For employers, 2021 was a challenging year. The post-election landscape, evolving federal and state law, and the effects of a seemingly endless global pandemic created a difficult business climate. Efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19 were met with stiff resistance — legal and otherwise; still, employers persist in earnest to maintain their operations safely and efficiently. However, 2021 brought other important, non-COVID-19 developments. This issue of the Class Action Trends Report offers a snapshot of the most significant employment-related class action activity from the tumultuous year.
The COVID-19 pandemic continued to pose enormous challenges in 2021. The Delta and Omicron variants, the volatile politics of vaccines and masks and testing, serious worker shortages, and the patchwork of ever-changing laws and regulations have created an environment fraught with risk of classwide liability. The Fall 2021 issue of the Class Action Trends Report discussed many of the challenges wrought for employers by the late phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.
At present, the bulk of new COVID-19-related employment lawsuits are centered around mandatory vaccination policies. A wave of complaint filings began mid-2021 without any sign it will ebb any time soon. Employees have sued individually, have brought large multi-plaintiff complaints, and have filed class actions seeking to invalidate vaccine mandates and redress for adverse...
The Presidency has refuted a claim by the Oyo State Governor and presidential candidate of the Allied People’s Movement in the 2027 general election, Seyi Makinde, in which the latter alleged that...