Yearly Archives: 2016

Making Sense of Mid-Term Modifications of At-Will Employment Contracts

Jun 22, 2016 Alex B. LongAdd a Comment

I’m always pleasantly surprised when I stumble across a piece of scholarship that seeks to solve a doctrinal puzzle in the law. I’m even more pleasantly surprised when the puzzle in question is one that I’ve puzzled over myself. And I’m really pleasantly surprised when the author offers a convincing solution to the puzzle. Those are but three reasons why I like Rachel Arnow-Richman’s article Modifying At-Will Employment Contracts.

Arnow-Richman’s article explores the contractual enforceability of what she calls “mid-term modifications,” a set of non-negotiable contract terms offered by an employer after the start of an at-will employment relationship.  These mid-term modifications often involve new terms that are less favorable to an employee, such as covenants not-to-compete or reduced benefits. The situation presents the type of conflict of competing interests that makes employment law so fascinating. Employees, whose employment status is already tenuous under the at-will employment rule, obviously want to be able to rely on “the deal” as to the terms and conditions of their employment when they first started to work. For their part, employers may have a legitimate need for flexibility in responding to changed circumstances. The law is then asked to produce an equitable solution to the conflict when an employer seeks to alter the deal after the relationship has commenced. But as Arnow-Richman demonstrates, “the common law has developed neither a coherent legal framework for analyzing mid-term modifications, nor a cogent theoretical basis for understanding existing doctrine.” (P. 3.)

For those who have taught the basic employment law survey course, the dilemma is probably a familiar one. Arnow-Richman lays out the two standard judicial approaches to the dilemma. Under the first (which Arnow-Richman refers to as the “unilateral modification” approach), courts permit employers to unilaterally offer new terms, reasoning that because at-will employment may be terminated at any time, continued employment constitutes consideration for any new terms. In contrast, other courts utilize what Arnow-Richman calls the “formal modification” approach. Under this approach, an employer must provide some additional form of consideration (a bonus, a pay increase, etc.) to support its modification. Arnow-Richman delves into the contract doctrine in the area, exploring the courts’ decisions to treat employment relationships as unilateral contracts and their focus on consideration. She concludes that the courts’ focus on consideration in this context is something of a relic. Instead, Arnow-Richman looks to more modern conceptions of good faith under the UCC and decisional law involving mid-term modifications of employment handbooks in crafting a proposed rule that strikes the appropriate balance. Ultimately, she advocates for a rule whereby “mid-term modifications unilaterally imposed by employers in at-will relationships should be enforceable only if the employer provides reasonable advance notice of the change.” (P. 5.) In so doing, she argues that her proposed rule “advances the principles of good faith and voluntariness that underlie contemporary contract modification law within the constraints of employment at will.”

One of the more refreshing features of the article is that Richman actually dives into the decisional law in an attempt to clarify what the courts are really doing. Instead of merely speculating about how courts approach mid-term modifications to employment relationships, Arnow-Richman digs into the cases and summarizes the different approaches courts take when considering the enforceability of different kinds of mid-term modifications. She looks at cases involving modifications in which employers attempt to impose non-compete agreements, arbitration agreements, and changes to existing employee handbooks and then examines the different ways in which courts respond to such attempts. Equally refreshing is the fact that Arnow-Richman is actually engaging in the type of doctrinal scholarship that sees value in wrestling with conflicting policy values in the face of uncertain case law in an attempt to propose a workable solution. As the issues confronting employers and employees in the modern workplace continue to evolve, the issues that the article explores continue to be of significant importance.

Arnow-Richman’s article also comes along at an interesting time in employment law. One of the things I most enjoy about teaching the basic Employment Law survey course is that the course involves a roughly equal mix of tort and contract law. Lately, tort law has taken on an increasingly dominant role, at least in the employment discrimination context. Arnow-Richman’s article is a useful reminder of the role that contract law plays in the law of the workplace and how that law needs to evolve to keep pace with the challenges facing employers and employees.

