Quick Hits Workers in Rhode Island will receive up to seven weeks of paid time off to bond with a new child or care for a sick family member in 2025. That number will increase to eight weeks in 2026. Domestic workers are now eligible for minimum wage and overtime…

Quick Hits Minnesota’s new ban on the use of nonsolicitation agreements by service providers or staffing agencies takes effect on July 1, 2024. The law will prohibit service providers from restricting in any way its employees from being solicited or hired by user companies. The law will render such provisions…

Quick Hits The Superior Court of Arizona ruled Arizona municipalities cannot set prevailing wage ordinances. The court struck down prevailing wage ordinances enacted by Phoenix and Tucson affecting construction contractors. On June 21, 2024, the Superior Court of Arizona Maricopa County ruled in favor of three trade associations challenging the…

Quick Hits Act No. 273 modifies La. Rev. Stat. § 23:921, Louisiana’s noncompete statute, to limit the noncompete restrictions allowed in contracts with physicians. Any contract that restrains a primary care physician from practicing medicine expires three years after the effective date of the contract and all other physicians five…

Quick Hits Act No. 273 modifies La. Rev. Stat. § 23:921, Louisiana’s noncompete statute, to limit the noncompete restrictions allowed in contracts with physicians. Any contract that restrains a primary care physician from practicing medicine expires three years after the effective date of the contract and all other physicians five…

Quick Hits On June 21, 2024, two bills were introduced in the California Legislature to reform PAGA, which could provide a measure of relief to California employers and much-needed increased court oversight. Notably, the proposed amendments would allow an employee to bring PAGA claims only for Labor Code violations the…

Quick Hits Following the lead of California, Colorado, Hawaii, New York, Washington, and the District of Columbia, Maryland’s Equal Pay for Equal Work – Wage Range Transparency Act will require employers to disclose certain wage information in both public and internal job postings. The law was signed into law by…

Quick Hits The Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries issued a proposed rule that would impose new requirements for employers responding to allegations of harassment. The proposal introduced five factors for evaluating what constitutes “appropriate corrective action” and “promptly correcting harassing behavior.” Currently, determining whether an employer took an appropriate…

Quick Hits Federal district courts in Kentucky and Louisiana have issued injunctions blocking the implementation and enforcement of the U.S. Department of Education’s new Title IX regulations in ten states. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky held that the U.S. Department of Education had exceeded its…

Quick Hits A California appellate court found an employer’s arbitration agreement with an eyewear store employee to be unenforceable for being both procedurally and substantively unconscionable. The appellate court noted several issues with the arbitration agreement—including finding that it was a contract of adhesion—that placed it “high on the scale…

Quick Hits Governor Pritzker is expected to sign SB3650, legislation amending Illinois’s Day and Temporary Labor Services Act (DTLSA). Third-party clients would not be required to provide comparator pay information until the worker has worked for the same third-party client for more than 720 hours within a twelve-month period and…

Quick Hits As part of a proposed consent judgment to resolve an antitrust charge brought by the DOJ and several states, the NCAA agreed to drop its rule requiring certain Division I college athletes who transfer schools to sit out a year. The DOJ and the states alleged that the…

Quick Hits Effective July 1, 2024, Senate Bill (SB) No. 553 will require virtually every California employer to implement a comprehensive workplace violence prevention plan. The new law does not have an implementation grace period. The new law applies to most California employers and employees, except corrections facilities, law enforcement…

Quick Hits On June 7, 2024, OFCCP published a CSAL that identified 500 establishments of federal supply and service contractors and subcontractors for compliance reviews. The CSAL operates as a “courtesy notification” to a contractor that an OFCCP compliance review will be undertaken; the compliance review process begins when the…

Quick Hits Minnesota Governor Walz signed employment-related legislation that amends laws addressing consumer data privacy, drug and alcohol or cannabis testing, employee misclassification, pay transparency, and restrictive covenants. Leave-related provisions address earned sick and safe time, paid family and medical leave, pregnancy accommodations, and parental leave. Wage- and pay-related legislation…

Quick Hits New Singaporean employment laws are in effect or will take effect this year. A new law extends the paid paternity leave benefit for two additional weeks, bringing the new leave allotment to four weeks of paid paternity leave. Singapore’s proposed Workplace Fairness Legislation, scheduled for passage in the…

Quick Hits The New York State Assembly has passed and delivered the Retail Worker Safety Act to the state Senate. Under the legislation, retail employers would be required to have written workplace violence prevention programs and workplace violence training. Retail employers with 500 or more employees nationwide would also be…

Quick Hits The California Civil Rights Department released new proposed regulations for employers’ use of AI and automated decision-making systems. The proposed regulations would affirm that employers’ use of such hiring technologies may violate the state’s antidiscrimination laws and clarify limits on the use of such technology in criminal background…

Quick Hits Beginning July 1, 2024, nearly all recruiters and temporary help agencies working with businesses or candidates in Ontario will be required to have a licence, even if the recruiters and temporary help agencies are not located in Ontario. THAs and recruiters that apply by June 30, 2024, may…

