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China has issued retaliatory sanctions again two prominent UK barristers and a leading set of commercial chambers.
Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, Sir Geoffrey Nice QC and Essex Court Chambers were among those accused by the Chinese government of “maliciously spreading lies and disinformation” about human rights abuses in Xinjiang province. The sanctions come days after the UK joined the US, EU and Canada in sanctioning Chinese officials for these abuses.
Kennedy is co-chair of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China alongside Ian Duncan Smith MP, who was also sanctioned, and Sir Geoffrey chairs the UK tribunal investigating allegations of genocide against Uighurs and other Muslims.
In February, members of Essex Court issued a legal opinion commissioned by The Global Legal Action Network, stating that there was a “credible case” that China’s actions against the Uighur Muslim minority population in Xinjiang “amounted to crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide”.
Justice Secretary Robert Buckland condemned the new sanctions in a tweet. “Chambers isn’t responsible for an opinion by one of its members; a lawyer shouldn’t be identified with the acts or views of the client, and the rule of law requires lawyers to be able to advise clients and give legal opinions without [foreign] governmental interference,” he wrote.
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Derek Sweeting QC, Chair of the Bar Council, also condemned the move: “The Bar Council strongly condemns any threat against members of the Bar simply for doing their job. Sanctioning a chambers or any legal organisation because a member has given a legal opinion in accordance with their professional obligations is an attack on the rule of law.”
The sanctions also targeted UK politicians and a number of businesses, which have since had their products pulled from prominent Chinese eCommerce platforms.
The minimum wage increase is crucial, now more than ever, to protect employees from exploitation and ensure they can make a decent living wage. This article will review some of the crucial highlights that you should know about minimum wage laws in 2021.
While local and state minimum wage rates have been on the steady rise over the last few years, the federal minimum wage rate has held steady at $7.25 an hour since 2009. Some federal lawmakers have been keen on raising this rate to $15 an hour.
Supporters insist that this raise is necessary if workers are to earn a decent living wage and reduce poverty rates. On the other hand, those opposed to the federal wage hike argue that it will cost too many jobs and hurt small businesses across different sectors.
With the amount of uncertainty brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, this federal increase is not likely at the moment. That being said, supporters are optimistic about pushing ahead once things have gone back to normal.
Currently, there are 29 states, and the District of Columbia, that have a minimum wage rate which is higher than the current federal minimum wage. This has been in response to the inaction at the federal level.
As of 1 January, 20 states ushered in the new year with an increase in minimum wage. In 9 of these states, the increase was as a result of legislation passed by state lawmakers. The states in question are Vermont, New York, New Jersey, New Mexico, Michigan, Massachusetts, Maryland, Illinois, and California. The changes in New York took effect on 31 December 2020. The scheduled wage increase in Michigan was also effectively halted and pushed for later in the year, on account of the state’s unemployment numbers, which stood at more than 8.5% in 2020.
While local and state minimum wage rates have been on the steady rise over the last few years, the federal minimum wage rate has held steady at $7.25 an hour since 2009.
In another nine states, the increase was in line with automatic annual inflation adjustments. These states are Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, Ohio, South Dakota, and Washington. Each of these states has some provision in their state minimum wage and employment law for the annual adjusting of the wage to reflect changes in prices compared to the preceding year. This adjustment ensures that workers experience no decline in their purchasing power.
For the remaining two states, namely Missouri and Arkansas, the New Year’s raise resulted from ballot measures that voters passed. In addition to these 20 states, five others, namely Virginia, Nevada, Oregon, Connecticut, and Washington, DC, are gearing up for minimum wage increases expected to occur later in the year.
Currently, a total of 44 localities, that is, counties and cities, with a minimum wage that is higher than their state minimum wage rate. Half of these localities hiked their minimum wage on New Year. Again, 13 out of these 44 localities are expected to increase their minimum wage rate later in the year.
There are some significant differences in how the various states are choosing to go about the whole minimum wage rate increases. States like Florida, for example, are choosing to go with gradually increasing the wage over time until it gets to a particular mark. The states consider indicators such as the employment index in the state, as well as the consumer price index.
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Other states, such as Michigan, have provisions to pause any scheduled wage increases if the economy is not doing as well. This was witnessed this year when the wage hike had to be pushed to a later date.
