Workforce Bulletin

On March 6, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit issued a significant decision clarifying how discrimination claims brought by majority-group plaintiffs should be analyzed under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (NJLAD). In Massey v. Borough of Bergenfield, the court concluded that majority-group plaintiffs should not be required to satisfy the “background circumstances” rule—a doctrine that imposed a heightened burden on plaintiffs alleging discrimination against majority groups. In reaching that conclusion, the court, predicting that the New Jersey Supreme Court would do the same, relied on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, which rejected the background circumstances rule in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII) cases. Massey marks the first federal appellate decision to apply Ames to state law.

On August 16, 2023, a unanimous three-judge panel of the Third Circuit vacated and remanded a decision from the Middle District of Pennsylvania ruling that the time spent by oil-rig workers changing in and out of their protective gear was not compensable.

Plaintiffs Rodney Tyger, Shawn Wadsworth brought a Fair Labor Standards Act collective action against Defendants Precision Drilling Corp., Precision Drilling Oilfield Services, Inc., and Precision Drilling Company, LP (“Precision”), an oil rig, for failing to pay them for pre-shift donning and post-shift doffing of ...

The obligations of a district court to analyze conflicting evidence regarding class and collective action certification was recently addressed by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Reinig v. RBS Citizens N.A., 912 F.3d 115, (3d Cir. 2018) (“Citizens”). In that case, the Third Circuit opined that Fed.R.Civ.P. 23 class certification orders (i) must explicitly define the classes and claims that are the subject of a certification order and (ii) provide an analysis of how the court reconciled any conflicting evidence supporting class certification.

In addition, the Third ...

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (“ADEA”) protects individuals who are at least 40 years of age from discrimination in the workplace. As such, the outcome of disparate-impact claims under the ADEA hinges, ordinarily, on whether or not an employer’s facially neutral-policy has a disparate impact on employees who are 40 years of age or older.  On January 10, 2017, the Third Circuit, in Karlo v. Pittsburgh Glass Works, LLC, 2017 BL 6064 (3d Cir. 2017), issued a precedential ruling, holding that disparate impact claims under the ADEA are not limited to comparisons of the ...