Until death do you rule, and not a single day after.
In Rizo v. Yovino, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated a ruling interpreting the Equal Pay Act by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals because the Ninth Circuit improperly counted the vote of Judge Stephen Reinhardt, who died 11 days before the ruling was announced.
Co-authored by Mike Leggieri (Employment & Compensation Partner, SF) and Steven Chasin (Litigation Associate, DC)
To paraphrase Pharaoh Ramses II, so it is written, so it shall be done.
In Schein, Inc. v. Archer and White Sales, Inc., 586 U.S. __ (January 8, 2019), the first opinion by Justice Kavanaugh, a unanimous Supreme Court reiterated this principle of the Federal Arbitration Act. Specifically, the Court confirmed that when an arbitration agreement delegates to an arbitrator the question of whether the agreement applies to a particular dispute, courts have no power to decide this question, even if a court considers the arbitrability argument to be “wholly groundless.”
On February 21, 2018, the US Supreme Court narrowed the definition of the term “whistleblower” under the Dodd-Frank Act. The Court found that to be a “whistleblower” covered by Dodd-Frank’s anti-retaliation provision, an employee must report concerns about their employer’s conduct to the Securities and Exchange Commission. In other words, an employee who reports such concerns only internally is not entitled to protection under Dodd-Frank.
