Research

Publications by Year

2026

• Depoliticizing 401(k) Disaster Access: Ending the Rigged Presidential Disaster Declaration Lottery (NYU Environmental Law Journal, Forthcoming). This article exposes how absolute presidential discretion under the Stafford Act turns penalty-free 401(k) natural disaster relief into a mechanism for political retaliation. While the SECURE 2.0 Act permits disaster survivors to access vital financial lifelines—such as Qualified Disaster Recovery Distributions and specialized loans—this relief remains entirely hostage to a major disaster declaration by the White House. Highlighting empirical data and historical examples of presidents using declaration denials to punish states with opposing political alignments, the paper demonstrates how the current framework subjects taxpayers to presidential caprice. To eliminate this gatekeeping bottleneck, the article proposes a historic legislative shift that establishes a localized governor’s trigger, ensuring a survivor’s financial recovery is dictated by the reality of the disaster on the ground rather than the political whims of the executive branch. Draft available upon request.
• The Climate Risk Transfer That Defines the Gig Economy (Co-authored with Joshua P. Fershée)(Georgetown Environmental Law Review, Forthcoming). This article exposes how platform companies utilize independent contractor classification and algorithmic management to transform human safety into a tradeable commodity during extreme weather events. It examines the mechanics of “climate-risk transfer,” analyzing how platforms deploy financial incentives like weather impact fees alongside algorithmic performance penalties to coerce vulnerable drivers into working during hazardous storms and extreme heat. By situating these practices within environmental law’s broader concern with externalized risk, the paper demonstrates how the gig economy perpetuates a mobile environmental justice crisis that disproportionately harms low-income and minority populations. Ultimately, the study delivers a vital regulatory framework urging administrative agencies to expand the legal definition of environmental harm to include climate-intensified working conditions mediated by private algorithmic governance. Draft available upon request.
• Nest Eggs and Lifelines: The Overlooked Strain of Economic Volatility on 401(k) Participants, 7 Corp. & Bus. L.J. 1 (2026). This article examines the severe, hidden strains that macroeconomic policies—specifically tariffs and supply-side constraints—place on 401(k) participants by driving up everyday living costs. It details how soaring inflation shrinks real income, forcing workers to navigate a dual-purpose crisis where their retirement accounts must simultaneously function as emergency capital. By evaluating how these spiraling costs compel participants to access early lifelines, such as penalty-free hardship withdrawals or distributions for disaster recovery, the paper exposes how broader economic instability structurally disrupts long-term retirement wealth.

2025

• Vesting Villainy, 28 U. Pa. J. Bus. L. 108 (2025). This article spearheads the national movement to eliminate vesting schedules entirely from 401(k) plans. Analyzing the deep policy implications of retirement wealth forfeiture, the paper utilizes examples of “corporate villains” like Amazon and Home Depot to demonstrate how pervasively these schedules flout retirement policy. The study proves that the continued use of vesting schedules broadly hinders nearly all segments of society, placing an unconscionable and disproportionate burden on women, lower socioeconomic workers, people of color, entrepreneurs, and individuals facing pre-retirement emergencies such as domestic violence.
• Promoting Financial Empowerment via 401(k) Plan Domestic Ause Victim Distributions George Washington Bus. & Fin. L. Rev. Online (2025). Highlighting that financial abuse occurs in nearly 99% of domestic violence cases, this article evaluates how Section 314 of the SECURE 2.0 Act provides a critical pathway to independence through penalty-free 401(k) domestic abuse victim distributions. The piece details how accessing up to $10,000 or 50% of their vested balance provides victims with the immediate, liquid capital required to safely escape abusive environments. To ensure these statutory protections function effectively in practice, the paper urges plan sponsors and employers to eliminate structural workplace barriers—such as complex verification hurdles, unvested matching losses, and spousal consent loopholes—that trap victims in predatory cycles.
• Benefits Washing, 113 Georgetown L. J. Online (2025). This essay introduces the term “benefits washing” to describe how major American employers systematically provide vague, fragmented, or deceptive information to make their compensation packages appear superior to reality. The practice distorts the modern job market through three primary mechanics: detail omission, attention deflection, and deceptive manipulation across critical areas like 401(k) plans, parental leave, and remote work policies. By analyzing the severe limitations of existing legal remedies available to misled workers, the piece exposes how benefits washing actively drains labor wealth and deepens structural wage gaps.

2024

• Benefits Transparency, 108 Marq. L. Rev. 37 (2024). Although employee benefits account for roughly one-fourth of worker compensation, modern equal pay and pay transparency statutes systematically fail to mandate detailed benefit parameters in job postings. This article argues that broad discretion allows companies to hide restrictive structural features of employer retirement plans, heavily disadvantaging jobseekers who assume 401(k) plan architectures are uniform across the market. To eliminate this information asymmetry, the paper calls for robust government mandates requiring the explicit, standardized disclosure of critical 401(k) details—including employer matching percentages, calculation metrics, and specific vesting timelines—backed by enforceable regulatory penalties.
• The Effects of 401(k) Vesting Schedules—in Numbers, 134 Yale L. J. F. 1 (2024) (with Tim Azizkhan, Cassidy R. Prince, and Luke Gorman). This empirical study analyzes a dataset of 909 large single-employer plans to document the vast scale of retirement wealth lost under employer vesting rules. The data reveals that in a single year across these plans, over 1.8 million participants left their jobs with 0% of their employer contributions vested, while total plan forfeitures surpassed $1.5 billion. The study establishes that over 82% of these clawed-back funds were recycled internally by employers to directly offset their own future matching contribution obligations rather than serving their ostensible purpose of driving worker retention. Ultimately, the paper provides the statistical baseline proving how vesting schedules distort public retirement policy and degrade the wealth accumulation of lower-income and minority laborers.
• An LLC by Any Other Name is Still Not a Corporation, 54 Seton Hall L. Rev. 1105 (2024) (with Joshua P. Fershée). This article documents the widespread and structurally damaging practice of conflating Limited Liability Companies (LLCs) with corporations, specifically focusing on the common misuse of the phrase “limited liability corporation.” By analyzing a massive dataset of legal documents and judicial opinions, the study reveals that this terminology error is routinely perpetuated by courts, attorneys, and automated AI models alike. The paper demonstrates how this conceptual blending results in highly unpredictable and unjust legal outcomes—particularly within veil-piercing and jurisdictional boundaries—and delivers a comprehensive framework to enforce precise entity distinctions across the legal profession.

