Hunton Employment & Labor Perspectives

On October 24, 2024, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a policy statement (known as a Circular) to explain the link between the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”) and employers’ growing use of artificial intelligence to evaluate, rank, and score applicants and employees. 

In an amicus brief filed before the Third Circuit, the EEOC has taken the position that claims of harassment based on gender identity and sexual orientation fall within the scope of the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act (“EFASASHA”).

“Ban-the-Box” legislation has seen steady growth throughout the country for more than two decades.  Currently, there is no federal legislation on the topic for private employers but a good number of states have limited their ability to inquire about or make decisions based on a prospective employee’s criminal background history.

Last year, the EEOC revealed its Strategic Enforcement Plan (“SEP”) for Fiscal Years 2024-2028.  In the SEP, the EEOC stated that a subject matter priority was “the continued underrepresentation of women and workers of color in certain industries and sectors.”  One such industry focus is on workers in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) fields. 

On June 18, 2024, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) released Promising Practices for Preventing Harassment in the Construction Industry (the “Guidance”), which highlights the EEOC’s recommended anti-harassment guidelines for the construction industry.  The initiative is part of the EEOC’s broader effort to address bias in the construction sector amidst significant federal investment through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the CHIPS and Science Act.

On July 2, 2024, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) released a long-awaited proposed rule to prevent heat-related injuries and illnesses in the workplace.  OSHA initiated the rulemaking process in October 2021 as part of its ongoing heat-related illness prevention initiative.

California lawmakers are considering passing a bill that would give employees the “right to disconnect” by ignoring after-hours calls, emails, and other communications from their employers.  The bill, AB 2751, introduced by Assemblyman Matt Haney (D-San Francisco), would add a Section 1198.2 to the Labor Code that would effectively prevent employers from contacting employees outside of working hours, with limited exceptions.

Employers contemplating a forced transfer of a worker will need to grapple with a new standard set out by the US Supreme Court under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the law that makes it unlawful to discriminate against workers based on various protected characteristics. The Supreme Court in Muldrow v. City of St. Louis issued an important ruling that clarifies the evidentiary standard employees must meet when asserting a discriminatory transfer claim against an employer under Title VII.   Prior to the Court’s decision, there was a Circuit split with most courts holding that an employee had to show a significant employment disadvantage to prevail on a claim that their transfer violated Title VII.  In its opinion, the Supreme Court held instead that an employee must show (i) the employer’s action was discriminatory, and (ii) that the employee suffered “some harm” respecting an “identifiable term or condition of employment” to state a claim for discrimination under Title VII.  The majority noted that the Court’s “some harm” standard is a downward departure from the type of evidence that lower courts had traditionally required to show discrimination under Title VII – namely, that an employee must suffer “significant,” “material,” or “serious” harm to have an actionable claim. 

Last week, New York’s Governor signed a bill into law that effectively prohibits employers from accessing employees’ or job applicants’ personal social media accounts. The law goes into effect on March 12, 2024.

When there is a willful violation to the Fair Credit Reporting Act (”FCRA”) consumers can recover either actual damages sustained by the consumer or statutory damages of no less than $100 and not more than $1000. (Punitive damages and attorney fees also are available).  There has been a trend in the district courts examining whether plaintiffs must prove that they suffered actual damage in order to recover statutory damages. Since 2007 several Circuits have reviewed this argument and each has explained that the provision for statutory damages does not require a showing of “actual damages.” The Eleventh Circuit is the most recent to weigh in on this question in Santos v. Healthcare Revenue Recovery Grp., and agrees with its sister Circuits.

On December 6, 2023, the US Supreme Court heard arguments for Muldrow v. City of St. Louis, which may have significant implications for discrimination cases under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Specifically, the Supreme Court in this case could clarify whether Title VII of the Civil Rights Act requires a clear showing of significant disadvantage or tangible harm to have an actionable claim.

On August 29, 2023, the California Court of Appeal issued a new opinion that, once again, changes how parties litigate and settle claims brought under California’s Private Attorneys’ General Act (“PAGA”).  See Robert Lacour v. Marshalls of California, LLC, et al., 94 Cal.App.5th 1172, 313 Cal.Rptr.3d 77.

On June 14, 2023, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed HB 2127, the Texas Regulatory Consistency Act (“TRCA”), into law. Once the TRCA goes into effect on September 1, 2023, it will preclude all municipalities and counties in Texas from adopting or enforcing ordinances regulating conduct with respect to certain subject matters, including labor.

California employers: take notice.  On July 24, 2023, the Office of Administrative Law approved changes to the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) regulations governing how California employers can use and consider criminal history in employment decisions.  These new changes, modifying Cal. Code Regs. Tit. 2, § 11017.1, go into effect on October 1, 2023.