A Cure for Just-In-Time Scheduling

May 26, 2016 Charlotte GardenAdd a Comment

Many readers were introduced to the concept of “just-in-time scheduling” when the New York Times explored the exhausting and chaotic work life of a Starbucks barista in August 2014. But the practice is certainly not limited to Starbucks. In response to this broader trend, groups like “OUR Walmart” are calling not only for higher wages and more full-time jobs, but for predictable and dependable scheduling, and left-leaning states and cities are beginning to mandate predictable work schedules for at least some workers. This emerging locus of advocacy and media attention is also the subject of Stabilizing Low-Wage Work, a great new article by Charlotte Alexander, Anna Haley-Lock, and Nantiya Ruan. The article analyzes comprehensively not only the problem of “just-in-time” scheduling for low-wage workers, but also the potential for either collective bargaining or state and local law to solve that problem.

Adapted from the practice of just-in-time manufacturing, just-in-time scheduling refers to the now-common practice of adjusting staffing levels in response to current conditions. While it is a problem for workers with many types of jobs, it has particularly taken hold in the service sector where, the article reports, “almost 30 percent or workers” have schedules with “variable start and end times.” Moreover, as the article shows, modern technology has made just-in-time scheduling attractive; employers can monitor and anticipate customer demand in close to real-time, sending workers home or canceling their shifts altogether if potential customers are staying home. Conversely, employers may want to call people in at a moment’s notice; this requires employees to wait by the phone, but seldom results in on-call pay. Federal law, particularly the Fair Labor Standards Act, does little to address this problem; when that law was drafted, the greater problem was that employers frequently demanded excessively long hours from workers.

A particular strength of this article is the way it braids workers’ voices with empirical research, creating an compelling picture of the havoc that erratic scheduling can wreak on workers’ lives. Among these harms are some that readers would probably expect—lost time with family, childcare emergencies, insufficient income—and some that might be more surprising, including the risk that workers can drop below the threshold number of work hours required for TANF and childcare subsidy benefits when they are repeatedly sent home from scheduled shifts.

What is the solution? The article points to two responses already in place for some sets of workers but far too little-known. First, collective bargaining agreements often guarantee that workers are compensated for last-minute schedule changes, though their provisions may be subject to limiting interpretations by arbitrators. Interestingly, the authors show that American CBAs are much more employer-friendly than some of their international counterparts; remarkably, Danish and German CBAs require that retail employers provide notice of 16 and 26 weeks, respectively, of workers’ schedules.

Second, some states have call-in and/or send-home pay provisions. However, the authors note a paucity of case law interpreting these provisions (especially call-in pay laws), offering a “likely explanation” that “these laws are little-used and call-in pay rights under-enforced.” But the problems with these solutions do not end there—reflecting painstaking research, the authors show that even where states have adopted both call-in and send-home pay legislation, coverage is generally spotty, exceptions are numerous, and remedies are weak. Moreover, these statutes address just-in-time scheduling by providing disincentives but do not actually ban the practice or affirmatively guarantee workers a predictable schedule or a guaranteed number of work hours. And, perversely, these laws generally apply only when workers already have something resembling an established schedule; they do not provide protections from the most egregious scheduling practices, such as requiring workers to call in early in the morning to find out if they will work later that day.

Thus, the authors suggest a handful of common-sense reforms. They include: strengthening and broadening guaranteed pay provisions in state laws and CBAs; amending the FLSA to penalize employers’ use of fluctuating schedules; adopting a DOL interpretation of “on-call time” under the FLSA that would encompass workers who are unexpectedly called into work; and strengthening current union and worker campaigns for secure schedules. Certainly some of these proposals are more likely to come to pass than others in the current political environment, but that is a feature of the article, rather than a bug: it identifies multiple levers that would have maximum impact if all pulled together, but that will still help workers when pulled individually.

Some of the growing number of states and cities that have been focused on raising their minimum wages have now also turned their attention to the problem of erratic scheduling. This article will be valuable not only to advocates, but also to legislators in search of solutions and model language. (To the latter, I particularly commend the detailed tables at the end of the article, which list each state’s call-in and send-home pay laws, and from which I learned that Connecticut is alone in specifically protecting employees of “beauty shops” from last-minute call-ins or send-homes.) In sum, this article is a remarkably timely exploration of a significant problem, and also a joy to read.

