The Massachusetts Bar Association welcomes back our Labor & Employment members to the 44th Annual Labor & Employment Spring Conference. This year’s conference will be an in-person event at Suffolk University Law School on Wednesday, May 24. Faculty presenters include a number of judges and accomplished attorneys who have provided significant thought leadership in the areas of labor and employment law.
This year's keynote speaker will be Jocelyn Samuels, vice chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Samuels was designated as EEOC vice chair by President Joe Biden on Jan. 20, 2021. She joined the EEOC as a commissioner on Oct. 14, 2020, and on July 14, 2021, was confirmed for a second term ending in 2026.
Immediately prior to joining the EEOC, Samuels served as the executive director and Roberta A. Conroy Scholar of Law at the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, focusing on legal and social science research on issues related to sexual and gender minorities.
From August 2014 through January 2017, she was the director of the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, where she oversaw civil rights enforcement with respect to hospitals, health care providers, insurers and human services agencies. In that role, she spearheaded development of regulations implementing Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act — the first broad-based federal law to prohibit sex discrimination in health care. Among other advances, those groundbreaking regulations protected LGBTQ persons from discrimination based on sex stereotyping and gender identity.
The conference will feature updates on employment law and labor law, a panel discussion on pay transparency, and a judicial panel. A networking reception will follow programming. Click here for the full agenda and to register.
Registration for the conference is required by 9 a.m. on Monday, May 22.