In Harris et. al. v. Medical Transportation Management, Inc. et. al., the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals held that a putative class cannot be certified as an “issue” class under Rule 23(c)(4) without also satisfying the requirements in Rule 23(a) and (b).  This ruling is important because it prohibits putative classes from using the “issue” class mechanism of Rule 23(c)(4) to skirt the important procedural requirements in Rule 23(a) and (b) that are meant to protect both the litigants and absent parties.  The court also encouraged the use of the partial summary judgment mechanism, rather than Rule 23(c)(4), to resolve discrete legal issues common to many class members. 

While the intent of Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act was to improve equality of access to goods and services offered by places of public accommodation, the Plaintiffs’ bar has seized on the law to recruit serial litigants—also known as “professional plaintiffs” or “paid testers”—to repeatedly sue businesses for minor, technical violations without actually seeking to purchase anything at all. 

Last week, the Ninth Circuit issued an opinion in Sharp v. S&S Activewear, L.L.C. where it confirmed that music in the workplace can form the basis of a Title VII sex harassment claim even when it is (1) not directed at any particular individual employee, and (2) offends both female and male employees.

On May 19, 2023, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit became the second circuit court to reject a familiar two-step certification procedure for collective actions under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).  In Clark v. A&L Home Care and Training Center, LLC, the court held that FLSA plaintiffs who seek to represent other employees in a collective action must demonstrate a “strong likelihood” that other employees they seek to represent are “similarly situated” to the lead plaintiffs.  

As discussed in prior blog posts, here, here, and here, pay equity is a hot topic for employee retention and compliance. This principle of equal pay for equal work has been mandated since the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and reiterated in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. More recently, legislators at the federal, state, and local level have increased their focus on pay equity and pay transparency initiatives. Because of this legislative activity, pay equity has also received increased attention from the Plaintiffs’ bar, and in recent years, pay equity lawsuits have been brought with increasing frequency. Against this backdrop, employers face the tough task of navigating a complex patchwork of pay equity laws in order to achieve fair and legally-compliant compensation practices, while ensuring that their compensation decisions can reflect the reality of a workforce with differing job positions, responsibilities, and performance outcomes.

As pay equity has drawn more attention in recent years, employers need to stay abreast of the patchwork of federal, state, and local laws related to pay equity issues. Importantly, employers should understand the varying standards for protected characteristics, appropriate comparators, and accepted defenses under the varying laws of different jurisdictions. At a high level, this post summarizes the federal and state legal frameworks for pay equity claims and highlights the important differences in analyzing such claims.

Employers who conduct background checks on applicants or employees must comply with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), 15 U.S.C. § 1681 et seq.  Among other things, the FCRA requires employers who procure criminal background reports (“consumer reports”) to provide applicants and employees with a Summary of Rights form as prepared by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) when providing them with the FCRA-required pre-adverse action notices. See 15 U.S.C. § 1681b(b)(3)(A)(ii).

The Fourth Circuit issued an opinion in Messer et al. v. Bristol Compressors International, LLC et. al. that should serve as a cautionary tale to employers planning to use severance agreements when implementing layoffs.  There, the court considered three questions.  First, whether Bristol Compressors validly eliminated its severance plan before terminating Plaintiffs’ employment.  Second, whether certain Plaintiffs who signed a Stay Bonus Letter Agreement (“SBLA”) waived their claims against Bristol Compressors.  And third, whether four of the Plaintiffs received adequate notice under the WARN Act before their employment was terminated.

In a recent decision in Perez v. Express Scripts, Inc., the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey determined that plaintiff and a conditionally certified class of 200 members in a misclassification class action were exempt given that they were highly compensated.

As pay equity and transparency continues to trend in the news, states and localities have passed pay disclosure and transparency laws to further assist employees in evaluating whether they are being paid fairly. These laws vary in scope – some require the disclosure of pay ranges on job postings, others require employers to provide the pay scale for a position upon an applicant or employee’s request, and others require employers to automatically provide pay scale information at the time of hire. Despite their differences, all of these pay disclosure laws are aimed at adding transparency to conversations about pay.

On March 22, 2023, the General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or the “Board”), Jennifer Abruzzo, issued a memorandum providing guidance in light of the NLRB’s recent decision in McLaren Macomb, 372 NLRB No. 58 (2023). As previously reported, the Board in McLaren Macomb held that overly broad non-disclosure and non-disparagement provisions in severance agreements violate employee rights under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA or the “Act”). The General Counsel’s memorandum—which is directed to the Board’s regional offices over which she exercises supervisory authority—seeks to clarify the scope of the McLaren Macomb decision, including: the types of provisions that may violate the NLRA; language that may be acceptable in light of the decision; whether the decision applies retroactively to previously executed severance agreements; and the potential applicability of the decision to supervisors. The memorandum is not legally binding, but it does give employers a more informed roadmap for how the Board initially will handle unfair labor practice (“ULP”) charges challenging severance agreements.

