worrying in-house lawyers; Sterling Jewelers' cert petition at SCOTUS; major headlines and more. Breaking this morning: the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to block Trump's move to end DACA.

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LGBT Rights: 'The Implications of This Ruling Cannot Be Understated'

Monday's landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling for broad workplace protections for LGBT employees brought a flood of commentary. What follows is a roundup of statements and writing from lawyers.

>> Evan Wolfson, senior counsel at Dentons: The "Supreme Court decision builds on the common sense reality that you can't even spell 'sexual orientation" without 'sex' and that the law cannot be 'as a man fit, as a woman fired. There is no gay exception or trans exclusion to the Civil Rights Act. We all need good news these days—and that this decision was issued during Pride Month makes it especially meaningful for millions of Americans and others worldwide, and for our firm."

>> Lori Armstrong Halber, a partner at Reed Smith: "What remains to be seen are how issues involving questions of religious freedom will be resolved. Justice Gorsuch goes out of his way at the end of the opinion to note that no one raised a religious freedom argument and so the court is not opining on that issue. The issue will be before the court in another context in Fulton v The City of Philadelphia, which involves adoption rights by LGBTQ which are being denied on religious grounds. Currently, in the employment context, an employee is entitled to a reasonable accommodation for a sincerely held religious belief subject to undue hardship; but the standard for undue hardship is relatively low. An employer will not be required to impose on, for example, a female worker's rights in the workplace to accommodate an orthodox or highly conservative male's religious beliefs."

>> Jane Schacter of Stanford Law School: "Justice Gorsuch is certainly respectful of LGBT persons in Bostock, but his opinion is insistently doctrinal and precisely analytical. As his opinions often do, it features lively prose and creative analogies. But it conspicuously eschews broad rhetoric about discrimination, and does so as part of the key logic of the opinion." And Schacter said: "The fact that Bostock is reasoned in such starkly different terms and comes from the pen of a justice not associated with support for LGBT rights should significantly recast the lines of debate. True, the dissenters rehearse standard—if tired—claims of judicial activism, but the fact that they are resisted by Justice Gorsuch in his own logic of judicial restraint should open new lines of inquiry."

>> Sam Schwartz-Fenwick, a partner at Seyfarth who leads the law firm's LGBT Affinity Group: "The implications of this ruling cannot be understated. Until today, most jurisdictions in the United States offered no employment protections to LGBT individuals. With this ruling however, the anti-discrimination mandate of Title VII now protects LGBT individuals throughout the country. Employers, both those who already had LGBT inclusive policies and those who will now have to adopt them in order to comply with the law, will benefit from the growth in productivity and performance that comes when employees are allowed and encouraged to be themselves at work."

>> Elena Baca, a Paul Hastings partner and global chair of the firm's employment law division: "For years, LGBTQ advocates have unsuccessfully advanced the argument that Title VII applied to gay and transgendered people. Equality activists have necessarily gone state to state seeking to broaden employment protections. At a minimum, this ruling will roll out protections not previously afforded in a number of states."

>> More reading: After Landmark LGBT Rights Ruling, Unresolved Questions Await Supreme Court (Law.com); The Supreme Court's Ruling on LGBTQ Protections Is a Triumph for Textualism—and Dignity (The Washington Post); Supreme Court Expansion of Transgender Rights Undercuts Trump Restrictions (NYT); LGBT Rights Supreme Court Ruling Is a Power Play by Gorsuch (Bloomberg); LGBTQ Rights Ruling Pushes Workplace Dynamic Already in Motion (NYT); The Three People at the Center of the Landmark Supreme Court Decision (The New Yorker)

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Employment Issues Still on In-House Counsels' Mind When Bringing Back Employees

Preparing for a second wave of the new coronavirus, in-house attorneys still have concerns about the impending employment issues related to workers heading back to the office, according to a report published by Morrison & Foerster, my colleague Dan Clark writes at Corporate Counsel.

Eighty-seven percent of the more than 100 in-house counsel respondents said they believe employment issues pose the greatest risk to their organizations as they bring employees back to the office.

"Employers care about their employees and want to make all of the right decisions but are also concerned with their liability and exposure," David Newman, a partner at Morrison & Foerster in Washington, said.

Employers are aware the pandemic could be far from over, Newman said. However, employers in certain industries need their employees to be back full time to operate. Nearly 67% of the respondents indicated they are moderately concerned with the threat of subsequent lockdowns caused by COVID-19.

Who Got the Work

>> Jeanne Christensen (above) and Tanvir Rahman, both of Wigdor LLP, are representing Marilyn Booker, former diversity chief, in a new suit in EDNY alleging racial discrimination. Booker asserts "she was fired because she pushed too hard to get senior executives in that division to embrace her plan to restructure a program for training black financial advisers. She thought the restructuring would help more recruits succeed," The New York Times reports. Bloomberg has more here. Read Booker's complaint here.

