Over the last few years high-profile age discrimination lawsuits have rocked the tech industry – perhaps not surprising as the average tech-worker is 5 years younger than the average non-tech worker. (State of Startups). Big names like IBM, Google, and HP have been on the defensive end of many of these claims, ultimately paying out millions in settlements (Gurchieck, SHRM; Riggio, DiversityInc). Most notably, IBM was the subject of a rare multi-year Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) investigation that found more than 85 percent of redundancy and rolling layoffs impacted older employees, age 40 or older, between 2013-2018 (Dorrian, Bloomberg Law; Callaham, Forbes). The investigation confirmed a pattern of systemic age discrimination, where IBM pre-selected older employees for layoffs and had managers alter their performance evaluations to justify their firing, giving adversely impacted former employees a strong basis to file age discrimination claims (Dorrian, Bloomberg Law).

As our economy has battled a global pandemic, investors and shareholders have been on a roller coaster ride as stock prices have fluctuated, and corporations have had to quickly pivot and change how they conduct business. From the Justice Department investigating senators on both sides of the aisle for insider trading to companies trying to buy-back stock, fears of how the COVID-19 pandemic will impact our markets and investment portfolios have underscored corporate trading practices. However, in the context of a global pandemic or other emergencies that can drastically affect the market, do our insider trading laws have the effect we expect them to?