Pay equity and transparency have become hot topics across the country as states and the federal government seek to ensure pay equity for employees, regardless of protected class. Federal anti-discrimination laws like the Equal Pay Act and Title VII provide legal recourse for employees who have experienced pay discrimination. As many employers know, federal law prohibits employers from demanding pay confidentiality from employees. Pay transparency laws go a step further and require employers to publish ranges for open positions, adding transparency to the conversations about ...

Avid readers of this blog will recall three prior postings about a wage and hour dispute under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) between an off-shore tool-pusher, Michael Hewitt, and his prior employer, Helix Energy Solutions Group, Inc.  As background, those articles can be found here: 

• Supreme Court Will Consider Helix Day Rate Pay Case
• Cert Filed in Hope Supreme Court Will Reevaluate Fifth Circuit’s FLSA OT Ruling
• Upcoming Fifth Circuit Hearing to Address FLSA Day-Rate Issues

At the core of the dispute was whether Hewitt was entitled to receive an overtime rate for hours ...

Last week, the Ninth Circuit issued a decision holding that California employers can require employees to enter into mandatory arbitration agreements as a condition of their employment.  In the decision, Chamber of Commerce v. Bonta, No. 20-15291 (9th Cir., Feb. 15 2023), a three-judge panel reversed the Ninth Circuit’s own prior decision and found that Assembly Bill 51 (AB 51), which sought to impose criminal and civil penalties on employers who require employees to enter into such agreements, is preempted by federal law.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a case that will impact how employers across the country respond to their employees’ requests for religious accommodation. Depending on how the Court rules, it may become much more difficult for companies to comply with or deny religious accommodations under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

As part of the bill funding the federal government, President Biden signed into law the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) and the PUMP for Nursing Mothers Act (PUMP Act). These relatively unknown laws are important pieces of legislation carrying with them significant changes to the workplace for pregnant employees.

On January 5, 2023, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (“NPRM”) that would “provide that it is an unfair method of competition – and therefore a violation of Section 5 [of the FTC Act] – for an employer to enter into or attempt to enter into a non-compete clause with a worker; [or to] maintain with a worker a non-compete clause . . .”  If this rule becomes final, it would effectively prohibit employers from entering into non-compete agreements—as broadly defined by the proposed rule—with their workers. 

On December 7, 2022, President Joe Biden signed the Speak Out Act (the “Act”), which limits the enforceability of pre-dispute non-disclosure and non-disparagement clauses covering sexual assault and sexual harassment disputes. The bipartisan Act was previously passed by the Senate and the House of Representatives by an overwhelming majority.

Voters in the District of Columbia, Nebraska, and Nevada overwhelmingly approved minimum wage-related ballot initiatives during this year’s midterm elections.  The political movement to establish a $15.00 minimum wage started in 2012 when 200 New York City fast food workers walked off the job demanding better pay and union rights.  Despite inaction by the federal government in the subsequent decade, there continues to be bipartisan support for minimum wage increases, particularly at the state level, as illustrated by the success of these three ballot measures.

On October 24, 2022, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion in Cadena v. Customer Connexx LLC holding that the time employees spend booting up their computers is compensable under the Fair Labor Standards Act (the “FLSA”). The decision reverses a 2021 Nevada district court’s decision that came to the opposite conclusion, holding that time spent initiating computers was not compensable.

Last Thursday, the U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”) published in the Federal Register its newly-proposed rule regarding independent contractor vs. employee classification under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA” or the “Act”).  Businesses have anticipated the release of this proposed rule from the Biden administration’s DOL since the DOL withdrew a more employer-friendly, Trump-era independent contractor rule in May 2021 that had not yet gone into effect.

Court watchers following the ripple effects of groundbreaking wage and hour opinion Swales v. KLLM Transport Services, LLC, 985 F.3d 430 (5th Cir. 2021) (“Swales”) may have gained their first insight into the Supreme Court’s thought process following Chief Justice John Robert’s refusal to pause a conditional collective action certification in Maximus Inc. v. Thomas, et al., No. 22A164, currently pending in the Eastern District of Virginia and following this decision and a failed appeal from the Fourth Circuit.

Earlier this year, Harris County, Texas, which encompasses a substantial majority of the City of Houston, became the sixth Texas city or county to embrace a “ban the box” policy when it adopted the Fair Chance Policy.

Our prior post discussed how Democrats in the House of Representatives sought to amend the Federal Labor Standards Act (FLSA) as part of new proposed legislation called the “Wage Theft Prevention and Wage Recovery Act”. It concluded that the legislation, if enacted, would increase both the frequency and severity of not only FLSA collective actions but also of investigations and enforcement actions by the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division.

In February, we examined newly passed New York City Local Law 32, which required employers to disclose salary ranges in job advertisements. The law was set to take effect on May 15, 2022, but, on April 28, 2022, the New York City Council passed an Amendment to Local Law 32 that pushed the effective date of the law back to November 1, 2022.

