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This week includes updates on the latest roadblocks at another round of stimulus, which remains necessary as more than 30 million Americans remain out of work, officially, and countless more are shut out of the social welfare programs offered in the US. We also highlight school re-openings and general Covid risk analysis.

The three cases highlighted in this weeks’ FFCRA complaint roundup include two filed by plaintiffs working in restaurants and another from a plaintiff employed in food distribution. Because the entire food supply chain has been deemed essential, workers in the industry have little ability to leave work to care for sick family members or children since the childcare industry cratered.

Berke-Weiss Law answers some questions on many New Yorkers’ minds right now in Law360: can I be fired for protesting or posting about politics on social media? Am I entitled to take time off to protest? Can my employer force me to take a Covid-19 test after protesting but before returning to my workplace?

Taking a break from the wall-to-wall imperative that is coronavirus, we wanted to highlight a new study about workplace cultures in the legal practice. Conducted by the Women Lawyers on Guard, the study Still Broken: Sexual Harassment and Misconduct in the Legal Profession shows that sexual harassment plagues women at all levels of the legal profession, from early-career lawyers to judges, and everyone in between.

Welcome to the Weekly Roundup for the week of July 6. If you’ve gone anywhere near the news this week, you’ll know that the South and West are spiking and states from Florida to California are reversing course and even considering new lockdowns.

As we edge into the dog days of summer, we’re also creeping toward fall classes, and the only thing people are sure of is they’re not sure about sending their kids back to school. And in the backdrop of massive virus spikes in the South and West, come renewed calls to make a decision on whether schools should open in the fall.

Here in New York, the governors of the tri-state area have formalized a quarantine for visitors from the hardest hit states while also mooting any chance of indoor dining in the foreseeable future, which mounting research indicates is a significant source of potential infectio

Overall, we are beginning to see some patterns in the thematic nature of the complaints. Specifically, plaintiffs seem to be those whose employment has been terminated either after expressing concerns about workplace health and safety (e.g. improper distancing, lack of PPE, and not enforcing CDC-recommended quarantine procedures) and parents whose employment has been terminated because they were unable to locate appropriate childcare or family care.

Some employers may be concerned about the risk posed by the return of employees who have participated in protests to newly reopened workplaces. Similarly, employees may want to know whether their increased risk of exposure could affect their job security, and what their rights are in this situation.

Employees may find themselves retaliated against because of their protesting outside of the workplace, in person or online. But, as the protests continue, and the depth of feeling about their purpose grows, there will be increasing interest in using all available legal tools to allow employees to express their political views off-site while remaining employed.

This week we’re looking at how women’s job losses are bad for the hops of a wider economic recovery, New York’s plans for phase three of reopening, and the trend to home birth trends, which we will also be discussing at greater length in a multi-post blog about coronavirus’s effects on pregnancy, abortion, and childbirth, specifically for low-income black women and women of color.