With the election quickly approaching, we are already receiving questions from employers involving concerns over arguments and disruptions in the workplace resulting from political disagreements. We hoped that the contentious...more
Forty years ago, the Supreme Court adopted a doctrine that has allowed federal agencies to make the final call on interpreting ambiguous laws. Today, the court overruled that doctrine and held that courts, not agencies, are...more
7/1/2024
/ Administrative Procedure Act ,
Chevron Deference ,
Chevron v NRDC ,
Constitutional Challenges ,
Government Agencies ,
Judicial Authority ,
Loper Bright Enterprises v Raimondo ,
National Marine Fisheries Service ,
Regulatory Authority ,
Relentless Inc v US Department of Commerce ,
SCOTUS ,
Stare Decisis ,
Statutory Interpretation ,
Unconstitutional Condition
On April 29, 2024, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued new enforcement guidance on harassment in the workplace. The guidance is the result of approximately seven years of effort and replaces...more
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Tuesday, April 23, issued its final rule that prevents most employers from enforcing noncompetes against workers. The 3-2 vote by commissioners comes nearly a year and a half after the...more
As we have previously covered in EmployNews, in June 2023, the general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) released a memo arguing that most noncompete agreements violate Section 7 of the National Labor...more
3/8/2024
/ Confidential Information ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Employment Contract ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Memorandum of Guidance ,
NLRA ,
NLRB ,
NLRB General Counsel ,
Non-Compete Agreements ,
Proprietary Information ,
Protected Concerted Activity ,
Restrictive Covenants ,
Section 7
This week, the regional director for Region 1 of the National Labor Relations Board issued an opinion that could usher in a wave of unionization efforts among college athletes. Fifteen members of the Dartmouth men’s...more
2/9/2024
/ Bargaining Units ,
Basketball ,
Collective Bargaining ,
College Athletes ,
Colleges ,
Employee Definition ,
NLRA ,
NLRB ,
Union Elections ,
Unions ,
Universities
On January 9, the U.S. Department of Labor released its final rule on classifying workers as employees or independent contractors under the Fair Labor Standards Act. ...more
On June 1, 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered an 8-1 opinion that limits the protections available to unions for damages caused during a strike. In Glacier Northwest v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Local Union...more
6/9/2023
/ Civil Liability ,
Glacier Northwest v International Brotherhood of Teamsters ,
NLRA ,
NLRB ,
Preemption ,
Private Property ,
Property Damage ,
SCOTUS ,
State Law Claims ,
Strike ,
Teamsters ,
Unions
In Johnson v. Global Language Center, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a district court's decision to grant summary judgment in favor of an employer in a Title VII retaliation claim, where the “protected activity”...more
Previously relegated to purely civil enforcement, in the last year the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has increased its focus on pursuing criminal charges for anti-poach agreements between companies that attempt to...more
5/5/2023
/ Acquittals ,
Antitrust Violations ,
Competition ,
Criminal Prosecution ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Health Care Providers ,
Home Health Agencies ,
No-Poaching ,
Price-Fixing ,
Restraint of Trade ,
Wage-Fixing
In February 2021, we wrote about Kinzer, et al. v. Whole Foods Market, Inc., a case pending in Massachusetts federal court in which multiple employees alleged that they had been terminated by Whole Foods for wearing Black...more
1/30/2023
/ Black Lives Matter ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Dress Codes ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Employment Litigation ,
Employment Policies ,
Masks ,
Retaliation ,
Summary Judgment ,
Termination ,
Title VII ,
Whole Foods ,
Workplace Attire
On January 13, the U.S. Supreme Court accepted review of a case that may have significant repercussions for employers faced with religious accommodation requests. The case was brought by Gerald Groff, who sued the U.S. Postal...more
On January 5, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) published a notice of proposed rulemaking seeking comment on a rule that would declare most U.S. noncompetition agreements unlawful, subject to very limited exceptions. Using...more
1/13/2023
/ Comment Period ,
Contract Terms ,
Employment Contract ,
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ,
FTC Act ,
Non-Compete Agreements ,
NPRM ,
Proposed Rules ,
Public Comment ,
Restrictive Covenants ,
Unfair Competition
Deep within the omnibus spending bill passed in the waning days of 2022 were two new laws providing important new rights to employees who are pregnant or nursing.
First, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) requires...more
On August 16 in Williams v. Kincaid, a divided three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals (which includes North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia) became the first federal appellate court to hold...more
On April 25, 2022, South Carolina enacted a statute aimed at curtailing employers’ ability to require workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19. To start, the Act absolutely bans state and local governments from requiring...more
Last week in Badgerow v. Walters, the United States Supreme Court held in an 8-1 decision that under the Federal Arbitration Act, a federal court cannot consider an underlying dispute to determine whether it has federal...more
The federal government’s vaccinate-or-test-and-mask policy impacting many private workplaces is no longer on hold. On November 4, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued its emergency temporary standard (ETS)...more
On November 4, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued an emergency regulation requiring many health care workers to be fully vaccinated by January 4, 2022. The vaccination requirement applies to all staff working...more
As many employers await the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s impending vaccination rule, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission quietly released new guidance regarding religious objections to mandatory...more
Under Section 11(c) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, employers are prohibited from taking adverse action against an employee because the employee has engaged in protected activity under the statute, such as filing a...more
9/17/2021
/ Adverse Employment Action ,
Anti-Retaliation Provisions ,
But For Causation ,
Coronavirus/COVID-19 ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Health and Safety ,
Infectious Diseases ,
Interpretive Rule ,
OSHA ,
Protected Concerted Activity ,
Whistleblower Protection Policies ,
Whistleblowers ,
Workplace Safety
As we have covered previously in EmployNews, organizations that mandate that their employees obtain vaccination against COVID-19 must consider whether employees may be entitled to an exemption due to a qualifying disability...more
On July 27 in response to rising COVID-19 case counts caused by the Delta variant, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its guidance for individuals who have been fully vaccinated to recommend that they wear...more
On May 21, 2021, Indiana University adopted a policy requiring all students, faculty, and staff to be fully vaccinated before returning to campus for the Fall 2021 semester. The policy includes a number of exemptions for...more
7/26/2021
/ Colleges ,
Coronavirus/COVID-19 ,
Educational Institutions ,
Exemptions ,
Health and Safety ,
Infectious Diseases ,
Religious Exemption ,
School Policies ,
Students ,
Universities ,
Vaccinations
By virtue of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2020 opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or transgender status. On June 15,...more
7/16/2021
/ Bostock v Clayton County Georgia ,
Civil Rights Act ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Employment Discrimination ,
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) ,
Gender Identity ,
Hostile Environment ,
New Guidance ,
Sexual Orientation ,
Title VII ,
Transgender ,
Workplace Harassment Guidance