The Trump administration must continue facing claims that it overstepped its authority by attempting to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, with a Maryland federal judge saying a lawsuit brought by the NAACP and three unions is strong enough to survive the administration’s dismissal motion.
U.S. District Judge Julie R. Rubin held Friday that the civil rights nonprofit and unions presented a compelling argument that the executive branch went too far by taking steps to shut down the Department of Education last year. Congress created the agency to perform specific functions and lawmakers set aside money for the agency to use, and the executive branch disregarded that when it canceled grants, ended programs and laid off agency employees en masse, the judge said.
“Plaintiffs point to defendants’ actions, which, they allege, have ended congressionally mandated programs and cut off congressional appropriations for same,” Judge Rubin said. “The court is satisfied that plaintiffs’ claims, as pled, plausibly allege that defendants have taken actions in direct contravention of the statutes creating such programs and directing appropriations thereto.”
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The NAACP and its affiliates are represented by Joseph M. Sellers, Ethan Judd, Ryan Wheeler and Jenna Waldman of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC and Robert Kim, Jessica Levin, Wendy Lecker and Theresa Luhm of the Education Law Center.
The U.S. Department of Labor ‘s proposed changes to its independent contractor classification test could result in fewer workers being able to avail themselves of Family and Medical Leave Act and PUMP Act protections, as well as add to compliance challenges posed by a patchwork of state laws, experts say.
The Labor Department in late April closed the book on a 60-day comment period for its proposed rule to reset the agency’s test for determining employee status under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, and the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act.
The rule proposes replacing a standard for determining whether a worker is an employee or independent contractor that was adopted during the Biden administration with a five-prong economic reality test, which tracks the framework that was in place during the first Trump administration.
Although disputes about worker classification often arise in the wage-hour context, attorneys said the updated standard could have wide-ranging ripple effects, including to whether workers can avail themselves of leave under the FMLA or nursing accommodations under the three-year-old Providing Urgent Maternal Protections for Nursing Mothers, or PUMP, Act.
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D. Michael Hancock, of counsel at plaintiff-side Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC and a former assistant administrator for the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division, said the proposed rule “opens the door to reclassifying some employees as independent contractors,” and it “certainly is going to create a lot of confusion among both employees and employers about who is protected.”
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DOL Test, State Laws May Not Align
Hancock of Cohen Milstein noted that more than two dozen states have adopted variations of the ABC test for determining whether someone is an employee or contractor. That framework, Hancock said, is “much clearer, much more definitive, [and] much more certain in its application.”
In those states where more robust legal protections are in place, Hancock said the impact of the federal regulation will likely be more limited. He added that courts evaluating classification disputes aren’t bound by the Labor Department’s test, he said.
“It might be meaningful for some courts, but it certainly isn’t binding for any court,” Hancock said. “Having said that, I think that it’s going to create a direct conflict with many of the courts who’ve spoken on this matter in the past, and so it’s going to be an interesting evolution as courts try to determine what, if anything, this regulation is going to mean as applied to specific cases.”
More workers will need to limit putative wage and hour collective actions to a single state or seek to bring a wider action where their employer is based or primarily does business, after the Second Circuit joined others in barring out-of-state workers from joining collective actions, attorneys said.
The panel’s ruling on Monday in Provencher v. Bimbo Bakeries USA Inc. that the lower court lacked personal jurisdiction over out-of-state workers’ claims was the latest appellate decision on the issue.
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“The issue is increasingly settled,” said Rebecca Ojserkis of worker-side firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC. “Where those collective actions are brought by workers within a particular state, this doesn’t really change anything.”
But for proposed collective actions that would include workers from multiple states, as in Bimbo Bakeries, or nationwide, “those cases are going to have to be brought where the employer is either headquartered or has their principal place of business,” she said.
The Second Circuit panel relied on the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2017 decision in Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court of California. The justices held in that case that individuals outside the state where the case originated lacked a connection to the state, so they could not join a class action there.
Moving forward, workers are better off filing broader putative collective actions where the business makes its home, Ojserkis said.
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As the issue becomes settled in more circuits, new questions could arise. One could be what happens when workers are suing joint employers that are located in different states, Ojserkis said.
“That requires plaintiffs to file two separate actions, which is completely inefficient for the courts and for the parties, and perhaps will lead to defendants coming around in those situations and saying, let’s consolidate,” she said.
A similar wrinkle could be what happens when employers have multiple headquarters or primary places of business.
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Yet another upcoming issue could be more states enacting “consent by registration” laws that require out-of-state businesses that register in the state to agree to personal jurisdiction.
