On June 19, the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) decided to quietly roll back protections for workers, revising its 

What is the MCAD? 

The MCAD is a state agency that is required by law to investigate complaints of discrimination in housing, in the workplace, in places of public accommodation, and in higher education admissions. Employees who experience discrimination are required to file their claims with the MCAD before they can bring those claims in court. The MCAD process moves through two stages: first there is an investigation that results in a decision that there either is probable cause to believe discrimination occurred (a finding for the employee) or there is not probable cause to believe discrimination occurred (a finding for the employer). In fiscal year 2025 the MCAD found for the employer 85% of the time at this stage. When there is a finding of probable cause, the case then moves to conciliation, where the MCAD tries to resolve the case with agreement by the parties. If conciliation is not successful the case moves to a public hearing, where the Commission hears the case and decides whether the employer violated the law and what remedies to impose. 

In a 2021-2022 survey of students across 133 colleges and universities, 

Unfortunately, at the same time in young adults’ lives when mental health struggles can appear and/or increase in severity, those young adults are often in college away from their homes and families. Additionally, as we have previously discussed, while colleges and universities have significant legal relationships with students, their duties with respect to students experiencing mental health issues have historically been limited by Massachusetts courts. 

For example, in 2018, in Dzung Duy Nguyen v. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) held that, “[w]here a university has actual knowledge of . . . a student’s stated plans or intentions to commit suicide, the university has a duty to take reasonable measures under the circumstances to protect the student from self-harm.” Yet, this decision does not impose any duty on a college or university that has more general knowledge of a student’s suicidality, such as knowledge of a student’s depression. In Nguyen, that line of reasoning resulted in the SJC holding that Massachusetts Institute of Technology had no duty to protect a student who died by suicide because that student “never communicated by words or actions to any MIT employee that he had stated plans or intentions to commit suicide.” Also relevant to this holding were the facts that Nguyen was a twenty-five-year-old graduate student living off campus rather than “a young student living in a campus dormitory under daily observation,” and that Nguyen repeatedly expressed that he wanted to keep his mental health struggles separate from his academic life. 

Last month, the Massachusetts State House passed a bill (H. 5366) that would have the Commonwealth join fifteen other states in banning cell phones in public schools statewide and 

Proponents of these policies argue that they are a step in the right direction in curbing compulsive cell phone and social media use among children and teens, which may have negative impacts on mental health and cognitive development. 

On the other hand, the age verification component of the bill has faced criticism at both the state and national level, with opponents describing the age verification requirement as draconian and legal advocacy groups arguing that the requirement would violate the First Amendment.

In a decision issued this week, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) held that victims of sexual harassment in academic settings may sue individual harassers directly under G.L. c. 214, § 1C—the state’s sexual harassment statute. The ruling reverses a lower court decision that had dismissed a sexual harassment claim filed by Dr. Kristin Knouse against her former instructor, dissertation committee member, and fellowship director, Dr. David Sabatini. The new ruling clarifies that students and trainees have a statutory right to be free from sexual harassment during their education and may sue individual teachers, faculty, staff, or other students to enforce that right. Naomi Shatz and I filed an 

Background  

The underlying dispute arose between Sabatini, a prominent biologist formerly at the Whitehead Institute and MIT, and Knouse, a former graduate student at MIT and later a Whitehead Fellow. Knouse alleged in internal reports to Whitehead that Sabatini engaged in sexualized comments while he was her instructor and a member of her dissertation committee, that they later had a sexual relationship while he had power over her career, and that Sabatini’s inappropriate conduct continued even after the relationship ended. An internal survey and independent investigation found that engaging in sexual discussions was a requirement for success in Sabatini’s lab and that the lab was dominated by a “culture of fear and retaliation.” When the independent investigation found violations of Whitehead’s sexual harassment policy, Sabatini separated from both Whitehead and MIT. 

