Title VII promises to protect employees who oppose workplace discrimination and harassment in good faith. Over time, judicial opinions have eroded this protection by creating an exception that has allowed employers to discipline employees if the employer deems that the manner of the employee’s complaints was insubordinate or disruptive. Last…
Restraining orders are an essential tool that Massachusetts law makes available to help victims of abuse or harassment stay safe. Abuse prevention orders and harassment prevention orders (the two types of civil restraining orders available in Massachusetts) allow courts to impose restrictions on abuse and on contact. Some judges are…
“This court is very concerned about the disparate impact automobile stops have on persons of color and the national statistics on the fatalities suffered by such communities at the hands of police officers,” wrote Justice Cypher in a fractured plurality opinion for the Supreme Judicial Court in Commonwealth v. Sweeting-Bailey last month. Despite this acknowledgment,…
On Friday the Supreme Judicial Court handed employees a decisive victory, holding in Meehan v. Medical Information Technology, Inc. that employers cannot retaliate against employees who exercise their statutory rights to file rebuttals in their personnel record. In so holding, the SJC overturned a decision of the Appeals Court from earlier this year (which…
“Where the police have observed a traffic violation, they are warranted in stopping a vehicle.” The Supreme Judicial Court made this statement more than thirty years ago, summarizing what came to be known as a basic premise of operating a motor vehicle in the United States. Fifteen years later, the court clarified that whether the traffic violation…
Boston Criminal Defense & Civil Litigation Firm Paralegal/Legal Assistant Position We are a fifteen-lawyer firm located in the North End/Waterfront of Boston, with an interesting, varied, fast-paced practice in criminal defense and civil litigation (including employment, students’ rights, and other academic cases). We seek a motivated Paralegal/Legal Assistant with a strong educational…
In many contexts, rules and codes of conduct have moved from evaluating the lawfulness or permissibility of sex based upon the presence or absence of force to instead evaluating whether the sex happened with or without consent. This is particularly true on college campuses, almost all of which have a…
By Mackenzie Bouverat, Law Student Intern As states begin to lift restrictions designed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, some employers have begun to require that their employees return to some form of in-person work, whether full-time or hybrid. Yet even for the fully vaccinated, the risk of infection…
The use of body-worn cameras by the Boston Police Department has sparked controversy since its pilot program in 2016 and its official implementation in 2019. While the City and the Police Department have marked this move as an effort to be more transparent with the community, citizens claim that such a goal of transparency cannot be achieved within a broken system.…
August is upon us and millions of college students across the country will be beginning their fall terms, including many first-year students who have just become adults and have spent little time away from their families or communities. If you are a parent of an incoming student, you may be helping…