A small but growing number of employees are asking for cryptocurrency as a form of compensation.  Whether a substitute for wages or as part of an incentive package, offering cryptocurrency as compensation has become a way for some companies to differentiate themselves from others.  In a competitive labor market, this desire to provide innovative forms of compensation is understandable.  But any company thinking about cryptocurrency needs to be aware of the risks involved, including regulatory uncertainties and market volatility.

As we previously reported, in late 2020, the District of Columbia’s Council passed the Ban on Non-Compete Agreements Amendment Act of 2020 (the “Act”), but more than a year later, employers and employees may still legally enter into binding covenants not to compete.  So what happened, and what’s next for non-competes in the District?

On February 9, 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law Senate Bill 114, which reestablishes the state’s COVID-19 supplemental paid sick leave requirements. Employers will not be able to simply dust off their 2021 policies and reimplement them, however, because the 2022 law contains some important changes from prior laws.

Following enactment of a similar law in Colorado in 2021, the New York City Council passed a bill on December 15, 2021 amending New York City’s Human Rights Law to require New York City employers to disclose the salary range of open positions in all advertised job postings. Mayor Eric Adams had until January 14, 2022 to veto the bill, but declined to do so, which means the law will take effect on May 15, 2022. The implications for New York City employers are far reaching.

The Massachusetts Personnel Records Law, M.G.L. chapter 149, § 52C gives employees the right to submit written rebuttals to any negative information contained in a personnel file if the employee truly disagrees with the content of the information. The written rebuttal then becomes a permanent feature of the employee’s personnel file. 

On September 24, 2021, the Safer Federal Workforce Task Force (“Task Force”) issued written Guidance to implement Executive Order 14042 (“Ensuring Adequate COVID Safety Protocols for Federal Contractors”), which was signed by President Biden on September 9, 2021.  The Guidance is a key component of President Biden’s larger “Path Out of the Pandemic: COVID-19 Action Plan.”

Private employers with 100 or more employees will face sweeping new requirements related to COVID-19 vaccination and testing under a plan announced by President Joe Biden on September 9.

Last month, a judge out of the Alameda County Superior Court ruled California’s Proposition 22 unconstitutional, constituting a significant legal obstacle to this young statute.

Proposition 22 (formally the Protect App-Based Drivers and Services Act, Bus. & Prof. Code, §§ 7448, et seq.) was a ballot initiative passed by a majority of California voters in the November 2020 election, which primarily aimed to classify application-based transportation and delivery companies’ drivers as independent contractors rather than employees. Proposition 22 arose in response to Assembly Bill 5, 2019 legislation codifying the California Supreme Court’s decision in Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court, which created a new “ABC” test for determining whether workers are properly classified as independent contractors. (More information on AB 5 can be found in this previous Hunton Employment & Labor Perspectives post.)

In a development that will impact postsecondary institutions of higher education throughout the country, yesterday the United States Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (“OCR”) issued a guidance letter explaining that the Department will no longer enforce a controversial Trump-era amendment to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, 20 U.S.C. § 1681 (“Title IX”), shortly after the provision was vacated by a Massachusetts federal district court and remanded to the Department for further consideration and explanation.

On August 13, 2021, the U.S. Department of Labor’s (“DOL”) Occupational Safety and Health Administration (“OSHA”) updated its guidance for employers in an effort to further protect workers from SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 (“COVID”).  This update (the “Guidance”) reflects recent COVID developments, including the increased spread of the Delta variant and the July 27, 2021 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (“CDC”) updated guidance, and is intended to help employers protect workers who are:  unvaccinated or partially vaccinated, otherwise at-risk, and/or fully vaccinated but located in areas of substantial or high community transmission.

This year has seen an increase in state legislation addressing noncompetition agreements (“non-competes”). Following Washington, D.C.’s passage of a ban on non-competes in January 2021 (addressed in greater detail here), Oregon, Nevada, and Illinois undertook revisions to their respective non-compete statutes. These legislative updates are summarized below.

The United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts ruled this week that a controversial Title IX amendment by the Trump-era Department of Education was “arbitrary and capricious” under the Administrative Procedure Act and ordered that the rule be vacated and remanded to the Department for further consideration and explanation.

On July 29, 2021, the U.S. Department of Labor filed a final rule rescinding the Trump-era “Joint Employer Status Under the Fair Labor Standards Act” rule (29 CFR part 791), which went into effect on March 16, 2020.

California employers will need to reconsider the way they calculate premium payments for meal and rest break violations following a recent decision of the California Supreme Court.