Dismissing Discrimination

Apr 27, 2016 Charlotte S. Alexander1 comment

In a recent article in The New York Times Magazine, sociologist Alice Goffman – author of an award-winning book that followed a group of African-American men in Philadelphia over six years – addressed accusations that her book presents an implausible account of police practices. When the magazine reporter sought corroboration from the police themselves about certain of these alleged practices, Goffman challenged the notion that “[t]he way to validate the claims in the book is by getting officials who are white men in power to corroborate them.” She continued, “The point of the book is for people who are written off and delegitimated to describe their own lives and to speak for themselves about the reality they face, and this is a reality that goes absolutely against the narratives of officials or middle-class people. So finding ‘legitimate’ people to validate the claims – it feels wrong to me on just about every level.”

In his new article, Dismissal, David Schraub takes aim at exactly the phenomenon that Goffman describes: the act of dismissal, by which “the interpretive frames proffered by [a] claimant [are portrayed] as illegitimate and the testimonial offerings of the claimant as irrational.” (p. 28.) (To be clear, neither Schraub nor this review engage with the substance of the criticisms of Goffman’s work, but rather to use her comments about corroboration and validation as a jumping-off point. Schraub does not discuss Goffman in his article.) Schraub is concerned both with courts’ dismissal of novel legal claims under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b), and with dismissal in its broader sense, “a decision (in any deliberative context) to dispense with a proffered claim prior to considering its merits.” (p. 3.)

An act of dismissal is profound, as it communicates that the dismissed claim, and the claimant, are unworthy of even minimal substantive recognition and engagement. Dismissal thus works a different harm than a loss on the merits, which occurs at the end of a process that gives the claimant a voice and leaves open the possibility of a successful adjudication. Schraub’s thoughtful unpacking of “dismissal” and its consequences fits well into the rich existing employment discrimination literature on the variety of subtle forms that discrimination can take and the fate of the plaintiffs who seek to make such claims in court. Just as Goffman describes the deligitimation of her subjects’ narratives, these plaintiffs may find their claims deligitimated and dismissed, as the version of discrimination that they present does not square with the one accepted by courts and society as a whole. Schraub’s portrayal of courts is ultimately positive, however, as he notes that, so long as a claim “adheres to certain preset conventions,” a court must give it at least an initial hearing, creating the possibility of eventual recognition, even if that recognition only comes after many dismissals. (p. 65.)

Schraub enters this discussion by examining the way in which judges and laypeople dismiss claims of race discrimination. In Schraub’s view, the act of dismissal, whether by a judge or a layperson, is fundamentally boundary-enforcing. Courts dismiss discrimination claims that push beyond what prior courts have deemed justiciable; laypeople’s dismissals – the accusation that the speaker is “playing the race card,” for example – enforce and perpetuate “deeply ingrained understandings regarding the meaning of discrimination[.]” (p. 5.) Schraub points out that the two forms of dismissal are interrelated. When courts mark off the boundaries of legally cognizable race discrimination, they influence the popular conception of what counts as a “legitimate” claim of racism, as “people take courts to be privileged speakers in articulations of our collective moral code.” (p. 63.) Popular conceptions of race discrimination claimants as manipulative complainers may also filter into the courtroom. Here, Schraub echoes observations by scholars such as Michael Selmi, who has noted that “courts often seem mired in a belief that [race discrimination] claims are generally unmeritorious, brought by whining plaintiffs who have been given too many, not too few, breaks along the way.” Thus, dismissal is a conservative act, used to shut down claims of discrimination that deviate from what courts and society have previously deemed to be valid.

Schraub also investigates the connections between dismissal and epistemology, or the ability to “know.” He notes that the act of dismissal can cause not only practical harm – the loss of a legal claim in court – but also a dignitary loss suffered by the claimant, a fundamental discounting of the claimant’s power to perceive and communicate his or her reality. The act of dismissal attacks the “testimonial contributions” of the claimant; it elevates the dismisser’s knowledge of the situation – attenuated and second-hand – over the first-hand knowledge of the person who claims race discrimination. Similar to Goffman, who wants to preserve people’s ability “to speak for themselves about the reality they face,” Schraub finds this troubling, an act of “epistemic injustice.” He summarizes, “Whom we credit as knowers—whose contentions gain a respectful hearing and whose fail to rise above the din—is a matter of significant consequence.” (p. 3–4.)