To establish a viable claim of employment discrimination or retaliation, an employee must show, among other things, that they suffered an “adverse employment action.” While termination is a quintessential adverse action, less serious actions are also legally sufficient. In a recent decision in 

Background 

In Walsh, the plaintiff, Joanne Walsh, worked as an information technology employee for HNTB Corporation in its Boston office for over 25 years. In 2019, when she was approximately 54 years old, she and another older employee in the same job were placed on nearly identical PIPs. During the course of the PIP, Walsh’s team leader told her that she could “be replaced with younger, cheaper people.” Walsh successfully completed the PIP but then felt that her working conditions deteriorated and she was treated differently than younger employees in the same job. Ten months after completing the PIP, Ms. Walsh and the other older employee who had been placed on the same PIP resigned. Ms. Walsh subsequently sued HNTB under both state and federal law, alleging that it had discriminated against her based on her age by placing her on a PIP and then constructively discharging her. The District Court found for HNTB on the discrimination claims, holding that no reasonable factfinder could conclude that Ms. Walsh’s PIP constituted an adverse employment action under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (“ADEA”) or M.G.L. c. 151B,. The District Court applied the same analysis to Ms. Walsh’s ADEA and 151B claims, noting that “the standards applied for age discrimination claims under federal law and Massachusetts state law are so similar that both claims can be analyzed together.” On March 13, 2026, the First Circuit affirmed the lower court’s ruling. In doing so, it provided important guidance on the proper adverse-employment-action standard and on when an employer-imposed PIP may satisfy that standard. 

Background 

In Hidalgo v. Watch City Construction Corp., the plaintiff, Andres Hidalgo, who worked as a laborer, sued his employer for violations of the Massachusetts Wage Act and related claims. Mr. Hidalgo alleged that he had only been paid for two out of the six weeks he worked and sought $3,738.67 in lost wages. Due to the Wage Act’s treble damages provision, these unpaid wages would amount to $11,216.01 in damages. Watch City denied Mr. Hidalgo’s allegations and brought counterclaims for, among other things, malicious prosecution and abuse of process. Mr. Hidalgo brought a special motion to dismiss Watch City’s counterclaims under the anti-SLAPP statute, arguing that the claims were brought solely to discourage him from continuing with his lawsuit. After a judge denied Mr. Hidalgo’s motion to dismiss, the Massachusetts Appeals Court reversed the decision and ordered the dismissal of Watch City’s counterclaims. 

On March 2, 2026, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) heard oral arguments in 

Post-Bruen 2nd Amendment cases in Massachusetts  

The Thomson case represents yet another chapter in this rapidly evolving area of the law. Since the Supreme Court decided Bruen in 2022, Massachusetts courts have grappled with its proper application. As we have noted, in Bruen, the Supreme Court adopted a history- and tradition-focused test for determining the validity of weapons regulations, directing Courts to look at whether the regulation is “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of [weapons] regulation.” In United States v. Rahimi, which was decided in 2024, the Supreme Court upheld the regulation of a federal statute prohibiting persons subject to qualifying domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms and provided further guidance in how the lower courts should interpret the principles it outlined in Bruen. In its decision in Rahimi the Court noted that valid gun regulations did not need be a “dead ringer” in relation to historical analogues, or have a “historical twin,” to be valid.  

I 

Ongoing Legal Battles 

Though their legal battle is far from complete, Harvard University has found the most success in suing the Trump administration to restore funding. In April 2025, Harvard, and unions representing Harvard faculty and graduate workers, sued the administration for cutting $2.2. billion in funding to the university and its affiliated hospitals that month. The administration argued that these cuts were justified under Title VI because Harvard had supposedly failed to respond appropriately to antisemitism on campus. In September 2025, a federal judge found that these cuts were illegal because, among other issues, the administration did not follow the proper procedure for withdrawing federal grants under Title VI. While this decision restored the flow of federal funding to Harvard for now, the administration has appealed the decision—leaving open the possibility of a reinstatement of the devastating cuts. UCLA won a similar victory last fall when a judge blocked the administration’s proposed funding freeze to that university based on its alleged concerns around antisemitism, transgender athletes, and DEI initiatives. While the administration initially appealed that decision, it dropped the appeal last month. 

Do commercial AI tools always have accurate legal information?