On June 12, 2021, a federal judge sitting in the Southern District of Texas held that Houston Methodist Hospital could require its employees to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, dismissing the lawsuit brought by 117 plaintiffs who protested the requirement.  See Bridges v. Houston Methodist Hospital, No. 4:21-cv-01774 (S.D. Tex. June 12, 2021).  This opinion marks the first federal ruling on the topic of vaccine mandates, serving as an early indication of how courts may respond to the legal considerations involved in employers’ attempts to have their employees return safely to the office amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

The legal landscape for defining “employers,” “employees,” and “independent contractors” can be quite dynamic, as this past year has illustrated. In January 2021, the Department of Labor issued an employer-friendly independent contractor rule that would have departed from the agency’s typical balancing test, but it formally withdrew this rule in early May with the change in administration. The DOL’s independent contractor rule is intended to provide guidance to employers when determining whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor. For employers, this is an important distinction because the FLSA’s overtime and minimum wage protections apply only to employees, not independent contractors. Because courts and employers sometimes struggle to find this line using the economic realities test and its iterations, the Trump-era independent contractor rule aimed to provide a clearer definition of “employee,” as opposed to “contractor.” The DOL has not yet proposed a new independent contractor test, but employers should be mindful that the Biden administration may potentially announce a new rule on this topic.

In an April 28, 2021 decision, the Ninth Circuit determined that the application of California’s ABC test (also known as AB-5) to motor carriers is not preempted by the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act of 1994 (“F4A”). The ABC test is a judicially-created independent contractor test that was ultimately codified via AB-5. For a more in-depth discussion of AB 5, visit our previous blog post here.

In the first four months of 2021, Virginia, New Mexico, New York and New Jersey passed laws legalizing or decriminalizing, in some form, recreational marijuana.  Exactly how these laws will affect employers in these states is still an open question, but for now, employers should understand the nuances of the laws so they can prepare for the emerging reality that is legal marijuana.

Most employers know the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) requires employees to be paid time-and-one-half for all hours worked over 40 in a workweek unless an exemption applies.  But what some employers don’t realize is, for the most-commonly-used overtime exemptions to apply, employees must not only satisfy various “duties” tests, but they must also be paid on a “salary basis” at not less than $684 per week.  Payment on a salary basis means an employee regularly receives a predetermined amount of compensation each pay period on a weekly, or less frequent, basis.

On March 25, 2021, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam signed into law new protections for employees related to the medicinal use of cannabis oil.  Effective July 1, 2021, the newly enacted § 40.1-27.4 will prohibit employers from disciplining, discharging, or discriminating against an employee for his or her lawful use of cannabis oil so long as the use is pursuant to a valid written certification issued by a health care practitioner for the treatment of the employee’s diagnosed condition or disease.

Following the flood of employee-friendly legislation during the Virginia General Assembly’s 2020 session, which included a significantly strengthened wage payment law that we previously discussed, the 2021 session resulted in the passage of yet another new wage-related law that employers need to be aware of.  This new law – the “Virginia Overtime Wage Act” – goes into effect on July 1, 2021 and will usher in the first overtime pay requirement in Virginia’s history.

Uber Technologies, Inc. has been sued in a class action lawsuit alleging the company’s use of criminal background checks discriminates against Black and Latinx drivers. The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on April 8, challenges Uber’s “unlawful use of criminal history to discriminate against its drivers in New York City as well as its brazen noncompliance with human rights and fair credit laws.”

Named plaintiff Job Golightly, a Black resident of Bronx County, New York, drove for Uber from 2014 through August 2020. Golightly claims that his criminal history consists of a single 2013 misdemeanor speeding violation from Virginia. According to the lawsuit, until 2017 Uber had relied solely on background checks conducted by the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC). Plaintiffs allege that in mid-2017, in response to negative news coverage on assaults committed by drivers, Uber began using the credit reporting agency Checkr to conduct additional background checks on current and prospective drivers. As a result, in August 2020 Uber allegedly conducted a background check on Golightly that revealed his 2013 speeding violation. One day later, Golightly claims that Uber deactivated him from its platform, preventing him from driving for the company.

Covid-19 has left employers who want their employees back in the office in a difficult position. With the pandemic still raging, many employees are fearful of returning to the office with unvaccinated peers. In order to ease their employees’ concerns and provide a safe work environment, some employers are offering incentives to get vaccinated. Some existing vaccine incentives include gift cards, time off after receiving the second dose, pay for the time spent getting the vaccine, or bonuses ranging from $75 to $500. Although offering vaccine incentives may seem like a solution at this time, employers should be mindful of the legal ramifications of providing their employees with incentives for receiving the vaccine.

In recent years, there has been a growing trend amongst litigants of protecting documents filed as part of the judicial record from public view by sealing them by agreement under a protective order.  However, a recent opinion out of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit criticizes this now-common practice.  Binh Hoa Le v. Exeter Fin. Corp., No. 20-10377, ––– F.3d –––, 2021 WL 838266 (5th Cir. March 5, 2021).

It is early in 2021 and already the NLRB has before it ALJ determinations that employee handbook policies conflict with the NLRA. When analyzing employee handbook policies, the Board generally applies the Boeing test, whereby a handbook policy’s potential interference with employee rights under the NLRA is balanced against an employer’s legitimate justifications for the policy, when viewing the policy from the employee’s perspective. While the NLRA and the Boeing test apply to a number of employee handbook policies, confidentiality, social media, and solicitation/distribution policies are especially vulnerable.

