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An important federal appeals court has clarified a key principle of antitrust law in a way that potentially makes it more difficult for an employer to win a motion to dismiss, and thereby avoid expensive discovery, with respect to company agreements that contain commonly used hiring restrictions.

On April 28, 2023, U.S. District Judge Victor A. Bolden issued the latest blow toSteve Medlock, Craig Seebald, Rami Rashmawi, Becky Baker the Department of Justice’s (“DOJ”) efforts to criminally prosecute individuals who engage in “no-poach” agreements by granting the defendants’ motion for judgment of acquittal.

The Department of Justice’s (“DOJ”) Antitrust Division has brought its third criminal antitrust case involving labor markets — this time against a healthcare staffing company and its former manager for allegedly agreeing not to solicit or hire its competitor’s contract nurses and to fix wages for those nurses.

As discussed in our recent blog post, the Criminal Antitrust Anti-Retaliation Act of 2019 (“CAARA”) was, earlier this year, assigned for implementation to Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (“OSHA”) Whistleblower Protection program.