David J. Reis

Reis, a partner and head of Arnold & Porter’s labor and employment practice, has been the editor of the harassment chapter in The Rutter Guide for the past 14 years. As the emphasis on harassment and gender equity issues has grown to include the #MeToo movement and the increased prevalence of equal pay claims, law firms have retained Reis to defend them against such claims.

The state legislature recently asked Reis to testify as an expert on whether California’s current “severe or pervasive” standard to prove hostile workplace sexual harassment is too high. He contended that the problem largely has been a failure to enforce the law. “All the reported conduct we have been reading about involves behavior that is well past the legal line and far exceeds the current standards,” he told lawmakers in January.

In June 2017 female associates at Steptoe & Johnson LLP launched a potential nationwide class action in the Central District under the Equal Pay Act alleging the firm pays them less than male counterparts. Steptoe retained Reis and law partner Dipanwita Amar to defend; the pair moved to compel individual arbitration of the claims. “The big barrier was the 9th Circuit’s Morris decision,” Reis said, citing the circuit’s 2016 ruling favoring class and collective actions under the National Labor Relations Act. He asked U.S. District Judge Otis D. Wright II to stay the action pending the U.S. Supreme Court’s Epic ruling, which would encompass Morris and which — in May — held that the NLRA does not invalidate a class or collective action waiver in an arbitration clause.

“Once the Epic decision came down, plaintiffs counsel conceded and agreed to dismiss. The cases now are headed to single arbitration. That’s a good result,” Reis said. Houck v. Steptoe & Johnson LLP, 2:17-cv-04595 (C.D. Cal., filed June 22, 2017).

Reis, a sports fan who played minor league baseball for the Atlanta Braves while attending law school in the offseason, said he’s developed a niche defending sports stars. “I have a side practice where people try to draw sports figures into barroom altercations,” he said.

Clients include the Oakland Raiders’ cornerback Sean Smith and the Golden State Warriors’ Draymond Green. One plaintiff claimed Smith attacked him outside a Pasadena cantina on July 4, 2017, and that the Raiders were vicariously liable for Smith’s actions because they were within the scope of his employment. Smith is serving a year in jail for the assault, but Reis successfully eliminated the Raiders from the case. Similarly, when a Michigan State University football player alleged that Green assaulted him at an East Lansing restaurant, Reis turned away the player’s efforts to have the case tried in California.

“I’m a big Warriors and Raiders fan,” Reis said. “I’m thrilled to work for them.”

— John Roemer