Employers with more than 25 employees must provide COVID-19 supplemental paid sick leave to their California employees under a recent law signed by the Governor.  This new law is broader than California’s prior COVID-19 paid sick leave law and, unlike the prior law, also covers employees who telework. The new sick leave entitlement is retroactive to January 1, 2021 and extends until September 30, 2021.

Who Must Provide Supplemental Paid Sick Leave?

SB 95 covers all employers with more than 25 employees. California’s prior COVID-19 sick leave law (Assembly Bill 1867) expired on December 31, 2020, and applied only to private businesses with 500 or more employees.

California employers may mandate employee vaccination under new guidance from the State’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH).  With the opening up of California businesses and expansion of vaccine eligibility, a key question facing employers has been whether they can require their employees to get vaccinated.  On March 4, 2021, California’s DFEH finally weighed in with its updated COVID-19 Guidance on several open questions regarding employee vaccination under California law.  The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) provided similar initial guidance late last year on how mandatory vaccination programs could comply with federal law.

While COVID-19 may have hit the business community like a hurricane, whether the pandemic, in fact, qualifies for a natural disaster exception under the federal law requiring businesses to warn employees of impending layoffs, remains an open question.

This February, a federal judge paved the way for the Eleventh Circuit to weigh in on whether a class action can proceed against an employer who was forced to lay off employees due to COVID-19.  That case, Benson v. Enter. Leasing Co. of Orlando, LLC, is one of the first to look at the application of pandemic-related layoffs to the Worker Adjustment Retraining Notification Act of 1988, 29 U.S.C. § 2100 et seq. (“WARN Act”). Underscoring the case’s importance to the business community, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has just filed an amicus or “friend of the court” brief asking the Eleventh Circuit to take up the case and provide “much-needed guidance” to other courts across the country.

In January 2021, New York City amended the Fair Chance Act to expand protections for both applicants and employees with criminal histories.  The amendments take effect July 29, 2021, adding additional protections for workers in the state.  Prior to the amendment, NYC’s Fair Chance Act prohibited employers from making an inquiry about an applicants’ criminal conviction records until after a conditional offer of employment is extended.  Then, an employer was required to balance a variety of factors to determine job-relatedness of the conviction.

Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (“Title III”) prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in public accommodations, requiring that individuals with a disability be offered the “full and equal enjoyment . . . of any place of public accommodation.”  42 U.S.C. § 12182(a).  As we previously discussed, the 30-year-old statute does not directly address whether “places of public accommodation” include websites, mobile applications, and other emerging web-based applications and technologies and, therefore, does not provide a standard for ensuring accessibility for web-based accommodations.

In a recent post, we wrote about a final rule issued by the Department of Labor (DOL) during the last days of the Trump administration addressing the appropriate test for classifying independent contractors under the FLSA. In the post, we noted that the future of the rule was in question because it was not set to go into effect until March 8, 2021. This delayed implementation provided an opportunity for the incoming Biden administration to freeze or withdraw the rule.

Since taking office, President Biden has issued Executive Orders covering topics from climate change to mask mandates.  Some of these new Executive Orders are aimed at eliminating discrimination and promoting equity at the federal level.  These directives will likely result in new requirements for private sector companies that are government contractors or subcontractors, and could require them to revise practices and policies in order to keep, or procure new, government contracts.

Last month, Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser signed the Ban On Non-Compete Agreements Amendment Act of 2020 (“the Act”), which becomes effective next week.  This law is a statutory ban on non-compete agreements that has the strength of similar bans in California, North Dakota, and Oklahoma.

The Act applies to all D.C. private employers and applies broadly to most employees who perform work in D.C. or whom a prospective employer reasonably anticipates will perform work in D.C.  The law does not have a minimum salary threshold.  Under the Act, employers are prohibited from ...

For over 30 years, most district courts throughout the country have used a two-step conditional certification process to govern certification of collective actions under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).  But in its recent and game-changing opinion, Swales v. KLLM Transport Services, LLC, the Fifth Circuit rejected that two-step process and laid out a stricter framework for FLSA collective actions.

Ten U.S. senators are asking the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to hone in on employers’ use of artificial intelligence (“AI”), machine-learning, and other hiring technologies that may result in discrimination.

The group of senators—Michael Bennet (D-CO), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), Chris Coons (D-DE), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Tina Smith (D-MN), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), and Jeff Merkley (D-OR)—jointly penned a December 8, 2020 letter to Chair Janet Dhillon. The letter urges that EEOC is responsible for combatting discrimination resulting from the use of hiring and other employment technologies. The senators voice concern about a number of hiring technologies, including:

• “[T]ools used in the employee selection process to manage and screen candidates after they apply for a job”;
• “[N]ew modes of assessment, such as gamified assessments or video interviews that use machine-learning models to evaluate candidates”;
• “[G]eneral intelligence or personality tests”; and
• “[M]odern applicant tracking systems.”

