The National Journal
On June 15, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that COVID-19 does not qualify as a “natural disaster” under the federal Workers’ Adjustment and Retraining Notification (“WARN”) Act, effectively foreclosing one important argument used by employers in defense of COVID-19-related WARN lawsuits. As this is the only appellate court to affirmatively interpret WARN’s “natural disaster” exception, barring a split by other circuits, this case sets an important precedent in ongoing COVID-19-related WARN litigation, as well as WARN suits related to future pandemics.
In the case before the Fifth Circuit, employees of a Texas oil “fracking” company filed a class action alleging that the company violated the WARN Act after the company terminated them without any advance notice. The employees were terminated on March 18, 2020, due to the crash in the price of oil after the declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic as a national emergency caused widespread COVID-related lockdowns and a precipitous drop in the demand for oil. The employees were provided with written notice on the date of their termination invoking the WARN “unforeseeable business circumstances” exception, and the company also filed WARN notices with the Texas Department of Labor.
Read more at
https://www.natlawreview.com/article/fifth-circuit-holds-covid-not-natural-disaster-under-warn-act
