Workforce Bulletin

Employers in the First Circuit know that unconscionability challenges to employment arbitration agreements are commonplace. In Trainor v. Primary Residential Mortgage, Inc., the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island recently addressed an employee’s arguments that an agreement’s venue clause requiring a Rhode Island employee to arbitrate her claims in Utah and a provision excluding certain claims from the scope of the arbitration agreement rendered the arbitration agreement unconscionable and unenforceable. The court rejected the first argument based ...

Launched more than a decade ago, the #MeToo movement made its way into the national (and international) conversation in 2017, and, by 2018, the movement had such momentum that it spurred a cornucopia of new state laws.  One of these new laws, which became effective July 11, 2018, is a New York State statute that prohibits employers from requiring employees to submit sexual harassment claims to mandatory arbitration.  This new law is codified in Section 7515 of the Civil Practice Law & Rules of the State of New York (“C.P.L.R.”), entitled “Mandatory arbitration clauses; ...