Tennessee, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, have no minimum wage. In two states, namely, Wyoming and Georgia, there is a minimum wage rate that is lower than the set federal rate. In these states, the federal rate applies only to jobs covered under federal laws. Even within the same state, it is not uncommon to find that the minimum wage rate varies by the size of the employer and the locality, among other considerations.
Beyond the minimum wage hike, employers have to carefully consider their exempt workers. They may need to review salaries for this category of employees or otherwise reclassify them from the exempt status and pay these employees overtime. 2020 saw the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) raise the salary threshold that applies to white-collar exemptions from overtime to $684 a week. In some states, the salary cutoff is much higher.
Some state exempt salary requirements are tied to the minimum-wage thresholds. On the other hand, some states have exempt salary rules that are entirely separate from the minimum-wage thresholds.
An understanding of employment law will help you know if you are being paid a fair wage. Talk to an employment lawyer for more details and representation on wage-related issues and disputes with your employer.
On Monday, Pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell moved to dismiss a defamation lawsuit brought against her by Dominion Voting Systems.
In her motion to dismiss, Powell argued that her earlier claims that Dominion was involved in widespread voter fraud during the 2020 US presidential election were so outrageous that “reasonable people would not accept such statements as fact.”
Lawyers representing Powell argued that her claims asserting that Dominion had conspired with Democrats to rig its voting machines to switch votes to Joe Biden were obviously her own “opinions and legal theories” rather than statements that the public would immediately believe. Dominion’s own descriptions of Powell’s statements as “outlandish” and “wild accusations” support this, they argued.
“Such characterisations of the allegedly defamatory statements further support Defendants' position that reasonable people would not accept such statements as fact but view them only as claims that await testing by the courts through the adversary process,” Powell’s defence lawyers wrote.
Dominion sued Powell for $1.3 billion in January over her dissemination of conspiracy theories involving the company in the aftermath of the election. The firm said it was forced to spend $565,000 on private security to protect its employees as harassment and death threats mounted, and that it projected a $200 million profit loss in the next five years due to the damaging claims.
Dominion has also filed another $1.3 billion lawsuit against former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani for pushing the same conspiracy theory.
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Over 4,000 lawyers have signed an open letter calling for Bar Associations to condemn and investigate Powell’s behaviour, which they argue was part of a campaign to “subvert constitutional democracy.”
During a hearing on the SolarWinds breach, which led to hackers compromising several government and business networks, the Senate Intelligence Committee raised the potential benefits of Congress mandating a notification requirement for victims of cyberattacks.
Both ranking members of the Senate Intelligence Committee – Chairman Mark Warner and Vice Chairman Marco Rubio – stated that Congress should consider enacting such a law. "We must improve the information sharing, of that there is no doubt, between the federal government and private sector,” Rubio said.
While testifying at the hearing, Microsoft President Brad Smith agreed that the government should impose a "notification obligation on entities in the private sector."
He acknowledged that a company asking to be regulated more tightly was unusual but told lawmakers: "I think it's the only way we are going to protect the country."
However, both Smith and FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia suggested that any future law of this kind draw a distinction between “notification” and “disclosure”, requiring victims to notify authorities after suffering cyberattacks likely to affect other consumers or companies, but not requiring the to disclose these incidents to the public until later, once more information has come to light.
"You can have threat data today and have your arms around the incident three months from now," Mandia said.
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The historic SolarWinds breach was discovered in December by FireEye. The firm found that hackers, suspected of being Russian agents, hid malicious software inside security updates that SolarWinds sent out to as many as 18,000 of its client organisations between March and June, including the US Department of Homeland Security. Other government agencies and an unknown number of private companies were also affected.
Also testifying at the hearing on Tuesday were SolarWinds CEO Sudhakar Ramakrishna and CrowdStrike President and CEO George Kurtz. Ramakrishna did not provide new information on how many of SolarWinds’ clients were affected by the breach.
The US Department of Labor’s worker safety agency will now be responsible for investigating individual complaints of retaliation for whistleblowers reporting suspected criminal antitrust violations or violations related to money laundering.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) will oversee allegations of retaliation against employees under the provisions enforced in is Whistleblower Protection Program, the DOL announced on Friday.
