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Rebecca S. Bjork

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Rebecca is Senior Counsel in the Labor and Employment Department in the Washington, D.C. office of Seyfarth Shaw LLP. She has represented clients in the pharmaceutical, automotive, transportation, food and beverage, telecommunications, staffing, higher education, and retail industries in employment, products liability, and consumer class actions and other aggregate litigation proceedings.

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By Gerald L. Maatman, Jr. and Rebecca Bjork

Yesterday evening the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed its Reply Brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in Mach Mining v. EEOC, Case No. 13-1019. It draws the battle lines for the upcoming oral argument before the SCOTUS in January of 2015. Given the importance of this case and the issue presented,…
Continue Reading The EEOC’s Most Important Brief Of The Year Filed With The U.S. Supreme Court – The Lines Are Drawn In The Mach Mining Appeal

By Rebecca S. Bjork and Gerald L. Maatman, Jr.

After Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 131 S. Ct. 2541 (2011), class action litigants are re-booting their theories in employment discrimination class actions. The stakes are high and the legal theories are novel in these workplace class actions, especially when an employer’s decision-making processes – either objective, subjective, or both…
Continue Reading Court Denies Class Certification In Race Discrimination Case Against The Fed

Sometimes, class certification decisions read to us like checklists, where a judge will recite line and verse the requirements under Rule 23 one by one, and often find that all of them are satisfied with little discussion of the evidentiary basis for the rulings.  At other times, however, a decision will be released that represents a more nuanced and…
Continue Reading Different Experiences Of Navy Chaplains Doom Effort To Certify A Rule 23 Class For “Institutional Reform” In Workplace Bias Case

By Rebecca Bjork and Gerald L. Maatman, Jr.

Workplace class actions are being reshaped before our very eyes, as district courts across the country apply important new Supreme Court decisions. A new noteworthy ruling illustrating this trend in the context of Rule 23(b)(3) requirements is from a long-running employment discrimination case in New York entitled Gulino, et al. v. The …
Continue Reading Certification Of Damages Issues – Really?

By Rebecca Bjork and Gerald L. Maatman, Jr.

To reach a decision it issued on August 22, 2013, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit was required to read some serious Supreme Court tea leaves and we found the results to be pretty interesting. In Butler v. Sears, Roebuck and Co., No. 11-8029 (7th Cir. Aug. 22, 2013),…
Continue Reading UPDATED – Remanded For Reconsideration In Light Of What Decision, Now, Exactly?