UNBIASED - April 23, 2024: Supreme Court Hears Starbucks Case, Though Headlines Are Misleading; DOJ's $138.7M Settlement with Nassar Victims; New Overtime Pay Rule for Employers.

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

1. Update: Columbia University to Hold Remote Classes Through End of Semester (1:07)2. Supreme Court Hears Starbucks v. McKinney; Here's What The Case Is About and Why Some Headlines are Misleading (2:03)3. DOJ Reaches $138.7M Settlement with Larry Nassar Victims Over Failure to Investigate Claims (9:07)4. Biden Administration Issues New Rule Increasing Overtime Pay Salary Threshold (10:51)Get EXCLUSIVE, unbiased content on Patreon.Watch this episode on YouTube.Follow Jordan on Instagram and TikTok.All sources for this episode can be found here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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call the Conax Ontario helpline at 1-866-531-2600. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Welcome back to Unbiased, your favorite source of unbiased news and legal analysis. Welcome back to Unbiased. Today is Tuesday, April 23rd. This is your daily news rundown. You already know the drill. If you love what you hear today and you absolutely love that this podcast is unbiased and leaves you feeling informed, please go ahead and leave my show a review on whatever platform you listen. Share the show with your friends. If you're watching on YouTube, hit that thumbs up button, subscribe to the channel. All of those things really help me. In today's episode, we'll start with an update from yesterday's episode, and then we'll touch on a few stories from today.

Now, this is a little bit shorter of an episode. There just wasn't much going on today, but that's okay because I have my work cut out for me tomorrow and Thursday. The Supreme Court is hearing arguments in two pretty controversial cases. Tomorrow's case presents the question of whether EMTALA preempts Idaho's enactment of a near-total abortion ban. And then Thursday is Trump's presidential immunity case. So a lot going on with that. I'm okay with today being a slow day. So with that and without further ado, let's get into today's stories.

In yesterday's episode, I briefly touched on the situation at Columbia University and the switch to virtual classes amid the protests against the war in Gaza. I said I wasn't sure how long the virtual class situation was going to be in effect, but last night we got an update. So the university released a statement that said all classes on Columbia's main campus would remain hybrid through the end of the semester, with the arts programs and practice-based programs being the exception. Now with that said, there's less than a week of classes left. So April 29th is the last day of classes before finals start on May 3rd

and end on May 10th. So I would imagine that maybe finals are sort of held remotely or in that hybrid situation as well for those students who maybe don't feel comfortable coming to campus, because I do think exams are still considered part of the regular semester. But all of this to say, that is the most recent update and the current semester is almost over. Now, today, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case called Starbucks versus McKinney. And the reason I wanted to cover this is because some of the headlines surrounding this case have been a little bit misleading. For instance,

a Reuters headline reads, United States Supreme Court examines firings of pro-union Starbucks workers. That's not necessarily true. NPR came a little bit closer. Their headline said, what the Starbucks case at the Supreme Court is all about. Hint, it's not coffee. And it's not coffee. This isn't a case about coffee, and this is not, it's definitely not a case about whether the 2022 firing of union workers was permissible or constitutional. This dispute is a procedural dispute. So this is a case that you would learn about as a first-year law student when learning about preliminary injunctions and court procedure. The actual involvement of Starbucks in this case is pretty irrelevant,

aside from the fact that it's a party to the case. But let's briefly talk about it anyway, because I want to make sure we're all on the same page. So the parties involved here are Starbucks and the National Labor Relations Board, which is responsible for investigating allegations of wrongdoing brought by workers, unions, and employers. So in January of 2022, seven Starbucks workers in Memphis, Tennessee, five of which were union workers, were fired. Now these workers had invited a news crew into the Starbucks store after hours to promote a unionization drive. So after the store had closed for the day, these employees came back, unlocked the store, let the news crew in, locked the door behind them, and then spent roughly an hour participating in unionization-related interviews.

Long story short, Starbucks finds out about, you know, the situation, fires the employees for violating company policy, and after those employees were fired, the employees filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging Starbucks had committed unfair labor practices by firing them. The NLRB, National Labor Relations Board, then files an administrative complaint on behalf of the employees and subsequently petitions a federal district court for a preliminary injunction pending the resolution of the case. The authority to do this comes from the National Labor Relations Act, specifically Section 10J. Section 10J gives the NLRB the ability to seek a preliminary injunction from a court

when labor disputes are pending. I've spoken about preliminary injunctions before. Let me refresh your memory if it's not coming to mind. I will touch on two instances where you may see a preliminary injunction come into play. So let's say you file a lawsuit against someone because that person is actively doing something that you have an issue with. Because the lawsuit takes a very long time to resolve, right? These lawsuits can take a long time. You can ask a judge for a preliminary injunction. If you get this request granted, it will essentially order the person you're suing to stop whatever they're doing until the court

issues a final ruling in the case. Now, another instance where we may see a preliminary injunction come into play is on appeal, and this one we have definitely talked about. So let's say you lose a case, but you want to appeal. When you appeal, you can ask for a preliminary injunction, which will basically put the lower court's ruling on hold while the appeal plays out. So those are a couple of instances where a preliminary injunction may be sought. It's essentially a temporary stop order. In this case, the National Labor Relations Board was requesting through an injunction, and among other things, right, they requested a bunch