"Until OSHA issues interim final rules, the agency will process whistleblower complaints related to these statutes using procedures under the Wendell H. Ford Aviation Investment and Reform Act for the 21st Century," the agency said.
OSHA’s Whistleblower Protection Program already enforces the provisions of 20 different whistleblower statutes related to shielding employees from retaliation for reporting violations of various commercial practices.
This new move from the DOL follows the passing of the Criminal Antitrust Anti-Retaliation Act in December, which heightens protections for whistleblowers reporting antitrust violations and offers safeguards to those who provide relevant information on violations of sections 1 or 3 of the Sherman Act.
Under the act, if an employer faces retaliation for whistleblowing, they can file a grievance with the DOL – which, if successful, will force the employer to reinstate the employee with full back pay, interest and special damages compensation.
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New tools specifically designed for tackling money laundering were introduced by Congress in the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020, giving prosecutors greater scope for detecting and stopping the movement of dirty money.
Legal sector insiders expect the DOL to shift its focus towards money laundering and antitrust violations once the nomination of attorney general Merrick Garland is confirmed.
A Trump-era bid by the US government to ban social media app TikTok were put on hold on Wednesday, indicating that the Biden administration is backing off the pressure on the company.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) told appeals courts for the Third Circuit and the District of Columbia to freeze government appeals of lower court rulings that blocked restrictions imposed on TikTok parent company ByteDance by the Trump Administration.
Under former President Donald Trump, the US Commerce Department sought to ban Apple and Google app stores from hosting the TikTok app and bar technical transactions necessary to its operation in the US. Yesterday, the DOJ said in court filings that the Commerce Department “plans to conduct an evaluation of the underlying record justifying those prohibitions”.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters during a Wednesday briefing that there is no specific timetable for the Biden administration’s review of TikTok and other issues related to Chinese companies.
Aside from ByteDance, the previous US administration levied restrictions against many Chinese-owned tech firms, citing their potential use by the Chinese government to obtain the private data of US citizens.
The move by the Trump administration to ban TikTok led to the proposal of a deal where US companies Walmart and Oracle would take over the app’s US operations. However, the terms of this agreement were not fully revealed, and its status during the current round of reviews is unknown.
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TikTok, which has over 100 million active US users, has denied allegations that its users’ data could be obtained by the Chinese government.
Florida-based voting machine company Smartmatic filed a lawsuit on Thursday against Fox News, three of its top hosts, and two former lawyers for former President Donald Trump for pushing a damaging conspiracy theory involving the company’s machines and their role in the 2020 US presidential election.
The 285-page complaint, which was filed in New York state, is one of the largest libel lawsuits ever undertaken in the US.
Smartmatic’s suit follows similar legal action from voting machine company Dominion, which also found itself at the centre of unsubstantiated claims of election fraud. Unlike Dominion, whose technology was used in 24 states, Smartmatic’s machines were only used in the heavily Democratic-leaning Los Angeles County.
According to the complaint, in the aftermath of the presidential election Fox News aired at least 13 reports falsely claiming that the company had colluded with Venezuela’s socialist government to steal the vote for then-candidate Joe Biden in 2020.
“Defendants’ story was a lie,” Smartmatic said in its complaint. “But, it was a story that sold.”
The company claimed that the disinformation jeopardised client contracts and caused a slew of death threats to be sent to employees and their families. It estimated that it will lose as much as $690 million in profits over the next five years as a result of the conspiracy theory.
Smartmatic is demanding $2.7 billion in damages and a full retraction of all false statements made by Fox News Network, its hosts Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs and Jeanine Pirro, and former Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell.
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“Fox News’ disinformation campaign had a direct and harmful impact on Smartmatic’s ability to conduct business in the United States and around the world now and in the future,” Smartmatic said in a statement on its legal action.
Smartmatic will be represented by Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff, LLP.
Dominion Voting Systems has filed a $1.3 billion lawsuit against former President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, accusing him of pushing a damaging conspiracy theory against the company.
The 107-page complaint, which was filed in federal court on Monday, accuses Giuliani of having “manufactured and disseminated the ‘Big Lie’” that its machines changed votes from Trump to Biden during the 2020 US presidential election.