>> Weil, Gotshal & Manges partner Zachary Tripp, co-head of the firm's appellate practice, is counsel of record in a new petition at the U.S. Supreme Court for client Sterling Jewelers Inc. in a gender-bias dispute. "The question presented is whether an arbitrator may compel class arbitration—binding the parties and absent class members—without finding actual consent, and instead based only on a finding that the agreement does not unambiguously prohibit class arbitration and should be construed against the drafter," Tripp wrote. The Weil Gotshal team includes partner Jeffrey Klein, former head of the firm's labor practice, and senior associate Sarah Sternlieb. Lawyers from Seyfarth Shaw, including partners Gerald Maatman Jr., Daniel Klein and Lorie Almon, a member of the labor and employment leadership team who co-manages the firm's New York office.

>> Munger, Tolles & Olson partner Elaine Goldenberg is on the team defending Lyft Inc. in a labor suit in Washington's federal trial court alleging violations of paid sick leave. Goldenberg and colleagues Rachel Miller-Ziegler, Rohit Singla, Justin Raphael on Tuesday moved to compel arbitration. The plaintiffs are represented by lawyers from Outten & Golden, including Sally Abrahamson, Mikael Rojas and Pooja Shethji. Read the complaint here.

>> "Two labor unions want a federal appeals court to force the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration to issue an emergency temporary standard protecting miners from infectious diseases," Bloomberg Law reports. The firms Mooney, Green, Saindon, Murphy & Welch and Santarella & Eckert LLC filed the challenge.

Around the Water Cooler

In Corporate Reckoning, Executives Pressed to Improve Racial Equity in Workplaces. "The moves are the latest public actions by businesses lining up to show their commitment to racial equality. The product decisions and financial pledges—totaling hundreds of millions of dollars in commitments so far—show how companies are responding to the second massive reordering of their world in 2020 and jumping into a national conversation about race. Spurred to action by the response to Mr. Floyd's killing May 25 while in police custody, executives and employees say that they are being called to show customers they are taking action to address racism." [WSJ]

Corporations Say They Support Black Lives Matter. Their Employees Doubt Them. "The goal, of course, is for customers and others outside those companies to find all these gestures compelling and believable. But many black employees find them confusing, at times even laughable, because such pronouncements and headline-garnering investments are so terribly inconsistent with their firsthand experiences in workplaces that have long devalued their lives and professional contributions." [The Washington Post]

Many workers will never go back to the office post-coronavirus. "Major companies are keeping workers home through the summer, if not the end of the year, in large part to protect them from COVID-19 and curb its spread. A widely available vaccine isn't expected until 2021, at the earliest. What happens once that glorious day finally arrives? Many workers, it turns out, still won't leave the house." [Boston Globe]

Google's New Rules Clamp Down on Discriminatory Housing, Job Ads. "Alphabet Inc's Google said on Thursday it was tackling unlawful discrimination by barring housing, employment and credit ads from being targeted to its users based on their postal code, gender, age, parental status or marital status." [Reuters]

Bloomberg Asks Court to Toss Suit from Former Campaign Aides. "Bloomberg attorneys wrote in their Monday motion to dismiss that the former field organizers who brought the class-action lawsuit earlier this year signed offer letters and were provided employee handbooks that specifically stated they were 'at will' workers and could be terminated 'at any time.'" [Politico]

Judge Rules OSHA Can Release Employer Injury Records. "Judge Ryu instructed the parties to submit a joint proposed order. It may be, however, that the DOL appeals the judge's decision. Other interested parties—including employer advocacy groups—could seek to intervene in the case." [Ogletree Deakins]

Covid-19

Companies Push for Virus Legal Protection, Prompting Worker Concern. "Companies and universities—and the groups that represent them—say they are vulnerable to a wave of lawsuits if they reopen while the coronavirus continues to circulate widely, and they are pushing Congress for temporary legal protections they say will help get the economy running again. But that idea has engendered stiff opposition, particularly among congressional Democrats and labor unions, who say some businesses are doing too little to protect vulnerable workers, and that such a liability shield would only encourage reckless behavior." [NYT]

Amazon Hiring Spree Bolsters Its Workplace Safety Team. "The world's biggest retailer is boosting its cadre of in-house counsels and advisers with experience in workplace safety and labor and employment litigation, as the company continues to face litigation over alleged unsafe work conditions. Tressi Cordaro, a Jackson Lewis principal and head of the firm's Workplace Safety and Health Practice Group in Washington, D.C., is the latest to join Amazon.com's team. Cordaro will join Amazon's Worldwide Operations, Workplace Health and Safety, on June 29 as the director of compliance, an Amazon representative confirmed to Bloomberg Law." [Bloomberg Law]

Legal Risks Abound When Companies Bring Their Employees Back. "Some employees already have filed lawsuits claiming companies including McDonald's, Amazon.com, and Smithfield Foods aren't doing enough to keep workers and their families free of coronavirus, even though employers are promising to follow such health guidelines as maintaining social distancing, improving sanitation, and providing personal protective gear. And legal experts see possible fights over other issues like privacy rights, age discrimination, or employees at greater risk of infection who are compelled to return too soon." [Bloomberg Law]

More People Will Be Fired in the Pandemic. Let's Talk About It. "One of the many unwelcome lessons we've already learned during this recession is just how terrible companies are at firing people." [NYT]