Justia Labor & Employment Law Opinion Summaries

Respondent, widow of an employee of Pacific Operators Offshore, sought benefits under the Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act (LHWCA), 33 U.S.C. 901 et seq., pursuant to the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA), 43 U.S.C. 1333(b), which extended LHWCA coverage to injuries "occurring as the result of operations conducted on the [OCS]" for the purpose of extracting natural resources from the shelf. The ALJ dismissed her claim, reasoning that section 1333(b) did not cover the employee's fatal injury because his accident occurred on land, not on the OCS. The Labor Department's Benefits Review Board affirmed, but the Ninth Circuit reversed. The Court concluded that the Ninth Circuit's "substantial-nexus" test was more faithful to the text of section 1333(b). The Court understood the Ninth Circuit's test to require the injured employee to establish a significant causal link between the injury that he suffered and his employer's on-OCS operations conducted for the purpose of extracting natural resources from the OCS.

Hosanna-Tabor, a member congregation of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, operated a small school in Michigan offering a "Christian-centered education" to students in kindergarten through eighth grade. The Synod classified its school teachers into two categories: "called" and "lay." "Called" teachers, among other things, were regarded as having been called to their vocation by God. To be eligible to be called from a congregation, a teacher must satisfy certain academic requirements. "Lay" or "contract" teachers, by contrast, were not required to be trained by the Synod or even to be Lutheran. "Called" teacher, Cheryl Perich filed a charge with the EEOC, claiming that her employment had been terminated in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. 12101 et seq. The EEOC brought suit against Hosanna-Tabor, alleging that Perich had been fired in retaliation for threatening to file an ADA lawsuit. Perich intervened. Invoking what was known as the "ministerial exception," Hosanna-Tabor argued that the suit was barred by the First Amendment because the claims concerned the employment relationship between a religious institution and one of its ministers. The Court held that the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment barred suits brought on behalf of ministers against their churches, claiming termination in violation of employment discrimination laws. Because Perich was a minister within the meaning of the ministerial exception, the First Amendment required dismissal of this employment discrimination suit against her religious employer.

Respondents, current or former employees of petitioner Wal-Mart, sought judgment against the company for injunctive and declaratory relief, punitive damages, and backpay, on behalf of themselves and a nationwide class of some 1.5 million female employees because of Wal-Mart's alleged discrimination against women in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. 2000e-1 et seq. At issue was whether the certification of the plaintiff class was consistent with Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 23(a) and (b)(2). The Court held that certification of the plaintiff class was not consistent with Rule 23(a) where proof of commonality necessarily overlapped with respondents' merits contention that Wal-mart engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination and without some glue holding together the alleged reasons for the employment decisions, it would be impossible to say that examination of all the class members' claims would produce a common answer to the crucial discrimination question. The Court concluded that in a company Wal-Mart's size and geographical scope, it was unlikely that all managers would exercise their discretion in a common way without some common direction and respondents' attempt to show such direction by means of statistical and anecdotal evidence fell well short. The Court also held that respondents' backpay claims were improperly certified under Rule 23(b)(2) where claims for monetary relief could not be certified under the rule. Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals was reversed.

This case concerned the extent of the protection, if any, that the Petition Clause granted public employees in routine disputes with government employers where petitioner filed a 42 U.S.C. 1983 suit after respondent's termination of petitioner as police chief and where petitioner was subsequently reinstated, with directives instructing petitioner in the performance of his duties. Petitioner alleged that the directives were issued in retaliation for the filing of his first grievance and violated his First Amendment right to "petition the Government for a redress of grievances." At issue was whether the public concern test applied when the employee invoked the Petition Clause. The Court held that a government employer's allegedly retaliatory actions against an employee did not give rise to liability under the Petition Clause unless the employee's petition related to a matter of public concern. Therefore, the Court held that the Third Circuit's conclusion that the public concern test did not limit public employees' Petition Clause claims was incorrect. Accordingly, the Court concluded that, absent full briefs by the parties, the Court need not consider how the foregoing framework would apply to this case and therefore, vacated the judgment and remanded for further proceedings.

The Board of Trustees of Stanford University filed suit against Roche Molecular Systems ("Roche") claiming that their HIV test kits infringed upon Stanford's patents. The suit stemmed from Stanford's employment of a research fellow who was arranged by his supervisor to work at Cetus, a research company developing methods to quantify blood-borne levels of HIV. The research fellow subsequently devised a PCR-based procedure for measuring the amount of HIV in a patient's blood while working with Cetus employees. The research fellow had entered into an agreement to assign to Stanford his "right, title and interest in" inventions resulting from his employment there and subsequently signed a similar agreement at Cetus. Stanford secured three patents to the measurement process. Roche acquired Cetus's PCR-related assets and commercialized the procedure into HIV test kits. At issue was whether the University and Small Business Patent Procedures Act of 1980, 35 U.S.C. 200 et seq., commonly referred to as the Bayh-Dole Act ("Act"), displaced the basic principle that rights in an invention belonged to the inventor and automatically vested title to federally funded inventions in federal contractors. The Court held that the Act did not automatically vest title to federally funded inventions in federal contractors or authorize contractors to unilaterally take title to such inventions and therefore, affirmed the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which held that the research fellow's agreement with Cetus assigned his rights to Cetus, and subsequently to Roche; that the Act did not automatically void an inventor's rights in federally funded inventions; and thus, the Act did not extinguish Roche's ownership interest in the invention and Stanford was deprived of standing.

Respondent filed an action under the False Claims Act ("FCA"), 31 U.S.C. 3730(e)(4)(A), alleging that his former employer had submitted hundreds of false claims for payment under its federal contracts. At issue was whether a federal agency's written response to a request for records under the Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA"), 5 U.S.C. 552, constituted a "report" within the meaning of the public disclosure bar. The Court held that a federal agency's written response to a FOIA request for records constituted a "report" within the meaning of the FCA's public disclosure bar where a "report," in this context, carried its ordinary meaning; where the Labor Department's three written responses in this case, along with the accompanying records produced to respondent's wife, were "reports" within the public disclosure bar's ordinary meaning; where the Court was not persuaded by assertions that it would be anomalous to read the public disclosure bar to encompass written FOIA responses; and whether respondent's suit was "based upon... allegations or transactions" disclosed in the reports at issue was a question to be resolved on remand.

Respondents, on behalf of beneficiaries of the CIGNA Corporation's ("CIGNA") Pension Plan, challenged the new plan's adoption, claiming that CIGNA's notice of the changes was improper, particularly because the new plan in certain respects provided them with less generous benefits. At issue was whether the district court applied the correct legal standard, namely, a "likely harm" standard, in determining that CIGNA's notice violations caused its employees sufficient injury to warrant legal relief. The Court held that although section 502(a)(1)(B) of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 ("ERISA"), 29 U.S.C. 1022(a), 1024(b), 1054(h), did not give the district court authority to reform CIGNA's plan, relief was authorized by section 502(a)(3), which allowed a participant, beneficiary, or fiduciary "to obtain other appropriate relief" to redress violations of ERISA "or the [plan's] terms." The Court also held that, because section 502(a)(3) authorized "appropriate equitable relief" for violations of ERISA, the relevant standard of harm would depend on the equitable theory by which the district court provided relief. Therefore, the Court vacated and remanded for further proceedings.