As explained in Jacob Gersen and Jeannie Suk’s forthcoming article, The Sex Bureaucracy, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) guidance documents about Title IX have shaped college and university sexual harassment and sexual assault policies by threatening the withdrawal of federal funding if the schools do…

As far as we know, every college and university in the country has a student handbook or honor code that provides rules for how students must perform their work and the standards they are expected to meet. And as far as we know, at every college and university students are…

This is the second in our series of posts about the NLRB’s recent decision regarding employees recording in the workplace.  For Part 1 of this series, click here. As we previously discussed, the NLRB just decided that employers cannot make a blanket ban on employees making recordings or taking photographs…

Whole Foods, a major grocery store chain, has a company-wide policy that prohibits its employees from making any recording—audio or video—and from taking any photographs in any area of a Whole Foods store. But a recent decision by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) might require Whole Foods to make…

Much has been made about allegations of sexual assault on college campuses in recent years. At first the discussion centered on victim’s rights advocates’ claims that colleges swept allegations of sexual assault under the rug. Starting in 2001, and escalating in 2011, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil…

Six months ago we wrote about the SJC’s recent cases grappling with the fallibility of eyewitness evidence in criminal cases, and the provisional jury instructions the Court had drafted on this topic. Two weeks ago, the SJC again tackled the issue of eyewitness identification in Commonwealth v. Bastaldo, and revised…

On May 15, 2015 the Supreme Judicial Court released its opinion in DaRosa & others v. City of New Bedford, Monsanto Company & others, addressing the question of how the work-product doctrine and public records laws interact when government entities are involved in litigation.  The case has negative implications for…

A number of recent news stories have demonstrated that around the country, parents and departments of child welfare are in disagreement about what activities are appropriate for children – and the states are taking steps to enforce seemingly draconian yet undefined rules on parents who leave their children unsupervised for…

On January 12, 2015 the Supreme Judicial Court (“SJC”) issued an opinion in Commonwealth v. Gomes holding that from now on juries must be instructed on scientific principles regarding eyewitness identification, and drafted a provisional jury instruction for judges to give until an official model instruction is developed.  The decision…

The Federal Department of Education (DOE) just released its final rules implementing changes to the Clery Act – the law that requires colleges and universities to report statistics about violent and sexual crimes on and near their campuses. While there are some positive developments in the new regulations, overall the…