In the last weeks of the Trump Administration, the Department of Labor (DOL) published its final rule for determining whether an individual is an employee or independent contractor under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The distinction between an employee and independent contractor is of critical importance because independent contractors are not entitled to the benefits of the FLSA, namely minimum wage and overtime.

California is well known for its broad restrictions relating to non-competition clauses applicable to workers. After a recent decision by the Federal Circuit, such notoriety may extend to the patent realm. Employers should beware to not fall into this employment agreement trap.

In what it characterized as an issue not previously addressed by California’s appellate courts, in Whitewater West Industries v. Alleshouse, No. 2019-1852 (Fed. Cir. Nov. 19, 2020), the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held that that California state law not only restricts non-competition ...

The Federal Reserve anticipates an approximate two percent reduction in unemployment by June 2021, envisioning rapid mass-hiring by employers once governments lift the more stifling COVID-19 restrictions.  Businesses requiring pre-employment background checks may be uniquely exposed to liability under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”) if minor mistakes are amplified by mass-hiring events.

On November 17, 2020 the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) released proposed updates to its Compliance Manual on Religious Discrimination (“Manual”). The draft revisions are available for public input until December 17, 2020, after which the EEOC will consider the public’s input, make any changes, and publish the finalized Manual.

Imagine this: you are an employer in California, and you recently hired a new employee.  You ran your own background check, which did not turn up any criminal convictions.  However, the employee’s job duties include submitting online applications to a government agency, which requires the employee to complete a Live Scan background check with the Department of Justice.  The Live Scan reveals that the employee has a past criminal conviction that will prevent her from submitting the applications.  You terminate the employee, and she tells you the conviction was judicially dismissed.  What do you do?

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) regularly releases guidance and advice to employers to aid in compliance with applicable workplace discrimination laws. For example, over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, the EEOC has frequently issued and updated guidance on how employers can strike the difficult balance between workplace safety and compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”) recently released a proposed rule seeking to clarify independent contractor vs. employee status under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”).   The proposed rule seeks to simplify the “economic realities” test currently applied by federal courts in various forms.  “The Department’s proposal aims to bring clarity and consistency to the determination of who’s an independent contractor under the Fair Labor Standards Act,” Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia explained in the DOL's news release.  “Once finalized, it will make it easier to identify employees covered by the Act, while respecting the decision other workers make to pursue the freedom and entrepreneurialism associated with being an independent contractor.”

Last month, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York invalidated portions of the Department of Labor’s Final Rule on joint employment, holding that parts of the Final Rule conflicted with the statutory language of the FLSA and chiding the DOL for failing to adequately explain why the Final Rule departed from the DOL’s own prior interpretations.

Nationwide, 36 states and over 150 municipalities have adopted “ban the box” laws that prohibit employers from asking applicants about their conviction or arrest records on their initial applications.  This article provides updates on recent changes and updates in Hawaii, California, and St. Louis, Missouri.

A bill recently signed into law in California will require private employers to submit annual “pay data reports” to the Department of Fair Employment and Housing (“DFEH”) beginning in March 2021. The California law implements a previously announced program rolled back by the Trump administration to expand federal reporting requirements to include employee pay data by race, gender, and ethnicity.

Beginning in January, an expanded California leave law will require employers with as few as five employees to provide up to 12 weeks of unpaid medical and family leave each year.  For larger employers also covered by the FMLA, the California leave may be in addition to the 12 weeks of leave that employers already must provide under federal law, for a potential total of up to six-months of leave.

As Fall settles in and schools reopen, many employees with children (and their employers) are breathing a masked sigh of relief. Back to school means back to work, and back to work means increased productivity and greater job stability during a time when productivity and stability are needed.

California Governor Gavin Newsom recently signed legislation, AB 2257, that provides a carve out to the state’s independent contractor law. Under Assembly Bill 5, all independent contractors are presumed to be employees unless the hiring business can meet the stringent requirements (known as the ABC test) that are set forth in the California Supreme Court’s Dynamex decision. AB 5 also provided for certain exemptions for certain categories of workers. For a more in depth discussion of AB 5, visit our previous blog post here.

On September 10, 2020, the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts issued a Memorandum and Order granting summary judgment in favor of a franchisor in response to claims by a purported class of franchisees that they were not truly independent contractors, but employees of the franchisor.

The main issue addressed in the case was whether specific federal legal requirements that are imposed upon franchisors trump the general Massachusetts independent contractor classification statute. The federal court reasoned that applying the Massachusetts independent contractor classification statute to the franchise business model would render franchisors regulated by the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) criminally liable under state law for employee misclassification simply by virtue of their compliance with the FTC’s requirements.