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the legality of such legislation in Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway Co. in 2023, after the Pennsylvania justices struck down such a law in that state. Kansas and Georgia also have explicit “consent by registration” laws, and some others have statutes that state courts have interpreted as establishing consent.
Ojserkis said, “We might see more of those kinds of statutes popping up, and there might be more challenges to those statutes by employers about whether or not those statutes hold water.”
The Spring 2026 edition of the Shareholder Advocate, our quarterly securities litigation and investor protection newsletter, is now available. This issue features:
- Laura Posner and Benjamin Jackson on the 30th anniversary of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act
- Kate Fitzgerald on the rise in pump-and-dump schemes
- Laura Posner and Key Jewler on investors’ lawsuit against The Trade Desk over its Kokai ad platform
- Jay Chaudhuri on the DOL’s replacement of its Retirement Security Rule
- A team profile of Cristine Turner, Senior Advisor for Investor Relations
- An update on poultry workers’ wage-fixing suit
Uber was recently hit with another unfavorable verdict in the second bellwether trial in multidistrict litigation over driver sex assaults, and another determination that the ride-hailing company can be liable for its drivers’ negligence does not bode well for the company, experts said.
Following a four-day trial and about three hours of deliberation, a North Carolina federal jury on April 20 found an Uber Technologies Inc. driver had committed battery against passenger Brianna Mensing, who accused him of grabbing her leg in 2019, and awarded her $5,000 in damages for emotional distress.
Earlier in the case, U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer, who is overseeing the MDL and presided over Mensing’s trial, had ruled that Uber is a “common carrier” under North Carolina law and therefore has a “non-delegable duty” to safely transport passengers.
The MDL, which encompasses more than 3,100 cases, alleges Uber knew since 2014 that drivers for its app preyed on and sexually assaulted passengers and that the company didn’t adopt safety measures such as cameras and enhanced background checks.
In the first bellwether trial in February, an Arizona federal jury determined that the driver was acting as the “apparent agent” of Uber, making the ride-hailing company liable for the assault, and awarded $8.5 million in compensatory damages.
A Win Is a Win
One plaintiffs attorney and former prosecutor praised the outcome of the North Carolina trial, telling Law360 that despite the modest damages award, it was a solid victory for the plaintiffs.
“It’s a superb outcome in terms of the finding of liability against Uber,” said Takisha Richardson of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, which is not handling any Uber MDL cases. “The biggest challenge in these cases is whether Uber is liable for the conduct of these drivers.”
Richardson, a former Special Victims Unit state prosecutor for Palm Beach, Florida, said Uber’s position continues to be that its drivers are individual contractors and therefore the company is not liable for their conduct.
“But the jury verdict in favor of the plaintiff, despite the numeric damages award, is very specific in holding Uber liable for the conduct of their drivers,” she said.
The case is important, Richardson said, because it represented the lower end of the spectrum of sexual assaults and showed the company can still be held accountable, even if the driver’s misconduct is to a lesser degree than a rape.
“We all understand what a rape is, and that’s a very simple concept for the broad public to understand,” she said. “But something of this level — the touching of the inner thigh — that, too is a violation of one’s body and there’s a consequence for that.”
Richardson said she “applauded” Mensing’s counsel for taking the case despite the potentially low monetary stakes.
“The status of a woman to have complete autonomy over her body and whether she wants to be touched is something to be valued,” she said. “There should be a sentence to pay for that.”
The Cohen Milstein attorney said she is interested in seeing the range of allegations in the other bellwether cases. The next bellwether trial is scheduled to take place in the Northern District of California in September, according to court records.
“I want to see how much it’s going to take in terms of getting Uber to come to the table and negotiate a meaningful settlement,” Richardson said.
Richardson said she thinks it’ll take about “half a dozen or so” unfavorable outcomes in the bellwether trials before Uber even thinks about settling.
“There have been two extremes in the losses for Uber,” she said. “I wonder if there will be some in-between cases that will give them a range of verdicts.”
Hartford HealthCare should be forced to produce 182 documents withheld under the attorney-client privilege from an antitrust lawsuit, say a Teamsters health plan and a transit district that claim the hospital group is exercising monopoly power over regional health services markets within Connecticut.
In a motion filed Saturday, Estuary Transit District and Teamsters 671 Health Service & Insurance Plan claimed many of the withheld records must be shared because they contain business or policy discussions, not legal advice. In some instances, a Hartford HealthCare Corp. attorney was copied on a message but was neither the sender nor primary recipient, according to the health plan and the transit district.
The entities also say Hartford HealthCare’s privilege log fails to explain whether email attachments contain protected information or were merely coupled to messages seeking legal advice.
