Associate Dean of Faculty and Professor Sandra Sperino completed her book with co-author Professor Suja Thomas. The book, Unequal: How America’s Courts Undermine Discrimination Law, is forthcoming with Oxford University Press.
Her most recent article is now in print. The article, titled “Discrimination Law: The New Franken-Tort” is published at 65 DePaul L. Rev. 721 (2016). This article was part of the Clifford Symposium in Tort Law. The article discusses how the Supreme Court has used tort law to define certain elements of discrimination law, but has not described all of the elements of this new tort. The article is the first one to try to piece together the new “tort” created by the Supreme Court.
An emerging issue under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act is whether the ADEA allows workers to prove a claim by showing that a subgroup of workers over the age of 40 were disproportionately impacted by a policy or procedure that is not justified by a reasonable factor other than age. The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit is currently determining whether such claims are cognizable. Professor Sperino discussed this issue with Bloomberg BNA. The article, “Can Older ‘Subclasses’ Sue Under the ADEA” can be found here: http://www.bna.com/older-subclasses-sue-n73014446334/
In June, Professor Sperino gave a presentation about whether Title VII is a tort at the Warns-Render Labor and Employment Law Institute.
Professor Sperino was invited to speak at NELA’s Fall Summary Judgment Seminar.
Professor Sperino served as a contributing editor to four books: Covenants Not To Compete; Trade Secrets, A State-by-State Survey; Employee Duty of Loyalty; and Tortious Interference in the Employment Context.