If you are an at-will employee, you have the right to quit your job at any time. And there may be compelling reasons to leave immediately. But quitting your job will affect your legal rights, so before you resign, here are some things to consider.   Can I collect unemployment?  You…

Massachusetts courts often require individuals on probation, particularly sex offenders, to wear GPS monitors that track their every movement.  Imposing this requirement, the state’s highest court said for the first time recently, is a search, meaning that a judge can only lawfully require such monitoring after making an individualized determination that balances “the Commonwealth’s need to impose monitoring…

More than one in six American employees provides care or assistance for an elderly or disabled family member or friend. Caregiving responsibilities cut across socioeconomic and demographic groups, although women and low-income individuals still assume a disproportionate share of such responsibilities.  One in seven Americans is currently age 65 or…

Massachusetts is one step closer to a strengthened equal pay law after the State Senate passed equal pay legislation in late January.  The bill, which now goes to the House of Representatives for review, seeks to address the continuing wage gap between men and women.  Although Massachusetts adopted its first-in-the-nation…

Last week, a Massachusetts federal trial court opened the door to a direct constitutional challenge to the death penalty.  “The court remains concerned,” Judge Mark L. Wolf wrote, “about the potential rate of error in federal capital cases generally and the risk of the execution of the innocent particularly.” The…

Last week, in Commonwealth v. McGhee, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (“SJC”) addressed, for the first time, the constitutionality of the Massachusetts sex trafficking statute. Massachusetts criminalized sex trafficking in 2011. The state law bars “subject[ing], or attempt[ing] to subject, or recruit[ing], entic[ing], harbor[ing], transport[ing], provid[ing] or obtain[ing] by any…

On Friday, the Supreme Judicial Court reminded the Boston police department (“BPD”) that it cannot give women a special hiring preference and thereby discriminate against men simply because there are woefully few women in the department. Sean Pugsley sued for discrimination after the BPD deliberately bypassed its main certification list…

Over the last few weeks, in the midst of our ongoing national discussion about law enforcement use of force, both the Supreme Court and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (“SJC”), in Kingsley v. Hendrickson and Commonwealth v. Asher, have joined the conversation with decisions reviewing use of force incidents.  While…

Massachusetts’ expanded parental leave law, An Act Relative to Parental Leave, goes into effect today.  The revised statute makes several significant changes to state law.  First, it removes any doubt about whether men are entitled to leave.  The amended law is gender neutral: men and women who work for employers…

Angela Ames resigned from her position at Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company just three hours after she returned from maternity leave.  Upon her return, she sought access to the company’s lactation rooms and was informed that she would have to wait three days for permission to use a room.  She was…