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Estuary Transit District and Teamsters 671 Health Service & Insurance Plan are represented by Michael B. Eisenkraft, Christopher J. Bateman, Silvie Saltzman, Brent W. Johnson and Nathaniel D. Regenold of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Eric L. Cramer, Daniel Walker, Caitlin Coslett and Laurel Boman of Berger Montague, Douglas A. Millen, Matthew W. Ruan, Robert J. Wozniak, Michael E. Moskovitz and Samantha M. Gupta of Justice Jagher London & Millen LLC, Frank R. Schirripa and Scott Jacobsen of Hach Rose Schirripa & Cheverie LLP, and Jonathan M. Shapiro and Mario K. Cerame of Aeton Law Partners LLP.
A Virginia federal judge has cleared the way for a new plaintiff to enter a putative class action accusing major shipbuilders of using “no-poach” agreements to suppress wages for engineers and architects, upholding a magistrate judge’s ruling that granted the plaintiffs leave to amend their complaint.
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Plaintiffs are represented by Steven J. Toll, Brent W. Johnson, Robert W. Cobbs, Alison S. Deich, Zachary R. Glubiak, Sabrina S. Merold, Silvie R. Saltzman and Callan C. Bruzzone of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Shana E. Scarlett, Rio S. Pierce, Eli Freedman, Steve W. Berman, Breanna Van Engelen, Elaine T. Byszewski and John Michael Grant of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, George F. Farah, Nicholas Jackson, Samantha Braver, Ellie Britt MacLean and William H. Anderson of Handley Farah & Anderson PLLC, Candice J. Enders, Julia R. McGrath and Marit Vike of Berger Montague PC, and Brian D. Clark, Arielle S. Wagner, Stephen J. Teti, and Olivia T. Levinson of Lockridge Grindal Nauen PLLP.
Bank of America and EY have agreed to pay $2.5 million to nearly 200,000 people to settle claims in multidistrict litigation over the May 2023 breach of file transfer application MOVEit, according to a motion for settlement.
The motion for preliminary approval of the deal, filed on Wednesday, said that in addition to reimbursement for losses or a cash payment of $100, the about 198,000 class members could file claims for two years of credit monitoring and identity theft protection to remedy the alleged damages resulting from the exploitation of the MOVEit system, which is owned and operated by Progress Software Corp.
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More than 100 other commercial and government entity defendants face liability in the multidistrict litigation stemming from the breach. Recently, Cadence Bank reached a $5.3 million deal to end negligence claims it faced in the MDL, and Nebraska-based Union Bank & Trust Co. agreed to pay $2.4 million to resolve its alleged wrongdoing associated with the breach.
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The plaintiffs are represented by Daniel J. Kurowski, Whitney K. Siehl and Kristen A. Johnson of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, E. Michelle Drake of Berger Montague, Gary F. Lynch of Lynch Carpenter LLP, Douglas J. McNamara of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Karen H. Riebel of Lockridge Grindal Nauen PLLP, and Charles E. S
Thousands of class members affected by seven Bon Secours Health System Inc. pension plans that were allegedly in violation of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act asked a Maryland federal court Friday to give final approval to a settlement that would require the health care organization to provide $98.3 million to bolster funding.
The settlement agreement calls for the hospital to contribute $14 million a year for the next seven years to the seven plans at issue, which “represents the total amount of underfunding,” the plaintiffs said in a request for final approval of the agreement. In addition, the settlement calls for the hospital to pay another $300,000 to benefit about 500 people who have unique circumstances under one of the plans.
Arlene Hodges and other named plaintiffs collectively asserted the hospital didn’t operate the seven benefit plans according to ERISA regulations and instead said they were under the “church plan” exemption, which allowed it to sidestep ERISA protections for participants in a variety of ways. According to the plaintiffs, Bon Secours didn’t establish proper funding and disclosure requirements for the plans along with other issues. Class notices were sent to about 28,000 members.
A New York federal judge on Friday signed off on a $219 million settlement resolving several lawsuits surrounding a Bank of New York Mellon Corp. unit’s role in the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme, but put off ruling on a contentious $41 million fee request from attorneys.
The settlement puts to rest a class of investors’ claims that New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office, the U.S. Department of Labor and private investors lodged against Ivy Asset Management LLC. The company, an investment advisory firm owned by BNY Mellon, conducted due diligence for clients with Madoff investments for years before the scheme came to light, but allegedly failed to disclose its suspicions that Madoff was a fraud.
In a one-page order, U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon gave no reason for her decision to approve the settlement. She said an opinion would be forthcoming, along with her decision on the fee request, which has been challenged by Schneiderman.
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The plaintiffs are represented by Lowey Dannenberg Cohen & Hart PC, Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check LLP, Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz LLP and Bernstein Liebhard LLP.