Giuliani’s claim “foreseeably went viral and deceived millions of people into believing that Dominion had stolen their votes and fixed the election,” Dominion alleged, stating that it had filed the lawsuit to correct the record and “stand up for itself, its employees, and the electoral process.”
Dominion’s complaint states that it spent $565,000 on private security to protect its employees as they faced harassment and death threats. The company says hundreds of its contracts in various states and localities have been placed in jeopardy by Giuliani’s campaign, and that it projects a loss of profits of $200 million in the next five years.
Dominion had previously sued lawyer Sidney Powell, whom the company also accused of deliberately disseminating conspiracy theories about the legality of the US election and Dominion’s role in it.
Last week, a group of prominent attorneys asked New York’s judiciary to suspend Giuliani’s license for making false claims in post-election lawsuits and for urging an audience of Trump supporters on 6 January to “fight like hell” and to engage in “trial by combat” shortly before they attacked the US capitol.
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Giuliani has stood by his claims about the election since its conclusion, saying during an appearance on a radio show last week that he has been attacked for “exercising my right of free speech and defending my client.”
A federal judge on Thursday rejected an attempt by far-right social network Parler to force Amazon to re-host its app on AWS.
US District Judge Barbara Rothstein in Seattle forcefully rejected Parler’s suggestion that it was in the public interest for a preliminary injunction to require Amazon Web Services (AWS) to “host the kind of abusive, violent content at issue in this case, particularly in light of the recent riots at the US Capitol.”
Amazon cut Parler off from its web hosting services following the 6 January riot where a far-right mob stormed the US Capitol. In a statement, it said that the company had failed to address a large volume of “posts that clearly encourage and incite violence”, violating its terms of service.
In its lawsuit filed on 11 January, Parler asked the US District Court in Seattle for a temporary restraining order against Amazon to reverse its decision, which it claimed was politically motivated. It also claimed that Amazon and Twitter were engaged in antitrust collusion, an allegation that Rothstein dismissed as “faint and factually inaccurate speculation.”
“The evidence it has submitted in support of the claim is both dwindlingly slight, and disputed by AWS,” she said. “Importantly, Parler has submitted no evidence that AWS and Twitter acted together intentionally — or even at all — in restraint of trade.”
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Rothstein also dismissed Parler’s allegation that AWS broke its contract by failing to provide 30 days’ notice to fix issues with its platform before removing it, a clause in the two companies’ agreement that was immediately amended by a following provision stipulating that AWS could terminate the contract “immediately upon notice”.
“We welcome the court’s careful ruling,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement. “This was not a case about free speech. It was about a customer that consistently violated our terms of service.”
National law firm Seyfarth Shaw has become the latest company to cut ties with the Trump Organisation following the president’s incitement of the deadly 6 January riot at the US Capitol.
“The firm has notified the Trump Organization that we will no longer serve as counsel,” Seyfarth Shaw spokesperson Martin Grego told Bloomberg.
“We are working with the company to secure new counsel for its ongoing commercial matters to ensure a smooth transition in accordance with our ethical obligations.”
Seyfarth Shaw represented a number of Trump-owned businesses in commercial and business litigation. It most recently represented the Trump Organisation in a case brought by the DC attorney general in June 2020, alleging that the Trump family had improperly used the president’s inauguration fund to enrich itself.
The firm’s decision comes as various other businesses have ended their association from the Trump brand after last week’s deadly riot, for which the US House of Representatives impeached Trump on grounds of “incitement of insurrection”.
Deutsche Bank and Signature Bank, two of the president’s favoured lenders, have also announced that they will no longer do business with him, and the PGA of America has stripped Trump National Golf Club of its right to host the 2022 PGA Championship. On the same day as Seyfarth Shaw’s announcement, property services giant Cushman & Wakefield also ended its relationship with Trump companies.
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Organisations that still maintain ties with the Trump family have faced widespread public backlash. In November 2020, prominent law firm Jones Day came under fire for representing Republican efforts to challenge the legality of the presidential election results, with fellow big law firm Porter Wright Morris & Arthur cutting ties after intense criticism.
Seyfarth Shaw ranks among the top 60 law firms in the US, according to data collated by The American Lawyer, employing around 900 lawyers worldwide.