2023

• Deducting Dobbs: The Tax Treatment of Abortion-Related Travel Benefits, 98 Tul. L. Rev. 1 (2023). In the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, numerous private employers expanded their employee benefit plans to reimburse travel expenses for out-of-state reproductive healthcare. This article evaluates the complex federal income tax implications of these travel benefits under Internal Revenue Code Sections 162 and 213, analyzing whether they qualify as deductible business expenses or tax-free medical care. Crucially, the paper exposes the severe legal and financial landmines facing corporate sponsors as emerging state-level criminalization laws collide directly with federal ERISA preemption boundaries.
• ERISA Plan Fiduciaries and ESG Factors, The Regulatory Review, A publication of the Penn Law Program on Regulation, Apr. 26, 2023. This article analyzes the intense legal uncertainty surrounding how retirement plan managers incorporate Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors into their investment selections. It evaluates the Department of Labor’s shifting regulatory definitions of fiduciary duty across different presidential administrations, exposing the immense compliance whiplash facing plan sponsors. Ultimately, the piece highlights the core structural tension under ERISA: balancing modern, long-term sustainability risks against the strict, traditional mandate to maximize purely financial returns for plan participants.

2022

• Megacompany Employee Churn Meets 401(k) Vesting Schedules: A Sabotage on Workers’ Retirement Wealth, 41 Yale L. & Pol’y Rev. 1 (2022). This article spotlights the severe, hidden retirement penalties that occur when high-turnover megacompanies—such as Amazon and Home Depot—overlay rigid 401(k) vesting schedules onto known high-turnover employees. By tracking plan data, the study documents how multi-year cliff and graded vesting rules structurally ensure that predominantly low-wage and minority warehouse workers terminate employment before ever owning their employer matching contributions. The paper argues that exploiting this dynamic to generate corporate forfeiture savings directly contradicts public retirement security policies. It provides a comprehensive regulatory framework to prohibit high-churn megacompanies from using vesting schedules entirely, forcing a systemic shift toward immediate 100% vesting.
• Employee Turnover & Partial Plan Terminations, 2022 N.Y.U. Rev. of Emp. Bens. & Exec. Comp. 6-1 (2022). This chapter delivers a comprehensive technical guide on the mechanics of IRS partial plan terminations, which legally trigger immediate 100% vesting for affected plan participants when a workforce faces a turnover rate of 20% or greater. It details how economic upheaval and employer-initiated severances collide with ERISA compliance, laying out exact methods for defining applicable time periods and calculating turnover metrics. By tracking the short- and long-term litigation risks facing plan sponsors, the piece provides employers with a vital blueprint to recognize when routine employee churn shifts into a mandatory vesting event, protecting mobile workers from forfeiture windfalls.
• The Shoe’s About to Drop for the Gig Economy: Understanding the Current Worker Classification Landscape in Preparation for a Changed World, 52 Mem. L. Rev. 627 (2022). This article serves as a comprehensive global compendium analyzing how the economic and existential instabilities of app-based work directly trigger adverse physical and mental health outcomes for gig workers. To map out the shifting legal landscape, the study details an exhaustive array of regulatory tests, evaluating traditional U.S. federal standards alongside pioneering city-level ordinances and international frameworks like the European Commission’s Proposed Directive. By synthesizing these diverse state, municipal, and global testing mechanisms, the paper delivers an essential strategic blueprint for compliance officers and policymakers preparing for the inevitable tightening of upstream corporate employment liabilities.
• The AB5 Experiment – Should States Adopt California’s Worker Classification Law?, 11 Am. Univ. Bus. L. Rev. 43 (2022). Originally designed to correct rampant worker misclassification by automatically reclassifying app-based drivers as employees via the strict “ABC test,” California’s AB5 triggered intense political pushback and a wave of corporate-backed ballot measures like Proposition 22. This article charts how that massive resistance, combined with furious lobbying from various professional groups, fractured the law into a convoluted framework riddled with over 100 occupational exemptions. Utilizing principles of experimental federalism, the paper warns other state and federal policymakers against copying California’s sub-optimal model, proving that premature policy convergence will only delay the national discovery of an effective, functional worker classification standard.

Other

• Facilitating Distinctive and Meaningful Change Within U.S. Law Schools (Part 2): Pursuing Successful Plan Implementation Through Better Resource Management, 18 Univ. New Hamp. L. Rev. 173 (2020) (with Patrick H. Gaughan).
• Partial Termination of Single-Employer Tax Qualified Plans: Clarity or Misappropriated Judicial Decision-Making?, 2 Geo. Mason Indep. L. Rev. 265 (1994) (with Jo Ann Petroziello).