Chief justice details efforts to combat workplace misconduct
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Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is using his annual report on the federal judiciary to highlight the steps the branch has taken to combat inappropriate conduct in the workplace.
In December 2017, Roberts asked that a working group be put together to examine the judiciary's workplace conduct policies. His request followed news reports about prominent federal appeals court judge Alex Kozinski, who retired following accusations by women, including former law clerks, that he had touched them inappropriately, made lewd comments and shown them pornography.
The working group of judges and judiciary officials that Roberts asked be convened issued a report in June, finding that inappropriate conduct is not widespread among the judiciary branch's 30,000 employees but also is "not limited to a few isolated instances." The group offered a range of recommendations for further action.
Roberts, in his New Year's Eve report, endorsed those recommendations, which focus on revising the codes of conduct the judiciary has for judges and employees, streamlining the process for identifying and correcting misconduct, and expanding training programs aimed at preventing inappropriate behavior.
Roberts did not say anything in the report about the sexual assault allegations that nearly derailed the confirmation of the court's newest justice, Brett Kavanaugh. In testimony before senators in September, psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford alleged that a drunken Kavanaugh groped her and tried to take off her clothes at a party decades ago when they were teenagers. Kavanaugh denied the allegations.
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USCIS Will Begin Accepting CW-1 Petitions for Fiscal Year 2019
On April 2, 2018, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will begin accepting petitions under the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI)-Only Transitional Worker (CW-1) program subject to the fiscal year (FY) 2019 cap. Employers in the CNMI use the CW-1 program to employ foreign workers who are ineligible for other nonimmigrant worker categories. The cap for CW-1 visas for FY 2019 is 4,999.
For the FY 2019 cap, USCIS encourages employers to file a petition for a CW-1 nonimmigrant worker up to six months in advance of the proposed start date of employment and as early as possible within that timeframe. USCIS will reject a petition if it is filed more than six months in advance. An extension petition may request a start date of Oct. 1, 2018, even if that worker’s current status will not expire by that date.
Since USCIS expects to receive more petitions than the number of CW-1 visas available for FY 2019, USCIS may conduct a lottery to randomly select petitions and associated beneficiaries so that the cap is not exceeded. The lottery would give employers the fairest opportunity to request workers, particularly with the possibility of mail delays from the CNMI.
USCIS will count the total number of beneficiaries in the petitions received after 10 business days to determine if a lottery is needed. If the cap is met after those initial 10 days, a lottery may still need to be conducted with only the petitions received on the last day before the cap was met. USCIS will announce when the cap is met and whether a lottery has been conducted.