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As the Senate considers Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, including his potential impact on legal protections for workers, it is useful to reflect on the court’s three 5-4 anti-worker decisions of the last term. The court’s decisions in Janus v. AFSCME , Lewis v. Epic Systems  and Encino Motorcars v. Navarro , each of which broke with norms of judicial restraint, could not have happened without — and in many ways were foreordained by — the norm-shattering decision of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to kill President Barack Obama’s nomination of Judge...

A South Carolina federal judge Friday rejected a Fluor Corp. attempt to escape a suit alleging that it failed to give workers sufficient Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notice before a Westinghouse Electric Co. nuclear reactor project shut down last year.

U.S. District Judge J. Michelle Childs rejected the subcontractor’s motion on the pleadings, saying references plaintiff’s counsel made at a February hearing regarding the role SCANA Corp. played in the shutdown of the Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Generating Station project did not waive their right to present evidence about...

[Newsletter excerpt] During Justice Anthony Kennedy’s three decades on the bench, he authored important and controversial decisions, including significant rulings supporting LGBT rights. Kennedy’s retirement comes at a particularly dynamic moment for these issues.

Federal appeals courts are divided over the scope of federal civil rights laws as they apply to LGBT workplace protections. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and gay rights advocates have pushed a broad interpretation of federal civil rights laws that includes “sexual orientation” as a form sex discrimination. Trump’s...

On May 24, 2018, Outten & Golden's Washington, DC office hosted an award ceremony as part of the firm's annual Public Interest Award program, which began in 2010. The New York office hosted a similar award ceremony on March 6, 2018. 

Outten & Golden typically honors one organization each year that is engaged in cutting-edge grassroots activities to protect and enforce the rights of workers, particularly low-wage workers.  Each award consists of $20,000, with an initial grant of $10,000, plus $2,500 each year for the following four years. The firm decided this year to honor two organizations:...

The long-time rumblings about age discrimination at IBM have finally produced a lawsuit. A 60-year-old Texas man alleges in a suit filed May 25 that he was improperly laid off amid the company's push to hire millennials.

Jonathan Langley, a former salesman in IBM's Hybrid Cloud unit, alleges the company sent him packing after a 24-year career that consistently "met or exceeded" the company's performance expectations. He also claims the company lied to investigators from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission about the reasons for his dismissal.

The reality is if he had "been younger...

The Communication Workers of America expanded its proposed class action Tuesday alleging Amazon, T-Mobile and "hundreds of major American employers" illegally target younger workers in Facebook job ads, adding federal age-bias claims and broadening the case's theory to target Facebook’s audience algorithm.

The suit, originally filed in California federal court in December, alleges the companies directed Facebook Inc. to show job ads only to younger workers, in violation of various state age-discrimination laws. Tuesday’s amended complaint adds nationwide collective claims under the federal...

A proposed class action lawsuit alleging Facebook’s ad placement tools facilitate discrimination against older job-seekers has been expanded to identify additional companies, further widening the latest front in claims that candidates are being filtered out by gender, geography, race and age.

“When Facebook’s own algorithm disproportionately directs ads to younger workers at the exclusion of older workers, Facebook and the advertisers who are using Facebook as an agent to send their advertisements are engaging in disparate treatment,” a communications union alleged in the amended complaint—...

Contact: Peter Romer-Friedman, Outten & Golden, 718-938-6132 or @email or

Beth Allen or Amy Fetherolf, CWA Communications, 202-434-1168, or @email or @email

Workers and CWA amend class action complaint to add federal age bias claims for older workers nationwide; allege Facebook’s algorithm discriminates against older workers; and announce that they have filed age bias charges with the EEOC against Facebook and 37 other companies

WASHINGTON, D.C.--Today, older workers, the Communications Workers of America (CWA), and Outten & Golden LLP announced major new steps in their campaign to stop...

Outten & Golden is delighted to announce that its San Francisco office has moved to larger space. The firm now has a 17-office suite on the 12th floor of One California Street, the US Bank building.

Wayne N. Outten, Founder and Managing Partner, said, "Since our founding in 1998, we have grown to more than 65 attorneys, making us the largest firm in the country focused exclusively on representing employees. Our San Francisco office has contributed substantially to this growth."

Jahan C. Sagafi, Partner in Charge of the San Francisco office, explained, "Over the past four and a half years, the...