The short answer to this is no. AI tools are known to “hallucinate” or make up plausible-seeming responses that are in fact not based on anything. This is very common in the legal field, where AI tools will invent court cases in response to searches for legal authority on certain points, or will attribute fictional quotes and holdings to real cases. In the last couple of years, many lawyers have faced sanctions for submitting documents to courts that contain hallucinated cases. Just this month a company sued OpenAI, arguing that the company engaged in the unauthorized practice of law when ChatGPT encouraged a woman to try to re-open a settled lawsuit and then generated the pleadings she used in court. Some states are taking steps to prevent AI tools from providing legal advice. A bill in New York would ban chatbots from giving legal or medical advice, and give people a right to sue companies whose chatbots violate the law. As with any information generated by AI tools, it is important to check any AI output about laws or legal cases against actual databases to verify that the information is correct.

If I use AI to develop a summary of my case for an attorney, is that summary privileged?

When it comes to protecting documents from disclosure to the opposing side in a legal case, there are two important protections to understand: the attorney-client privilege and the work product protection. Many people know about the attorney-client privilege, which protects private communications between an attorney and someone seeking legal advice (even if they are not officially a client yet). This privilege generally only applies to confidential communications between the attorney and client; in most cases if a third party joins the conversation the privilege is waived. The work product protection protects documents that are prepared in anticipation of litigation. Just like the attorney-client privilege, this protection can be waived if the materials are showed to a third party in a way that makes it likely the materials could end up in the hands of the legal adversary.

What does this mean for people using AI? On February 10 two federal judges came to opposite conclusions about whether a litigant’s AI prompts and responses had to be disclosed to the other side in litigation. In New York, a judge in the Southern District addressed whether a defendants’ communications with AI, seized by the government pursuant to a search warrant, could be protected from inspection (U.S. v. Heppner). The judge held that neither the attorney-client privilege nor the work-product protection applied to those materials. In his written opinion memorializing the decision, the judge reasoned (1) there no attorney-client privilege because the defendant’s communications with Claude were not with an attorney, (2) there was no expectation of confidentiality in the communications with Claude because the terms of use make clear that Claude reserves the right to disclose data to third parties and to use people’s inputs for training; and (3) because the lawyer did not direct the defendant to use Claude, he wasn’t using it for the purpose of obtaining legal advice. The judge read the scope of the work product protection narrowly and found it did not apply because the AI documents were not prepared at the behest of counsel and did not reflect the lawyer’s case strategy.

That same day in a civil case in the Eastern District of Michigan, a judge granted a self-represented plaintiff’s motion to protect information about her use of AI tools in connection with the litigation. The judge in that case (Warner v. Gilbarco, Inc.) found that the work product doctrine protected the plaintiff’s AI searches made in conjunction with her litigation. The judge held that the work product doctrine protects parties’ ability to use AI tools just as they use more traditional tools to prepare for litigation. The judge also noted that AI programs are “tools, not persons,” and the protection over work product is only waived when the work product is disclosed in a way that is likely to get it into the hands of a litigant’s adversary. He found that entering work product into a LLM was not likely to result in disclosure of the work product to an adversary.

Two district court decisions cannot tell us much about how this law will develop, nor whether it will develop uniformly across the country. In Massachusetts, for example, the work product protection does not depend on documents being created “at the behest” of counsel, as the New York court held was necessary for the protection to attach. Instead, where litigants create documents “because of” existing or anticipated litigation those documents are protected by the work product doctrine. Factors such as whether the AI tools save, train on, and might disclose inputs may be relevant to determinations about how these protections apply, as do the specific factual circumstances surrounding why and how a litigant used AI tools.

What are the takeaways from these cases?

Technology develops more quickly than the law, and courts are just starting to decide how to handle generative AI in litigation. The most important lesson from this rapidly developing landscape is that you should always speak to a lawyer before putting information about your case into an AI tool, and review legal information provided by AI tools through a critical lens.

If you are looking to speak to a lawyer about your criminal, employment, or academic legal issues please contact us.

* Our blogs are written by the firm’s attorneys, without the use of AI or ghostwriters 

Earlier this week, the Supreme Judicial Court issued a decision on the rights of public employee whistleblowers. The decision clarified what activity is protected under the Massachusetts Whistleblower Act, G. L. c. 149, § 185 (“MWA”), and addressed whether a public employee who is partially responsible for wrongful conduct, but reports the wrongful conduct, can still seek protection under the MWA.

