A recent denial of a defendant’s motion to dismiss offers the latest reminder to employers that it may not be so easy to get out from under the employee-friendly provisions of the Massachusetts Fair Employment Practices Law and the Massachusetts Wage Act, even if their employees are far from Massachusetts.
Attorneys say that they expect to see such preliminary litigation battles over choice of law to arise with greater frequency, given the rise in remote work that has persisted beyond the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In Wilson v. Recorded Future, Inc., et al., the defendants sought dismissal of the plaintiff’s claims under the Fair Employment Practices Law, G.L.c. 151B, §4(1B), as well as the Massachusetts Wage Act, G.L.c. 149, §148.
The defendants argued that Massachusetts did not have the “most significant relationship” to the employment of the plaintiff, a Virginia resident.
They also argued that Virginia, not Massachusetts, was the “locus” of the plaintiff’s relationship with his employer and that his alleged contacts with Massachusetts were insufficient to establish that Chapter 151B and the Massachusetts Wage Act apply.
But the plaintiff countered that he communicated regularly with employees located in his employer’s Massachusetts office, traveled to Boston to perform his job duties, and that the decisions at issue in the case had been made in Massachusetts.
That was enough for the discrimination claim to...
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