However, Schraub redeems courts in the end. As he observes, courts may not “shunt aside” a discrimination claim “simply because it is inconvenient or uncomfortable” (p. 65); they are institutionally bound to give even boundary-pushing claims at least an initial hearing. After enough hearings, courts may come around, and the “narratives of officials or middle-class people,” in Goffman’s words, may thus expand to encompass formerly dismissable claims of race discrimination, just as those narratives now recognize once-dismissable claims of sexual harassment as justiciable. Though he does not present his work in quite this way, Schraub is thus interested in the circumstances under which legal and popular understandings of discrimination stretch to accommodate changed conditions on the ground, the moments in which new forms of discrimination are recognized by courts and society. His work provides a valuable theoretical framework for thinking about these moments of recognition, and also about the many acts of dismissal that precede them.

Preferential Hiring and “Special Treatment”: It’s all Relative

Mar 28, 2016 Kerri Lynn StoneAdd a Comment

This year’s law and scholarship of employment discrimination has invited critical thought, new strategies, and rethinking of traditional legal methods like never before. Among the most innovative pieces is Professor Noah Zatz’s Special Treatment Everywhere, Special Treatment Nowhere, 95 B.U. L. Rev. 1155 (2015).  Zatz laments the defensive posture assumed by those on the vanguard of civil rights activism and litigation when, in his own words, “the best defense of civil rights law requires a strong offense.” (P. 1155.)

He proceeds to take issue with the notion that disparate treatment law ought to be color and status-blind, citing the law of affirmative action in particular, and noting that “rather than retreat from ‘special treatment accusations,’” those who wish to preserve and strengthen civil rights laws and protections ought to “name it and claim it,” (p. 1157) meaning confronting these accusations and keeping the law’s (and our) focus on the avoidance of disparate treatment without obsessing over whether this might necessarily invite or involve some special treatment. This eyes-on-the prize approach means endorsing proactive steps that can be taken not only by the courts, but by employers to preempt discrimination. It also means being vigilant about distinguishing legitimate, goal-advancing interventions—that many are quick to dismiss as special treatment—from “raw redistribution.” Ultimately, Professor Zatz concludes, a “[f]ailure to appreciate the remedial context” of affirmative action is precisely what will engender “reckless accusations of ‘special treatment.’” (P. 1157.)

Professor Zatz then observes that the work of trying actively to avoid the disparate treatment of employees can, itself, often be deemed special treatment. This, however, stems from a “failure to acknowledge the relevant nondiscriminatory baseline,” (p. 1158) and the restorative goals and effects of what is too often written off as discriminatory, “special” treatment or racial favoritism. Professor Zatz walks his readers through various scenarios that aim to highlight that the beneficiaries of the “special treatment” decried too readily by many are not benefiting because of their race, but because they have been discriminated against because of their race. His eloquent, well-reasoned analysis of an issue and arguments all too often glossed over in debates over affirmative action isolates and crystallizes precisely why affirmative action should not be blindly relegated to the realm of racial favoritism.

Through insightful illustrations and examples, Professor Zatz aims to isolate for his reader, and refocus his reader on, the notion of discrimination as a deviation from a desired baseline of nondiscrimination, and away from the notion of priority hiring or affirmative action as discriminatory, illicit special treatment. He is able to do this by exhorting his reader to consider the “discriminated against” status of one upon whom preferential treatment may be conferred, rather than that individual’s racial or other protected class status. In other words, the treatment is remedial, rather than illicit and suspect. As Professor Zatz puts it, “[t]he relevant baseline for evaluating the priority hiring has to be the world as it would have been without the supervisor’s initial disparate treatment, not the world created by that discrimination. If there is no better way to identify the true victim of discrimination, then either we just throw up our hands and accept the discriminatory status quo, or we modify it with imperfect tools.” (P. 1162.)

