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Labor Law Attorneys in Queens, NY - Seo Law Group, PLLC
Topics in Legal News |
2025/06/05 11:12
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With years of experience representing both employees and employers, our firm has developed a comprehensive understanding of the legal challenges that arise in today’s workplaces. Our labor and employment attorneys provide strategic, personalized representation tailored to your specific circumstances.
We are passionate about protecting the rights of employees. If you’ve faced discrimination, harassment, retaliation, wrongful termination, or any other form of workplace injustice, we are prepared to stand by you and pursue the justice you deserve.
We also advise employers on navigating the complex landscape of labor and employment law. From drafting employment agreements and enforcing non-compete clauses to ensuring compliance and resolving disputes, we offer practical, results-oriented legal support designed to protect your organization.
Our attorneys have successfully represented clients in both the public and private sectors across a wide range of employment matters, including:
-Wrongful termination and layoffs
-Workplace discrimination and harassment
-Promotion and advancement disputes
-Disciplinary actions
-Employment contract and severance negotiations
-Non-compete and confidentiality agreements
-Disability accommodations and related claims
Whether you're an individual seeking justice or a business seeking clarity, we are here to help. |
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Justice Dept. moves to cancel police reform settlements reached with Minneapolis
Topics in Legal News |
2025/05/21 12:32
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The Justice Department moved Wednesday to cancel a settlement with Minneapolis that called for an overhaul of its police department following the murder of George Floyd, as well as a similar agreement with Louisville, Kentucky, saying it doesn’t want to pursue the cases.
Following a scathing report by the Justice Department in 2023, Minneapolis in January approved a consent decree with the federal government in the final days of the Biden administration to overhaul its training and use-of-force policies under court supervision.
The agreement required approval from a federal court in Minnesota. But the Trump administration was granted a delay soon after taking office while it considered its options, and on Wednesday told the court it does not intend to proceed. It planned to file a similar motion in federal court in Kentucky.
“After an extensive review by current Department of Justice and Civil Rights Division leadership, the United States no longer believes that the proposed consent decree would be in the public interest,” said the Minnesota motion, signed by Andrew Darlington, acting chief of the special litigation section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “The United States will no longer prosecute this matter.”
The Justice Department announced its decision just before the five-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd. Then-officer Derek Chauvin used his knee on May 25, 2020, to pin the Black man to the pavement for 9 1/2 minutes in a case that sparked protests around the world and a national reckoning with racism and police brutality.
However, no immediate changes are expected to affect the Minneapolis Police Department, which is operating under a similar consent decree with the Minnesota Human Rights Department.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara reiterated at a news conference Tuesday that his department would abide by the terms of the federal agreement as it was signed, regardless of what the Trump administration decided.
The city in 2023 reached a settlement agreement with the state Human Rights Department to remake policing, under court supervision, after the agency issued a blistering report in 2022 that found that police had long engaged in a pattern of racial discrimination.
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Officers plead guilty in DWI police corruption probe in Albuquerque, NM
Topics in Legal News |
2025/02/09 20:23
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Two former Albuquerque police officers pleaded guilty Friday to federal charges of racketeering, extortion and accepting bribes in a sweeping corruption investigation into a scheme that allegedly allowed people arrested for driving while intoxicated to evade conviction, according to court records.
The former officers worked under the Albuquerque Police Department’s driving while intoxicated unit and acknowledged conspiring with attorney Ricardo Mendez in a yearslong scheme. Federal investigators say that Mendez’s law firm offered gifts and thousands of dollars in bribes to officers in exchange for having his clients’ cases dismissed.
Officers Joshua Montaño and Honorio Alba signed agreements to plead guilty and cooperate with investigators in exchange for leniency on charges that might otherwise result in lengthy prison sentences. Attorneys for Montaño and Alba did not immediately respond to phone and email messages.
Mendez last month pleaded guilty to a slew of federal charges that include racketeering and bribery.
Clients would pay Mendez or his associate an attorney retainer fee in cash, court records said. Then Mendez would pay officers in cash — $5,000 or more — or in the form of gifts or legal services to not appear in court as a necessary witness to the driving incident, resulting in the dismissal of the case.