Background 

In Galvin v. Roxbury Community College, the plaintiff, Thomas Galvin, was the college’s primary campus security authority and was responsible for the school’s compliance with the Clery Act, a federal law that requires colleges and universities that receive federal financial aid to disclose crime statistics to the U.S. Department of Education annually. In August 2010, the college’s HR director received two complaints from a student alleging that she had been sexually assaulted on campus by two college professors in previous years. When Galvin asked whether there were any reported crimes that needed to be disclosed to comply with the Clery Act, the HR director failed to disclose these complaints. In November 2010, after learning of the complaints and asking his supervisor about whether they should be disclosed, he was again told that there was nothing to disclose. The reporting responsibility ultimately rested with Galvin, who decided not to disclose the allegations in the college’s 2010 Clery Act report. On the same day, Galvin’s supervisor arranged for the student who made the allegations to be provided with a scholarship for the remaining balance of her semester bill.  

In early 2011, Galvin met with Department of Education employees to seek guidance on reporting the two assault allegations and compliance with the Clery Act; the employees told him that they were unsure about his situation and that they would get back to him. In July 2011, Galvin met with staff from the State Auditor’s office and told them about the assault allegations, the college’s failure to report the allegations, and the scholarship given to the complaining student. The State Auditor’s staff notified the college’s chair of the board of trustees about Galvin’s disclosures, which began a formal investigation. That investigation determined that the college’s failure to report the allegations violated the Clery Act.  Two months after the investigation concluded, Galvin received a negative performance evaluation largely due to his role in failing to ensure Clery Act compliance. One month later, he was terminated. 

Lower Court  

Galvin sued the college for wrongful termination in violation of the MWA. To make out a claim under the MWA, public employees are required to show that (1) they engaged in protected activity, (2) an adverse action was taken against them by their employer because of the protected activity, and (3) the adverse action caused the employee damages. Here, the motion judge made two primary determinations: Galvin was a whistleblower as a matter of law because he reasonably believed the college’s failure to report the student’s allegations violated the Clery Act, and the question of whether Galvin was terminated because of his whistleblowing activity, rather than because of his own performance deficiencies, was a question for the jury to decide. The jury agreed with Galvin, concluding that he was indeed terminated because of his whistleblowing activity, and awarded him $980,000 in damages. The college appealed the judge’s decision granting summary judgment on the question of whether Galvin engaged in protected activity, arguing that that question should have been decided by a jury. 

SJC Decision 

In its opinion, the Supreme Judicial Court agreed with the motion judge’s conclusions and emphasized three points.  

First, as to the MWA’s protected activity requirement, “where the activity objected to is undisputably illegal, nothing further is required to establish that the employee engaged in protected activity for maintaining a claim under [the MWA].” Here, the college’s failure to report the two sexual assault allegations were “undisputably illegal” because the college itself recognized that the allegations should have been reported to the Department of Education and the failure to report occurred repeatedly, as the student made multiple allegations over the course of several years. The court noted that where the legality of the activity was disputed, or an employee’s belief in the activity’s legality erroneous, the question of whether the employee engaged in protected activity is a “more complex” question. 

Second, a public employee whistleblower does not lose MWA protection even if they are involved in the wrongful activity. Stripping whistleblower protections from employees involved in the wrongdoing would discourage the revelation of that wrongdoing, which is contrary to the statute’s purpose. And, as the Court pointed out, employee involvement in the wrongdoing is not uncommon; it is often how employees learn about wrongful activity in the first place. The employee’s own misconduct, however, would factor into the question of whether they were terminated because of their whistleblowing activity or for their role in the misconduct. 

Third, for an employee to establish that they engaged in protected activity, they must show that their objecting activity was based on a reasonable belief that the employer’s actions are unlawful. This reasonable belief requirement is automatically satisfied where the activity in question is undisputedly illegal. Contrary to the college’s position, an employee must only show that their belief that the activity was illegal is in “good faith” when that belief is erroneous. When the objection is “undisputably unlawful,” as it was here, the employee does not have to show good faith. 

The Court’s decision is a positive step in bolstering whistleblower protections and protecting the rights of public employees to report illegal or unsafe actions by their employer without fear of reprisal.  

If you believe that you have been retaliated against for engaging in whistleblower activity, or if you have another workplace legal concern, contact our employment attorneys at (617) 742-6020. 

* Our blogs are written by the firm’s attorneys, without the use of AI or ghostwriters