Hunton Employment & Labor Perspectives

On July 7, 2026, the Ninth Circuit heard oral argument over California Senate Bill 399 (“SB 399”), the state’s “captive audience” law, which prohibits employers from requiring employees to attend meetings on certain political or religious topics, including union-related issues.

Massachusetts employers received a meaningful reprieve this month when Governor Maura Healey’s proposal to tighten the Commonwealth’s noncompete statute was dropped from the state’s economic development legislation. 

Occupational heat is no longer just a workplace safety issue.  It is now a theory of boardroom liability. 

The federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (“WARN Act”) was enacted in 1988 to help protect employees, their families, and communities from the sudden and potentially severe impact of large-scale company closures and layoffs.

On June 29, 2026, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a landmark decision overruling a 90-year-old Supreme Court precedent and significantly expanding presidential power to remove members of independent agencies. In Trump v. Slaughter, No. 25-332, the Supreme Court held that the “for-cause” removal protections applicable to commissioners of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are unconstitutional and inconsistent with the separation of powers doctrine. Although the Supreme Court’s decision concerned FTC commissioners, its reasoning is likely to have broader consequences for other multimember agencies whose leaders have traditionally been protected from at-will removal. For employers, the most immediate implications may be at agencies such as the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), where changes in leadership could now occur more quickly and bring faster shifts in enforcement priorities, regulatory policy, and litigation risk.

Joint-employer liability has long fallen short of what unions and labor advocates seek: direct liability for manufacturers, contractors, and brands, which they view as necessary to drive meaningful change.  In recent years, activists have adopted a layered litigation strategy, invoking laws unrelated to employment, including consumer protection, unfair competition, and anti-trafficking statutes in the United States and abroad, to impose liability on upstream entities for the conduct of downstream employers.  These theories rely on independent statutory duties arising from the company’s own conduct, representations, or knowledge.  The focus shifts from who controls workers to who benefits from the alleged mistreatment.

On June 9, 2026, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Faster Labor Contracts Act, H.R. 5408.  The bill now moves to the Senate.  If enacted and signed into law, it could significantly change how employers negotiate first collective bargaining agreements with newly recognized unions, by replacing today’s open-ended process under the National Labor Relations Act with an expedited framework that could end in binding arbitration. 

Effective April 18, 2026, New York amended its General Business Law to limit employers’ use of a person’s consumer credit history in certain hiring and employment decisions.  In doing so, New York State builds on the precedent set by New York City and several other states with similar laws.

Virginia has enacted a wave of significant employment laws that will affect employers throughout 2026 and beyond.

Over the last few years, employers adjusted to an expanding patchwork of pay transparency laws requiring salary ranges in job postings. Now, lawmakers are moving beyond requiring compensation disclosures and into the next phase of hiring transparency regulation: “ghost jobs” and artificial intelligence disclosures.