Boston Lawyer Blog

SJC Confirms Broad Reach of Whistleblower Protections

Published on: January 29, 2026 | by Noah Gillen

Earlier this week, the Supreme Judicial Court issued a decision on the rights of public employee whistleblowers. The decision clarified what activity is protected under the Massachusetts Whistleblower Act, G. L. c. 149, § 185 (“MWA”), and addressed whether a public employee who is partially responsible for wrongful conduct, but reports the wrongful conduct, can still seek protection under the MWA.

Background

In Galvin v. Roxbury Community College, the plaintiff, Thomas Galvin, was the college’s primary campus security authority and was responsible for the school’s compliance with the Clery Act, a federal law that requires colleges and universities that receive federal financial aid to disclose crime statistics to the U.S. Department of Education annually. In August 2010, the college’s HR director received two complaints from a student alleging that she had been sexually assaulted on campus by two college professors in previous years. When Galvin asked whether there were any reported crimes that needed to be disclosed to comply with the Clery Act, the HR director failed to disclose these complaints. In November 2010, after learning of the complaints and asking his supervisor about whether they should be disclosed, he was again told that there was nothing to disclose. The reporting responsibility ultimately rested with Galvin, who decided not to disclose the allegations in the college’s 2010 Clery Act report. On the same day, Galvin’s supervisor arranged for the student who made the allegations to be provided with a scholarship for the remaining balance of her semester bill.

Leading Universities ink deals with the Trump Administration

Published on: January 26, 2026 | by Zalkind Duncan & Bernstein LLP and Jacob Bezner

Leading Universities ink deals with the Trump Administration

Since taking office, the Trump administration has overhauled enforcement of federal anti-discrimination laws on college campuses, particularly the laws that prohibit discrimination on the bases of race and sex. Now, less than one year later, six leading universities—the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Brown University, the University of Virginia, Cornell University, and Northwestern University—have signed deals with the Trump administration. The focus of these deals on specific forms of supposed discrimination occurring on campus—namely antisemitism, “DEI” initiatives, and gender inclusivity in university facilities and athletic programs—illustrate the Trump administration’s enforcement priorities at higher education institutions.

Legal Background

Massachusetts Pay Transparency Law Goes Into Effect

Published on: December 15, 2025 | by Jackson Estrin

Massachusetts Pay Transparency Law Goes Into Effect

In recent years, in an attempt to address concerns related to pay disparities across race, gender and other group classifications, several states have adopted various forms of pay transparency legislation. On a macro level, these laws represent an attempt to remedy pay gaps that have historically existed between workers of different demographic groups. Under a pay transparency regime, workers are provided easier access to information about the pay range of their job, which they are then able to utilize to their advantage when negotiating wages with their employers. On October 29, 2025, the pay transparency provision of “An Act Relative to Salary Range Transparency” went into effect in Massachusetts, and Massachusetts joined the growing list of states that have adopted legislation aimed at increasing pay transparency in the workforce.

An Act Relative to Salary Range Transparency

The SJC limited the scope of the Wage Act. What does that mean for employees?

Published on: November 4, 2025 | by Tess Halpern

The late 1800s and early 1900s constitute a historical period known as the Second Industrial Revolution. While this time period is marked by significant advancements in technology, such as the invention of the lightbulb and the vast expansion of transportation by railroad, it is also marked by the unsanitary and dangerous factory conditions in which millions of people worked.

During this time, the Massachusetts legislature led the nation by outlawing some of the worst ways in which factory owners were taking advantage of employees. For example, the state limited the number of hours children could work each day in 1842, passed the first factory safety and health law in the United States in 1877, and was the first state to adopt a minimum wage law in 1912.

In 1879, the Massachusetts legislature revolutionized labor yet again when it passed the Massachusetts Wage Act. This Act, which the Supreme Judicial Court has said was “intended and designed to protect wage earners from the long-term detention of wages by unscrupulous employers,” states that, on the day an employee is discharged from their employment, their employer must pay them the full wages or salary they are owed. Any employer that fails to make these payments on time is required to pay treble (triple) damages.

New Federal Law Criminalizes Online Sharing of “Revenge Porn” and Requires Websites to Remove Images on Request

Published on: October 23, 2025 | by Niamh Gibbons

As we have previously written, most states have passed legislation in recent years to criminalize the distribution of non-consensually distributed intimate images, often known as “revenge porn.” The federal Violence Against Women Act also allows victims of revenge porn to sue in federal court for damages caused by the sharing of sexually graphic images of them. The recently-enacted Take It Down Act is a new federal statute that makes it a federal offense to publish, or threaten to publish, intimate images or deepfakes (which the Act refers to as “digital forgeries”) without the consent of the person shown in the image, and requires online platforms to remove such images within forty-eight hours of a removal request.

Passage of the bipartisan legislation has been welcomed as a step toward curbing online harassment and exploitation, a problem that is only becoming more widespread as AI makes it easier to access sexual images and create fake ones. Yet as with other laws aimed at regulating online content, the new statute is open to potential challenges, largely on free speech grounds.

Criminal offense and penalties

Massachusetts state legislature considers enhanced protections for librarians and safeguards against book bans

Published on: October 20, 2025 | by Jacob Bezner

As book bans continue to cause controversy nationwide, Massachusetts lawmakers are considering a bill that would prohibit ideologically driven book bans and protect public school employees from retaliation based on good faith decisions to include or exclude materials from their libraries.

Massachusetts is no exception from the nationwide movement toward ideologically driven book bans. In 2024, the Commonwealth experienced twenty attempts to ban books from school and public libraries, eighth most in the country. This number represented a decline from 2023, when the Commonwealth encountered thirty-seven attempts to ban books, fourth most in the country.

