Jennifer Serafyn, Dawn Solowey and Sam Schwartz-Fenwick are labor and employment law attorneys at Seyfarth. Serafyn is former chief of the civil rights unit at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts. Solowey and Schwartz-Fenwick are co-chairs of the firm’s cultural flashpoints task force.
The scene in Minneapolis has become increasingly volatile. On Jan. 7, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot 37-year-old Renee Good during enforcement operations
Protests erupted across the city and on Jan. 15, President Donald Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to deploy armed forces to carry out law enforcement functions, such as making arrests and conducting searches. The last time this act was invoked was in 1992 following riots in Los Angeles after the Rodney King verdict.
While Trump’s recent comments were aimed at Minneapolis, employers across the country should prepare now. Invoking the Insurrection Act will create unique legal and practical challenges—not just in the deployment zone, but in workplaces nationwide as this divisive issue becomes a cultural flashpoint.
If Trump invokes the Insurrection Act, employers should anticipate mandatory closures, city-imposed curfews, restricted employee access to worksites and operational paralysis—even if the business is outside the epicenter of unrest. Even if the president does not use the Insurrection...
Amid the ongoing conflict involving Israel, the United States and Iran, several rumours about Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu have begun circulating widely on social media. Multiple viral posts have...