Employment and Labor Law

Print
Comment
Volume 91.8
Weighing In: Why Obesity Should Be Considered a Qualifying Disability Under the Americans with Disabilities Act
Anne Marie Hawley
B.A. 2019, Georgetown University; J.D. Candidate 2025, The University of Chicago Law School.

I would like to thank Professor Sarah Konsky, Professor Katie Eyer, and the editors of the University of Chicago Law Review for their guidance and helpful feedback. Special thanks are also due to activist Aubrey Gordon and journalist Michael Hobbes, whose tireless advocacy inspired my research topic.

Anti-fat bias has been described as the last socially acceptable form of prejudice. Despite the discrimination that fat people face, there is no federal protection against weight discrimination. One potential solution to the lack of existing legal protections is the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Claims challenging weight discrimination under the ADA argue that weight discrimination is a form of disability discrimination that is based on the medical condition of obesity. Yet, courts have resisted granting the ADA’s protections to obese plaintiffs.

This Comment argues that courts should recognize obesity as an ADA-protected disability, even in circuits that have restricted obesity-as-a-disability ADA claims to cases where a plaintiff can show that their obesity is related to a physiological disorder. The author draws parallels between obesity and gender dysphoria to highlight courts’ recent willingness to extend the ADA’s protection to highly stigmatized clinical conditions when a diagnosis has gained credibility in the medical community and evidence suggests that the condition has a physiological cause.

Print
Comment
Volume 91.7
Guns and the Right to Exclude: Saving Guns-at-Work Laws from Cedar Point's Per Se Takings Rule
Tom Malaga Kadie
B.A. 2019, University of California, Berkeley; J.D. Candidate 2025, The University of Chicago Law School.

I would like to thank Professor Lior Strahilevitz and the editors and staff of the University of Chicago Law Review for their thoughtful advice and insight.

This Comment uses the case study of guns-at-work laws to understand Cedar Point v. Hassid’s per se takings rule as well as its exceptions. Enacted by about half of the States, guns-at-work laws protect the right of a business’s employees, customers, and invitees to store firearms in private vehicles even if those private vehicles are on company property (i.e. parking lots/parking structures). While these laws have long survived Takings Clause challenges, Cedar Point revived the viability of such challenges. Using the example of guns-at-work laws, the Comment seeks both to understand the scope of Cedar Point’s per se takings rule and to clarify and develop the open-to-the-public and long-standing restrictions on property rights exceptions to it.

Print
Article
87.4
The Case for Noncompetes
Jonathan M. Barnett
Torrey H. Webb Professor, University of Southern California, Gould School of Law.

We thank Shyam Balganesh, Norman Bishara, Michael Burstein, Richard Castanon, Bryan Choi, Victor Fleischer, Lee Fleming, Ronald Gilson, John Goldberg, Robert Gomulkiewicz, Charles Tait Graves, Michael Guttentag, Ryan Holte, Justin Hughes, David Levine, Orly Lobel, Greg Mandel, Karl Mannheim, Matt Marx, Adam Mossoff, Natasha Nayak, Ruth Okediji, David Orozco, Eric Posner, Greg Reilly, Michael Risch, Ben Sachs, David Schwartz, Joseph Singer, Henry Smith, Kathy Spier, Matt Stephenson, James Stern, Olav Sorenson, Evan Starr, David Taylor, Saurabh Vishnubhakat, Polk Wagner, and Stephen Yelderman, as well as attendees at the 2015 Works in Progress in Intellectual Property Conference, the 2017 Conference of the American Law and Economics Association, and workshops at Harvard Law School, University of Pennsylvania Law School, Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, the Center for Law and the Social Sciences at the University of Southern California School of Law, and the University of San Diego School of Law for their helpful discussions and comments on prior versions of this paper. We also thank Carolyn Ginno, Matthew Arnold, Anna Ayar, Vanand Baroni, Haley Dumas, Ryan Foley, David Javidzad, Rachel Stariha, and Millicent Whitemore for their valuable research assistance.

Ted Sichelman
Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law.

On February 23, 2017, two titans of Silicon Valley went to war in federal court: Google filed a lawsuit against Uber, accusing it of using intellectual property allegedly stolen by one of the lead engineers on Waymo, Google’s self-driving automotive subsidiary. Specifically, Google alleged that Anthony Levandowski had misappropriated Google’s intellectual property before departing (along with other Google engineers) to found Otto, a self-driving car startup subsequently acquired by Uber for $680 million.

Print
Comment
85.5
Master of Its Own Case: EEOC Investigations after Issuing a Right-to-sue Notice
Eric E. Petry
BA 2014, The College of Wooster; JD Candidate 2019, The University of Chicago Law School

Often dismissed as a second-class agency with little power, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) actually plays a crucial role in antidiscrimination efforts and is tasked with enforcing every employment discrimination statute in the federal arsenal.

Volumes