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Pentagon chief loses bid to reject 9/11 plea deals
Topics in Legal News |
2025/01/01 19:59
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A military appeals court has ruled against Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s effort to throw out the plea deals reached for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two other defendants in the 9/11 attacks, a U.S. official said.
The decision puts back on track the agreements that would have the three men plead guilty to one of the deadliest attacks on the United States in exchange for being spared the possibility of the death penalty. The attacks by al-Qaida killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001, and helped spur U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in what the George W. Bush administration called its war on terror.
The military appeals court released its ruling Monday night, according to the U.S. official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Military prosecutors and defense attorneys for Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the attacks, and two co-defendants reached the plea agreements after two years of government-approved negotiations. The deals were announced late last summer.
Supporters of the plea agreements see them as a way of resolving the legally troubled case against the men at the U.S. military commission at Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba. Pretrial hearings for Mohammed, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi have been underway for more than a decade.
Much of the focus of pretrial arguments has been on how torture of the men while in CIA custody in the first years after their detention may taint the overall evidence in the case.
Within days of news of the plea deal this summer, Austin issued a brief order saying he was nullifying them.
He cited the gravity of the 9/11 attacks in saying that as defense secretary, he should decide on any plea agreements that would spare the defendants the possibility of execution.
Defense lawyers said Austin had no legal authority to reject a decision already approved by the Guantanamo court’s top authority and said the move amounted to unlawful interference in the case.
The military judge hearing the 9/11 case, Air Force Col. Matthew McCall, had agreed that Austin lacked standing to throw out the plea bargains after they were underway. That had set up the Defense Department’s appeal to the military appeals court.
Austin now has the option of taking his effort to throw out the plea deals to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Separately, the Pentagon said it had repatriated one of the longest-held detainees at the Guantanamo military prison, a Tunisian man who U.S. authorities approved for transfer more than a decade ago.
Ridah bin Saleh al-Yazidi’s return to Tunisia leaves 26 men at Guantanamo. That’s down from a peak population of about 700 Muslim men detained abroad and brought to the prison in the years after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Al-Yazidi’s repatriation leaves 14 men awaiting transfer to other countries after U.S. authorities waived any prosecution and cleared them as security risks.
The Biden administration, pressed by rights groups to free remaining Guantanamo detainees held without charge, transferred out three other men this month. The U.S. says it is searching for suitable and stable countries willing to receive the remaining 14.
In a statement, the U.S. military said it had worked with authorities in Tunisia for the “responsible transfer” of al-Yazidi. He had been a prisoner at Guantanamo since 2002, when the U.S. began sending Muslim detainees taken abroad there.
Al-Yazidi is the last of a dozen Tunisian men once held at Guantanamo.
Of those remaining at Guantanamo, seven — including Mohammed and his 9/11 co-defendants — face active cases. Two others of the 26 total have been convicted and sentenced by the military commission.
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Supreme Court rejects Wisconsin parents’ challenge to school guidance
Topics in Legal News |
2024/12/11 10:11
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The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from Wisconsin parents who wanted to challenge a school district’s guidance for supporting transgender students.
The justices, acting in a case from Eau Claire, left in place an appellate ruling dismissing the parents’ lawsuit.
Three justices, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas, would have heard the case. That’s one short of what is needed for full review by the Supreme Court.
Parents with children in Eau Claire public schools argued in a lawsuit that the school district’s policy violates constitutional protections for parental rights and religious freedom.
Sixteen Republican-led states had urged the court to take up the parents’ case.
Lower courts had found that the parents lacked the legal right, or standing. Among other reasons, the courts said no parent presented evidence that the policy affected them or their children.
A unanimous three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals included two judges Republican Donald Trump appointed during his first term.
But Alito described the case as presenting “a question of great and growing national importance,” whether public school districts violate parents’ rights when they encourage students to transition or assist in the process without parental consent or knowledge.
“Administrative Guidance for Gender Identity Support” encourages transgender students to reach out to staff members with concerns and instructs employees to be careful who they talk to about a student’s gender identity, since not all students are “out” to their families. |
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