Legal Briefs: News From Around NH

U.S. Department of Labor is launching an effort to alert families throughout the nation of changes in federal law that now extend the rights to pump breastmilk at work to more women, including those employed as teachers, farmworkers and care workers.

The newly enacted Providing Urgent Maternal Protections for Nursing Mothers Act extends the rights of nursing mothers to have time and a private space to pump breastmilk at work. Under the PUMP Act, more workers in more industries are now protected by the provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The new protections also expand remedies available to these workers if their employers do not comply with the law.

The campaign by the department’s Wage and Hour Division – which enforces the PUMP Act and the FLSA – provides information about worker protections for nursing mothers includes national outreach and a website providing guidance, fact sheets and other resources for workers and employers.

Among the PUMP Act’s provisions is the extension of rights and protections to have break time and space to pump breast milk at work to include millions of working women not previously covered by the FLSA. It also allows working women to

Jay Buckey

take legal action and seek monetary remedies if their employer fails to comply with federal law.

Buckey joins Shaheen & Gordon

Attorney Jay Buckey has joined the to the civil litigation practice group of Shaheen & Gordon, working out of the firm’s Concord office.

Buckey, who previously worked as a managing attorney at the New Hampshire Public Defender, works with clients on a variety of civil matters from representation of individual clients to complex commercial disputes, including in Superior Court and federal District Court. He has also served as an adjunct professor at Vermont Law School, teaching criminal law.

Formella urges Biden to label drug cartels terrorist organizations

Attorney General John M. Formella has joined a coalition of AGs in over 20 states calling on the Biden administration Blinken to designate Mexican drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations under federal law. Doing so will free up resources to confront the deadly opioid crisis with the seriousness it deserves.

In the letter sent Wednesday, the AGs write that cartels, including the Sinaloa cartel and Cartel Jalisco New Generation, import raw materials from China, use them to produce deadly synthetic opioids at low cost, and traffic those poisons across the southwestern border and into U.S. communities.

Designating major cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations would give state and federal law enforcement agencies increased authority to freeze cartel assets, deny entry to cartel members, and allow prosecutors to pursue stricter punishments against those who provide cartels with material support, according to Formella’s office.