Nationwide, interest groups and government entities have spearheaded campaigns to ban books. Of such campaigns, seventy-two percent are led by interest groups and government entities. In comparison, only sixteen percent of these campaigns are led by parents.

Supreme Judicial Court holds murder charges cannot be based on accidental killing of bystander in course of legitimate acts of self-defense

Published on: October 16, 2025 | by Noah Gillen

Massachusetts courts have recognized self-defense as a defense to homicide as far back as the trial following the Boston Massacre in 1770, where John Adams successfully defended all but one of a group of British soldiers who had fired into a crowd of protesters that had thrown objects at them. In all that time, however, Massachusetts courts had never definitively answered the question of whether the defense applies where in the process of defending oneself, a defendant kills an innocent bystander.

That changed on Tuesday, when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court addressed the question in its decision in Commonwealth v. Santana-Rodriguez. The defendant in the case, Kenneth Jose Santana-Rodriguez, was at a salon with his girlfriend when her former boyfriend confronted him. Revealing a gun in his waistband, the ex-boyfriend stated, “You know what’s about to happen.” Believing “it was him or [the ex-boyfriend],” the defendant drew a gun and fired at the ex-boyfriend, but instead hit Trung Tran, a salon employee, who was killed.

In its opinion, the Court concluded that Santana-Rodriguez and similarly situated defendants acting in lawful self-defense cannot be guilty of first- or second-degree murder, but can still be found guilty of involuntary manslaughter if the prosecution proves that a defendant’s exercise of self-defense “was wanton or reckless so as to create a high degree of likelihood that substantial harm would result to an unintended victim.” In coming to this conclusion, the Court applied the concept of transferred intent to the self-defense context. Transferred intent is a theory of criminal liability that allows a defendant who attempts to kill one person, but by mistake or accident kills another, to still be criminally liable for the killing because their “felonious intent is transferred from the intended victim to the unintended victim.” In the self-defense context, when a defendant uses force to defend against an aggressor, but by mistake or accident harms someone other than the aggressor, the justifiability of the defendant’s use of force in self-defense carries over, or “transfers.” As stated in the opinion, the “intent follows the bullet.”

Massachusetts state legislature considers far-reaching AI bill targeting algorithmic discrimination

Published on: October 6, 2025 | by Jackson Estrin

Following the U.S. Senate’s decision in July to remove language in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that would have limited the ability of states to regulate the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the employment and hiring context, states are now free to continue to legislate in this area. In 2024, Colorado passed SB 205, one of the first state laws directly related to algorithmic discrimination. Algorithmic discrimination broadly refers to the phenomenon of using an automated decision-making tool to make or inform a decision that has the effect of discriminating against a protected class. Since the adoption of SB 205, several other states have introduced similar laws targeting the use of AI in the employment context, and following the recent spike in interest in this issue, the Massachusetts state legislature introduced SD 3007, “An Act to ensure non-discrimination by improving algorithmic system.” SD 3007 has the potential to be one of the most comprehensive laws of its kind in the entire country, and could prove to be highly influential as legislators across the country grapple with how to regulate rapidly evolving AI technology.

SD 3007

SD 3007 was introduced on June 26, 2025, and was referred to the committee on Advanced Information Technology, the Internet and Cybersecurity on September 4, 2025. The law would cover “any person, business, organization, or government agency that is subject to the jurisdiction of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, excluding an individual acting at their own direction and in a non-commercial context.”

First Circuit Clarifies Scope of Students’ Free Speech Rights at Public Universities

Published on: August 15, 2025 | by Naomi Shatz

Where is the line between free speech and sexual harassment? Students at public schools have both the right to free speech and expression, and the right to educational environments free of discrimination and harassment. At times, these rights can seem to run headlong into each other. When one student says something derogatory or offensive to another student, whose rights prevail?

Recently the First Circuit has been developing its jurisprudence in this thorny area. Last summer the Court held that a middle school could restrict a student’s expressive activity that demeaned and offended other students—in that case, wearing a shirt that said “There are Only Two Genders.” Then last month in Doe v. University of Massachusetts et al., the Court held that a college student who made a few comments that touch on sexual topics directed at different students, coupled with some non-sexual physical acts, was engaged in constitutionally-protected expression. These two cases have started to illustrate where the boundaries of protected student speech lie.

Back to School Basics: What You Need to Know About Academic Misconduct

Published on: August 7, 2025 | by Naomi Shatz

If you or your child is accused of engaging in academic misconduct, you’ll get a crash course in how the college or university bureaucracy works to process these cases and sanction students. Before that happens–and to prevent that from happening–it is important to understand a few key points about academic misconduct in higher education.

Lesson #1: Read the handbook and syllabi

Students (and schools) are required to follow the handbooks, policies, and syllabi they receive. While sitting down to pore over hundreds of pages of regulations is no one’s idea of a fun way to start the year, students are expected to know what is in these documents, and will be sanctioned if they violate the rules they set out. It is particularly important for students to read their professor’s syllabi carefully, because each professor may have different rules about what kind of work is and is not acceptable in their class. It is the student’s responsibility to know the rules for each class they are in, and to follow those rules.

Lesson #2: Academic misconduct is a broad category

In a previous post I explained how colleges define plagiarism, probably the most common form of academic misconduct. Colleges will sanction students for plagiarism if the student intentionally or accidentally copies, quotes without proper attribution, or incorporates language or ideas from some other person into their work. Colleges also deem it plagiarism if students work together on an assignment but do not list their co-collaborators on the work they turn in.

Unauthorized use of AI is another area where students are increasingly being disciplined for academic misconduct. Each school, and each professor, may have different rules about whether and how students can use AI platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grammarly, and CoPilot. When students are allowed to use these tools, they may be required to disclose that use. Some professors may prohibit their use altogether.