In early November, an administrative law judge of the National Labor Relations Board dismissed a complaint filed against an employer, finding that the employer did not violate the National Labor Relations Act by withdrawing rehire offers from two employees’ based on their Facebook conversation. The two employees worked for a…
Last week, in Bland v. Roberts, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit handed a constitutional victory to Facebook and two plaintiffs who lost their jobs after displaying online support for the incumbent’s opponent in a sheriff’s election. Reversing the district court decision, which said that “liking” a…
On August 29, 2013, Gov. Chris Christie signed New Jersey’s social media privacy law, making New Jersey the twelfth state to enact such laws governing employers. (Various states have enacted similar laws governing institutions of higher education.) Christie’s signature ends an approximately year and a half long legislative process: the…
On August 19, 2013, the New Jersey Senate passed – by a vote of 36 to 0 – a revised bill barring employers from seeking access to employees’ social media accounts. The bill was previously approved by the New Jersey Assembly on May 20, 2013, as discussed in a prior…
On May 21, 2013, Washington’s governor signed a new law protecting employee social networking accounts. The new law, which goes into effect on July 28, 2013, prevents employers from requesting, requiring or coercing an employee or applicant to disclose login information for the employee’s personal social networking account. Employers also…
On May 20, 2013, the New Jersey Assembly passed – by a vote of 77 to 0 – a revised bill barring employers from seeking access to employees’ social media accounts. The bill incorporates changes suggested by Governor Chris Christie, including the elimination of a private cause of action. Instead,…
Thank you to everyone who joined us in both New York and Washington, DC for our Social Media Week events – Game On! Special thank you to all of our panelists: Randy Leibowitz, Mike Scafidi, Tim Ettus, Lou Kerner, Peter Corbett, Jim Gatto, Sean Kane, Lauren Lynch Flick and Tina Kearns…
PhoneDog LLC filed a lawsuit last July against a now former employee, Noah Kravitz. PhoneDog, which reviews mobile devices, including phones and tablets, is claiming ownership of Kravitz’s Twitter followers. They claim he owes them $340,000 based on an assumed value of $2.50 per follower per month. The dispute arose…
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois has held that a company’s alleged use of an employee’s Facebook and Twitter pages without her permission to post marketing messages that looked like they were written by the employee may be liable under the Illinois Right to Publicity Act…
According to a recent study by OpenDNS, Facebook is both the most widely blocked site in enterprises today and the second most widely allowed site in enterprises today. The study goes on to report that more than 14 percent of all enterprises that block websites on their networks choose to…