Professor Zatz also addresses some popular critiques of affirmative action, among them that to the extent that some of its beneficiaries are not actually the precise people who were unfairly deprived of employment because of their race, they are, in fact, being treated differently (preferentially) because of their race. He also addresses the critique that “innocent” members of non-discriminated-against groups, who neither engaged in nor benefited from discrimination may find themselves “displaced.”   Professor Zatz answers that while affirmative action invariably allows some undesirable results, “to dismiss this remedy for its imperfections is to apply a double standard: the possible loss (of an accurate remedy) to the worker discriminated against is valued less than the possible loss (of an inaccurate remedy) to other workers….” (P. 1163.) Using illustrative examples of his invention and from actual cases, Professor Zatz emphasizes the notion that strategically, the best thing to do when advancing or justifying a remedy that objectors term affirmative action is to “own” the term, using it to strengthen what is being accomplished, rather than backing away from the concept.

Next, Professor Zatz expands his analysis to address claims that exist beyond traditional disparate treatment. Specifically, in his attempt to stave off criticism that such claims “invit[e] or require[e] special treatment,” he refocuses his reader on “the substance of the nondiscriminatory baseline,” invoking employer liability in third party harasser claims, the accommodation mandate of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and Title VII pregnancy disparate impact cases. (P. 1168) He notes that the imposition of liability in the former suggests that the alleged unlawful behavior “disrupts the nondiscriminatory baseline that the employer must maintain,” and that in each instance, “the special treatment accusation really functions as a stalking horse for an underlying dispute about the concept of discrimination.” (P. 1169.) He adds that the latter two share the facts that “(1) absent remedial action (“accommodation”) by their employers, individually identifiable workers face workplace harm because of their protected status, and (2) they face this harm even in the absence of disparate treatment by their employers.” (P. 1179.) In each case, his searching comparison between the principles at play in representative caselaw and the non-discrimination baseline proves insightful and illustrative of his ultimate argument that “special treatment” is not a trump card that nullifies the legitimacy of the remedy or claim against which it levied.

This piece’s careful and logical analysis highlights that which should be obvious to those too quick to dismiss affirmative action or certain remedies as just another way of discriminating against the rights of innocent third parties because of their race, sex, or other status: “Whenever we refuse to acknowledge the remedial character of employer action, these accusations emerge because remedies…are given out to those whose injury calls forth the remedy. When that injury is ignored, it mistakenly seems that the remedy was allocated based on race, sex, or disability, not based on subjection to race, sex, or disability discrimination.” (P. 1178.) (Emphasis added). He also eloquently demonstrates, through intricate examples and analysis, that race or other status consciousness is not only not tantamount to invidious discrimination, but it is often necessary to avoid or remedy invidious discrimination.

Why Importing Employment Discrimination Causation Into Criminal Law is a Bad Idea

Feb 26, 2016 Henry L. Chambers, Jr.Add a Comment

In Causation in Context, Professor Leora F. Eisenstadt harshly critiques Burrage v. United States, a case in which the Supreme Court imports some of its troublesome thinking on employment discrimination causation into a criminal law case. I like the article lots because it crosses two substantive areas and explains why causation, a tricky and core concept in both areas, does quite different work in each area. In the process, the article exposes the larger danger of misusing a powerful tool that judges, lawyers and law professors alike use – reasoning by analogy. Professor Eisenstadt implicitly suggests that reasoning by analogy is of little or no use if the court that is reasoning has an insufficient understanding of the underlying areas at issue and fails to recognize what makes the analogy inapt.  If a court wants to use an employment discrimination concept in a criminal law area, the court needs to understand why the concept has been used—and whether the concept has been misused—in the employment discrimination area before deploying it in the criminal law area.

In short, the article considers how the Supreme Court in Burrage imported the but-for causation principle – the notion that a factor does not cause a result if the result would have occurred in the absence of the factor – that has been become prevalent in the employment discrimination area into a criminal law case. In the process, a principle used to determine whether intentional discrimination caused an adverse job action is now used in a criminal case to determine whether the use of an illicit drug caused a victim’s death. The article discusses the Court’s mistake in finding a false equivalency between causation in criminal law and causation in employment discrimination law. The false equivalency not only triggered an inappropriate use of an employment discrimination causation standard in the criminal law case; it may trigger a broader assumption that a principle used in one area of the law can be borrowed and used in other areas of the law. That could create problems if courts import concepts from other areas of law into an already complex employment discrimination arena.