of things, but one of the things that the injunction was seeking to do was require Starbucks to reinstate the terminated employees while this labor dispute was pending. Now, traditionally, when you seek out a preliminary injunction, there are four factors that a court will consider when deciding whether to grant or deny a request. But when it comes to labor disputes or requests for an injunction in a labor dispute, it's called a 10-J injunction because of the particular statute that governs it. Courts use a different standard. So it's no longer that four-factor test. It becomes sort of a two-prong test. And Starbucks says that this two-prong test

is too lenient and it makes it easier for the NLRB to have their injunction requests granted. So in a traditional court case, the court, like I said, will look at four factors. One, is there a likelihood of success on the merits of the case? So once all arguments are heard, is the party requesting the injunction likely to succeed? Two, whether the party requesting the injunction will suffer irreparable harm without the injunction. Number three is whether the balance of equities tips in the requesting party's favor. And number four is where does the public interest lie? Does the public's interest lie in granting the injunction or denying the injunction request?

So that's what courts consider when it's your typical court case. But when it comes to labor disputes, courts apply what is sometimes called the just and proper test. And the just and proper test is specifically set forth in Section 10J of the National Labor Relations Act. And it's not that the test is set forth in the sense of, you know, it tells a court what questions to ask. But what the law says is this. It says, upon the filing of any such petition by the NLRB, the court has jurisdiction to grant the NLRB relief as it deems just and proper. So what the court below in the Starbucks case did when deciding whether to grant or deny the NLRB's injunction request is it looked at two factors. It looked at whether there is reasonable cause to believe an unfair labor practice has occurred, and it also looked at whether the injunctive relief is just and proper. And again, Starbucks says that that is too easy, and based on that two-prong test, the National Labor Relations Board will win on their request for an injunction nearly every time. So Starbucks says we need to start

applying the traditional four-factor test to labor disputes and get rid of this just improper two-prong test. So the question for the court here is whether a court, when assessing a preliminary injunction request in a labor dispute, must use the traditional four-pronged test, or whether 10-J injunctions are subject to a different, more lenient standard. We will likely have a decision from the justices in June, perhaps earlier, but it's looking like June at this rate. And just to kind of be as clear as possible, if the justices rule in favor of the NLRB, nothing really changes and the standard in obtaining a 10-J injunction when it comes to labor disputes remains what it currently is. However, if the justices rule in favor of Starbucks, it'll become more difficult for the

NLRB to obtain injunctions. So that's what this lawsuit is all about, not about coffee, not about whether these employees were wrongfully terminated. It's a procedural dispute. On to the next story, the DOJ announced a $138.7 million settlement with the victims of disgraced former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar. In a statement posted to the DOJ's website, the DOJ wrote, quote, these settlements will resolve administrative claims against the United States, alleging that the FBI failed to conduct an adequate investigation of Nassar's conduct. In July 2021, the department's office of the inspector general issued a report critical of certain aspects of the FBI's response to an investigation of allegations against Nassar. The settlement agreements, which have been approved

by the department, resolve 139 claims for a total of $138.7 million to be distributed to the claimants, end quote. So those 139 claims referenced in the DOJ statement were filed by various athletes and patients of Larry Nassar against the DOJ and the FBI. In total, these claims sought roughly a billion dollars, and the reason these claims were brought is because this watchdog report found that the FBI had, the FBI was notified of Nassar's sexual misconduct, but failed to act on it for more than 14 months. And then once the agents did act on it and did start investigating, there were fundamental errors and violations of multiple FBI policies. So following this watchdog report, the victims filed various claims against the DOJ and the FBI, and this settlement is those agencies, the DOJ and FBI, resolving those disputes and compensating the victims for their failures.

The final story today is that the Biden administration announced a new rule this afternoon, which will extend mandatory overtime pay to millions more salaried workers starting July 1st. So here's how it'll work. Starting July 1st, employers will be required to pay overtime to those employees that earn a salary of less than $43,888 per year and work more than 40 hours per week. Then on January 1st of next year or of 2025, the salary threshold increases to $58,656. Then in 2027, this salary threshold will automatically increase every three years to reflect changes in average earnings. So this overtime pay requirement will not extend to workers that are paid hourly. It only extends to those on an annual salary and of course only kicks in once an employee surpasses 40 working hours in a week. Now for the question I'm sure a lot of you have, how is this different than where things stand currently? How does this change things? Well, currently the salary threshold is $35,568 annually. This was

set in 2020 by the Trump administration. So under that rule, those employees who work more than 40 hours in a week and earn less than $35,568 annually do receive overtime pay from their employers. But this new rule increases the current threshold by about $8,400 starting July 1st. It then increases by another $14,800 starting January 1st, and then obviously you have the subsequent increases every three years starting in 2027. Now a couple of other things that are worth mentioning is one, under federal law, overtime pay is one and a half times the regular pay rate. Two, even if a salaried worker earns over the salary threshold, that employee may still be eligible for overtime pay as long as they don't primarily perform management-related

duties. However, those workers are generally exempt if they earn a salary of more than $107,000 currently, though the new rule raises that cutoff to about $150,000 annually. And then the final thing that I want to note is that this new rule will almost certainly face legal challenges. President Obama actually issued a similar rule during his presidency, and that was ultimately struck down. So this rule will probably be challenged on a similar basis, which could delay the implementation, but that is how, you know, that's what the rule says as of today. So that is what I have for you today. Thank you so much

for being here. I hope you have a fantastic night and I will talk to you tomorrow.