On March 11, the U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”) announced plans to rescind two final rules that the Biden Administration said would have significantly weakened protections for workers under the Fair Labor Standards Act(“FLSA”).
Cora Leeuwenburg Associate Editor Loyola University of Chicago School of Law, JD 2022 The controversy surrounding the unprecedented movement by retail investors and Gamestop has not died down in the last month following the stock’s meteoric rise in price and dramatic fall. The wildly volatile stock has lost hedge funds millions and resulted in …
Read more
A full year of quarantine, and a whole lot of spam. You wouldn’t be alone in noticing that telemarketer and spam calls have proliferated in the past year of lockdown. The Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) has noticed, too: the tail end of 2020 saw the agency file its first ever complaint against a VoIP service provider for enabling scammers to make robocalls. Just weeks later, they filed their second. The agency is making clear that this new method of enforcement will help combat the issue—but is it?
Molly Franklin Associate Editor Loyola University Chicago School of Law, JD 2022 The start of work from home For almost a year now, millions of Americans have been working from home because of the COVID pandemic. When offices told their employees to bring their laptops home with them in March last year, most expected to …
Read more
One of President Joe Biden’s promises to America if elected President of the United States was to be more proactive to fix the increasing issue of climate change. Previously, during his tenure as Vice President, in 2010 disclosures were mandated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that ordered publicly traded companies disclose their climate change related data in their filings to help investors make more informed decisions. More than ten years later, and only a month after President Biden’s inauguration, the SEC released a statement regarding their intentions to revise these disclosure requirements and bring a greater focus to investment decision regarding climate change issues.
The Loyola Journal of Regulatory Compliance hosted its fifth annual symposium on Friday, March 12th. The symposium, “Labor & Employment Compliance Issues in the Era of Covid-19,” brought together practitioners to reflect on a variety of concerns facing employment professionals as advisor, employer, and client in the pandemic and post-pandemic workplace.
To ensure safety and the best experience for athletes to excel in sports, eligibility to play on certain teams and at varying levels of competition has long depended on individuals’ biological factors, the primary factor being sex. This established practice of separating sport participation by two categories, male and female based upon the sex assigned at birth is being reexamined, particularly as it relates to individuals who were born male, now identify as female, and desire to compete in women’s sport. The federal government, state governments, and sport governing bodies are addressing the matters presented by athletes who transition genders, with opposition by both sides of the issues seemingly being the only commonality.
William Baker Associate Editor Loyola University Chicago School of Law, JD 2022 The oil and gas industry recently announced plans to end gas flaring by 2030. Flaring involves the controlled release of excess gas from natural gas wells. While this practice is commonplace in the oil and gas industry, it nevertheless harms the environment …
Read more
As March starts and we enter Women’s History Month, Time Magazine, The New York Times, National Public Radio, CNBC, The Washington Post, and more wrote articles on the unique and disproportionate effects that COVID-19 has had on women. However, by focusing exclusively on the effect of COVID-19 on women, we ignore the impacts faced by gender non-binary people. This approach leaves many people to continue to be disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, as economic impacts cannot be addressed and answered, if they are not first acknowledged.
The United States’ current systems and its response to COVID-19 has failed to serve many people, in fact, the pandemic has amplified existing economic and social inequalities. If we are to resolve these inequalities, instead of focusing on the disproportionate effects experienced by cis-gender women, the focus should shift towards marginalized people, such as, cis and transgender women, and non-binary individuals. This article takes a limited approach due to its length, and it focuses on the effects COVID-19 has had on women, and the transgender and non-binary community, where the United States needs to acknowledge the economic inequalities these people face and change the current systems.
For almost a year, schools have been reacting to the unprecedented circumstances that Covid-19 has caused. Most of the mitigation efforts thus far have been at the direction of state and local governments. Only recently have federal agencies given clear and substantial guidance on how to get students back into the classroom. Schools have largely fallen into three categories — in-person, remote, or a blended model that involves students doing some classwork at home and some at school. Some schools moved to increase their in-person learning and some have had to retrace their steps when positivity rates were too high, either in the school or in the larger community.