ILN Today

Employers in the First Circuit know that unconscionability challenges to employment arbitration agreements are commonplace. In Trainor v. Primary Residential Mortgage, Inc., the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island recently addressed an employee’s arguments that an agreement’s venue clause requiring a Rhode Island employee to arbitrate her claims in Utah and a provision excluding certain claims from the scope of the arbitration agreement rendered the arbitration agreement unconscionable and unenforceable. The court rejected the first argument based on the employer’s on-the-record concession that it would agree to virtual arbitration, and the second because the exclusions from the arbitration agreement benefitted both parties and were cabined to limited circumstances. In light of Trainor, employers may want to review their arbitration agreements to preserve their ability to agree to virtual arbitration to moot a challenge to a venue clause and to ensure that any exceptions to the duty to arbitrate are symmetrical and narrowly tailored.

There has been a recent flurry of movement – both in the courts and in state legislatures – on the marijuana law front across several states.  As we previously reported, on February 22, 2021, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed three separate cannabis reform bills into law (NJ A21, NJ A 1897, and NJ A5342/NJ S3454), formally legalizing the use and possession of recreational marijuana in the Garden State.  The new laws contain express workplace-related provisions that impact New Jersey employers by establishing non-discrimination rules for recreational cannabis users or marijuana users, codifying that employers do not have a duty to accommodate cannabis use in the workplace, and establishing procedures for employee drug testing.  The laws’ employment provisions were effective immediately, but they do not become operative until the New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory Commission (“CRC”) adopts implementing regulations.