#WorkforceWednesday: ACA Preventive Coverage Mandate Blocked, Another No-Poach Loss for DOJ, and Employers Prepare for the End of the COVID-19 Emergencies - Employment Law This Week®
Taking the Pulse, A Health Care and Life Sciences Podcast | Episode 100: Marguerite Willis, Nexsen Pruet Attorney
As previously predicted, the new year and change of administration in the U.S. brought a series of notable developments in criminal antitrust enforcement. Recent actions indicate that the new antitrust leadership in the...more
On April 14, 2025, after a three-week trial, a federal jury in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada returned a guilty verdict on all six counts for Eduardo Lopez, a home healthcare staffing executive. Lopez was...more
In October 2016, the Obama Administration announced that it would criminally prosecute no-poach and wage-fixing agreements among competitors for talent. Starting in December 2020, through the Trump and Biden Administrations,...more
On Monday, April 14, 2025, a federal jury convicted Eduardo “Eddie” Lopez of conspiring to fix the wages for home healthcare nurses in Las Vegas and for fraudulently failing to disclose the criminal antitrust investigation...more
Despite the summer doldrums, cartel enforcers around the world had several notable enforcement actions and, perhaps more importantly, signaled a busy fall and winter. In the United States, the Department of Justice’s...more
When it comes to antitrust criminal enforcement, 2023 will be remembered as the year when the US Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Antitrust Division redefined and tested the outer boundaries of its authority. This report looks...more
Labor Market Meets Competition Law - In a labor market where companies are competing to attract and retain talent, the rising shortage of highly-skilled employees, high mobility, and high salary demands in certain market...more
The Department of Justice (DOJ) lost its third jury trial in its mission to secure criminal convictions against companies and executives accused of labor-side antitrust violations on March 22, 2023, when a jury in Maine...more
On March 16, the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division (“DOJ Antitrust Division”) announced that a federal grand jury returned an indictment charging a former health care staffing executive of fixing wages for nurses....more
Two of the Department of Justice’s labor-market criminal antitrust prosecutions have seen interesting recent developments. (See our previous coverage of this prosecution trend, reported on: Feb. 9th; May 2nd; Sept. 22nd; and...more
It has been a tumultuous year for the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and its recent no-poach criminal prosecution strategy. No-poach agreements, which are arrangements between companies that place restrictions on the hiring...more
In 2022, antitrust authorities around the world were pursuing more investigations, bringing new types of cases, and making policy changes to spark even more enforcement actions. In the United States, the Department of...more
Last month, the DOJ finally secured its first criminal conviction for a labor-market antitrust offense. (Check here for our previous coverage of this prosecution trend.) VDA OC LLC (“VDA”), a healthcare staffing company,...more
It is no secret that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has been largely unsuccessful in the criminal no poach cases it has brought to trial to date. Its most public loss came with the acquittals earlier this year of DaVita, a...more
On October 27, 2022, VDA OC, LLC, (VDA) a Nevada health care staffing company, pleaded guilty to participating in a conspiracy to suppress and eliminate competition for the services of school nurses. According to the plea,...more
The U.S. Department of Justice appears to be close to reaching a plea deal that would result in the nation’s first-ever successful criminal prosecution of a workplace-related antitrust matter – and it should send a clear...more
Since the last edition of the QCC, there has been a series of dramatic developments in the criminal antitrust enforcement space in the U.S. from the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division (Division)....more
Last month, the first two trials arising from the DOJ’s recent push to criminally prosecute wage-fixing and employee non-solicitation agreements both ended in acquittals on the antitrust charges. In United States v. Jindal,...more
On April 14, a jury in the Eastern District of Texas handed the U.S. Department of Justice its first loss in prosecuting an alleged wage-fixing crime and the first verdict ever in a criminal prosecution of wage-fixing under...more
In the span of 24 hours, two closely-watched federal jury trials both ended in defeat last week for the Department of Justice, Antitrust Division (“the Division”). The trials were considered bellwethers in gauging how the...more
In 2016, the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division (DOJ) announced that it would criminally prosecute no-poach and wage-fixing agreements for the first time. Indeed, the DOJ has backed this up by bringing a number of...more
In July of 2021, President Biden issued Executive Order 14036, which affirmed the executive branch’s policy to enforce antitrust laws. Two aspects of the Order relate directly to employment law...more
The end of 2021 continued to be a busy time for antitrust enforcers in the U.S. and around the world. Perhaps most notably, in November the Senate confirmed Jonathan Kanter to lead the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust...more
The focus on using the antitrust laws to target labor markets has been gaining momentum for years, but the close of 2021 saw the trend hit overdrive with antitrust attacks on perceived harm to workers coming from all corners...more
Within the last year, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) brought its first indictments alleging criminal wage-fixing conspiracies and criminal no-poach conspiracies among competing employers. In December 2020, DOJ indicted...more