Professor Eisenstadt begins her argument with a discussion of the history of the but-for causation standard in employment discrimination law, noting that factual causation has been a major issue in employment discrimination cases at least since the Supreme Court addressed the issue in Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins.  The Price Waterhouse Court sought to determine what “because of” meant when multiple factors appeared to cause an adverse job action. The Court’s plurality opinion ultimately determined that in Title VII intentional discrimination cases, but-for causation was not the proper causation standard when multiple causes led to an adverse job action. Rather, the Court instituted a mixed motives standard that allowed recovery if an adverse job action was caused in part by unlawful bias, though the employer could avoid all liability if it could prove it would have made the same decision anyway. Congress resolved the issue in the Civil Rights Act of 1991 by codifying the motivating factor test. That test allows plaintiff to recover if unlawful bias is shown to have motivated the relevant job action, though recovery is limited if the defendant proves it would have made the same decision without use of the illegitimate factor.

Professor Eisenstadt then traces the Court’s installation of but-for causation in two recent employment discrimination mixed-motives cases.  In Gross v. FBL Financial Services, the Court decided that but-for causation is required in mixed-motives Age Discrimination in Employment Act cases, resting its decision on the absence of an explicit motivating factor test in the ADEA. Though the Price Waterhouse Court had determined that “because of” in Title VII required a mixed-motives standard, the Gross Court concluded that similar language in the ADEA triggered a but-for causation standard. A few years later, the Court in University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center v. Nassar used the same analysis to require but-for causation in Title VII retaliation cases.

Professor Eisenstadt then discusses Burrage v. United States.  The defendant in Burrage was a heroin dealer who faced an enhanced mandatory punishment if his buyer’s death resulted from the use of the heroin the defendant sold him. As the victim had taken multiple drugs, the medical examiner could determine that the heroin use was a contributing factor in the victim’s death, but could not determine that the heroin use was a but-for cause of the death.  The jury was instructed that the heroin need only have been a contributing factor in the victim’s death. Relying in part on an analysis of but-for causation in employment discrimination cases, the Court decided that the statute at issue required but-for causation. The defendant prevailed.

Professor Eisenstadt criticizes the Court’s false equivalency of but-for causation in criminal law and employment discrimination law. After analyzing the multiple differences between how causation applies in the different areas of law, Eisenstadt concludes that the purpose of employment discrimination law is so different than the purpose of criminal law that importing an employment discrimination principle into criminal law is inappropriate. She suggests that the false equivalency could lead to the importation of principles from other areas of law into employment discrimination and notes that tort principles have already been imported into employment discrimination law.

She then describes problems that would attend importing criminal law principles, such as mens rea intent levels into employment discrimination law. Though intent is important in each area, intent serves different purposes in the two areas. For example, differing levels of criminal mens rea track differing levels of criminal culpability. That structure does not apply in the employment discrimination area.  Similarly, importing criminal law fault principles into employment discrimination law could be very problematic. Though both areas consider fault, fault in criminal law carries a moralistic edge that focuses on the character of the defendant whereas fault in the employment discrimination area merely denotes employer responsibility.

Ultimately, Professor Eisenstadt suggests: “Instead of reflexively borrowing definitional concepts across fields of law, courts deciding employment cases should be focused on the specific goals of the law at issue, the relevant parties’ interests, and the practical implications of importing the concept into employment law.” (p. 41.)

I like this article not just because the subject matter is interesting to me as a criminal law and employment discrimination law professor, but because the article speaks to multiple audiences. It speaks to students who mistakenly think that causation in one context is the same as causation in every context. It speaks to judges who act as if causation is an easily understood concept that can be plugged into multiple areas without considering context. It speaks to professors who know that causation can be chameleon-like and want to see a well-reasoned explanation of the harms that can come from treating causation as a one-size fits all concept. Most of all, I like the article because it helps break down the silos that can be created in the academy. For those who believe that criminal law and employment discrimination law have little to do with one another, this article reminds us that judges may see connections between areas that academicians may not see. If we are to speak to and with judges, we may need to come out of our silos to discuss why the concepts that apply in one area of law should not be lightly transferred to another area of law and to discuss when such transfer is appropriate. This article helps foster this process.

I am most appreciative to have another article to assign to my employment discrimination and criminal law students that will get them thinking about causation and why it is such a tricky issue both in criminal law and in employment discrimination law. I encourage you to read this article.