California recently enacted Assembly Bill 1867, requiring all private employers with 500 or more employees to provide COVID-19 supplemental paid sick leave for their California employees.  Employers must begin providing supplemental sick leave, under the new law, no later than September 19, 2020.  The law will remain in effect until the later of December 31, 2020 or expiration of any federal extension of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act.

While most EEOC enforcement actions are related to individual complaints of discrimination and/or retaliation, so-called “pattern or practice” matters are those in which the EEOC attempts to show that an employer has systematically engaged in discriminatory activities. The Equal Employment Opportunity states on its website, “Systemic discrimination involves a pattern or practice, policy, or class case where the alleged discrimination has a broad impact on an industry, profession, company or geographic area.” To combat systemic discrimination, section 707(a) of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 authorizes the EEOC to sue employers engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination.

Last week, the Department of Labor (“DOL”) provided clarity regarding issues of remote work and remote learning.

First, the DOL issued guidance regarding employers’ obligation to track the work hours of employees who are working remotely due to COVID-19 or due to an already existing telework or remote work arrangement.

This month, the Southern District of Florida declined to certify a nationwide class of Denny’s servers alleging the restaurant chain had violated the minimum wage and tip credit provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) on the basis that the named plaintiff failed to provide enough evidence that the servers were similarly situated.

Plaintiff Lindsay Rafferty worked as a server at a Denny’s restaurant in Akron, Ohio from February 2012 through October 2018.  On November 13, 2019, Rafferty filed a lawsuit against Denny’s alleging that the restaurant paid its employee servers a sub-minimum hour wage under the tip credit provisions of the FLSA and that Denny’s required its servers to perform non-tipped “sidework.”

On August 3, 2020, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York struck down portions of the DOL’s Final Rule regarding who qualifies for COVID-19 emergency paid sick leave under the Emergency Paid Sick Leave Act (“EPSLA”) and the Emergency Family and Medical Leave Expansion Act (“EFMLEA”), collectively referred to at the Families First Coronavirus Response Act.

Of particular importance to employers, the Court invalidated two provisions of the DOL’s Final Rule pertaining to: (1) conditioning leave on the availability of work and (2) the need to obtain employer consent prior to taking leave on an intermittent basis.

The Department of Labor has released a new set of “Questions and Answers” for employers under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (“FFCRA”).  The guidance supplements the temporary rule issued by DOL in April; final regulations are still forthcoming.

FFCRA provides (1) paid sick leave and (2) paid family medical leave under certain circumstances created by COVID-19.  We previously posted about these forms of leave in March, April, and June.  See our entries here, here, here, here, and here.

Virginia became the first state in the country to pass a workplace safety standard specific to COVID-19 on July 15.  It includes hazard assessment, communication and training requirements, depending on the types of tasks employees perform at work.

As part of Virginia’s overhaul of its labor and employment laws—on which we previously reported—the Commonwealth also enacted Virginia Senate Bill 712, which amended the Virginia Human Rights Act (hereafter, the “VHRA”) to require covered employers to reasonably accommodate the known limitations of an employee as it relates to pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions, unless such an accommodation would impose an undue hardship on the employer.

Due to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), many San Francisco businesses have closed in order to contain the spread of the pandemic, resulting in declining revenues and widespread business interruption.  These economic conditions have led to employee layoffs across San Francisco.  As San Francisco employers work to restore their business operations in the wake of COVID-19, they should be aware of new rules that may affect how they rebuild their workforce.

An employer’s obligations under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”) are triggered when it obtains a “consumer report” from a “consumer reporting agency” for use in making an employment decision. A federal court in the Middle District of Florida is set to rule on a summary judgment motion clarifying whether a business that transmits public records unaltered to a prospective employer is a “consumer reporting agency”.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed employers to an influx of novel employment law issues.  Many employers already have experienced an uptick in related internal complaints or litigation. Below we identify five particular employment law liabilities employers may be exposed to once the dust settles from the pandemic.

Wage and Hour Claims

The shift to telework during the coronavirus pandemic has forced many employers to set aside traditional tracking mechanisms that are used to determine when employees take breaks and clock off. As a result, employers may be vulnerable to employee claims that employers failed to provide and/or pay for all required meal periods, rest breaks, and overtime for remote and on-site employees. To proactively minimize potential wage and hour related claims, employers should ensure to the extent possible that employees are properly compensated for all hours worked. In addition, employers can minimize minimum wage violations by complying with applicable federal, state and local laws that may require employers to reimburse employees for certain expenses incurred in order to telework, such as cell phone, high-speed internet, or other equipment costs. Moreover, employers should consider encouraging managers to execute best supervisory practices in the telework environment, including setting clear expectations with employees, conducting regular check-ins, promptly addressing issues, and making other efforts to maintain clear communication.

A federal district court in Florida recently declined to conditionally certify a nationwide collective action brought under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) because the plaintiff did not show sufficient evidence that she was similarly situated to other restaurant managers who wanted to join.