Quick Hits Starting July 1, 2024, a new California law, SB 478, will prohibit businesses from adding automatic service charges onto consumer bills. Other states and federal agencies may soon restrict, or prohibit, businesses from using automatic service charges. California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill (SB) No. 478 into…

Quick Hits The Maine Department of Labor issued proposed rules for the state’s Paid Family and Medical Leave Program, providing employers with initial clarification regarding covered employees, contribution amounts, substitution of private plans, and other facets of the law. The public comment period for the proposed rules is open through…

Quick Hits Maryland’s HB 1388 imposes greater restrictions on Maryland employers entering noncompete and conflict of interest agreements with both health care and veterinary professionals. HB 1388 prohibits restrictions for certain employees who are required to be licensed under the Health Occupations Article and certain employees who are licensed as…

Quick Hits The Illinois legislature passed SB2979 to clarify that multiple alleged collections or disseminations of an individual’s biometrics constitute only a single violation of the Privacy Act and the individual is limited to only one recovery of statutory damages. Once signed, the bill will reverse a holding by the…

Quick Hits The DOL is enforcing child labor laws through two key mechanisms: (1) preventing employers from shipping or profiting from “hot goods” and (2) assessing aggregate civil money penalties. An August 2023 DOL field assistance bulletin advises field agents on identifying violations of “oppressive child labor” and applying the…

Quick Hits With Governor Jared Polis’s signing into law SB 24-205, Colorado becomes the first U.S. state to enact comprehensive legislation regulating the use and development of AI systems. The law addresses, among other things, the risk of algorithmic discrimination “arising from the intended and contracted uses of … high-risk…

Quick Hits The Supreme Court held that Section 3 of the FAA requires federal courts to grant stays of lawsuits after claims are sent to arbitration, if a stay is requested. The ruling resolves a 6–4 circuit split regarding whether federal district courts must stay lawsuits pending arbitration or whether…

Quick Hits OFCCP released its first detailed guidance on federal contractors’ use of AI and automated systems. The guidance instructs federal contractors to routinely monitor whether AI and automated systems have a disparate or adverse impact on protected groups and take actions to reduce those impacts or use different tools.…

Quick Hits The New Jersey Supreme Court invalidated an otherwise valid settlement agreement solely because the agreement contained a “non-disparagement provision,” the scope of which the court found “would bar individuals from describing an employer’s discriminatory conduct” in violation of NJLAD. The court held that the non-disparagement provision was broad…

Quick Hits June 2, 2024, and October 1, 2024, are mandatory holidays due to federal elections in Mexico and the presidential inauguration day. Employees who work on mandatory holidays are entitled to two times their daily wage in addition to their normal salary for that day. Employers must respect and…

 Current LawExpansion Under Public Act No. 24-8 Effective January 1, 2025 (Unless Otherwise Noted)Covered EmployeesThe current law applies to “service workers,” who are defined as employees in certain occupations identified in the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Standard Occupational Classification system.The expanded law applies to all employees, including seasonal employees…

Quick Hits The EB-1 and EB-2 final action dates remain unchanged for all countries of chargeability. The EB-3 final action date for India retrogressed eight days, while all other countries of chargeability remain unchanged. USCIS has confirmed it will accept employment-based adjustment of status applications based on the final action…

Quick Hits Comprehensive workplace safety legislation proposed in the New York State Senate would require retail employers to assess potential workplace violence hazards and develop and implement comprehensive written workplace violence plans. Among other requirements, retail employers with fifty or more employees nationwide would have to install panic buttons to…

Quick Hits The DOL’s Wage and Hour Division published new field assistance guiding its field staff on the implications of employers’ increasing use of automated systems and AI technologies. The guidance cautions that while such technologies have workplace benefits, human oversight is necessary to avoid results that violate federal labor…

Quick Hits On April 29, 2024, three separate lawsuits were filed challenging the 2024 Title IX regulations: (1) Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, and Idaho filed one lawsuit in the Western District of Louisiana; (2) Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina filed a second lawsuit in the Northern District of Alabama; and…

Quick Hits Retailers with at least 300 or more employees worldwide and that have employees in the County of Los Angeles will be required to provide their employees with predictable schedules. The county ordinance is similar to a City of Los Angeles ordinance that took effect in April 2023. The…

Quick Hits Minnesota lawmakers are attempting to secure enough votes ahead of this year’s legislative session deadline to place numerous bills on the governor’s desk, many of which, if enacted, will affect employers. Bills address drug testing, earned sick and safe time, pay transparency in job postings, wage deductions for…

On April 11, 2024, the Illinois Senate passed Senate Bill (SB) 2979, which would stop statutory damages under the Privacy Act from accruing for each unlawful collection or dissemination of an individual’s biometric information. Quick Hits The Illinois legislature is considering a bill that would amend the Privacy Act to…

The pilot program, entitled “Pilot Program on Voluntary Self-Disclosures for Individuals,” increases transparency regarding the circumstances under which prosecutors will offer leniency to cooperating witnesses and other individuals through use of a non-prosecution agreement (NPA) when they report potential criminal misconduct involving corporations. Quick Hits The DOJ launched a new…

Quick Hits Final privacy rules under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) set basic limitations on the use or disclosure by covered entities (such as employer health benefit plans) and their business associates of reproductive health care information. The final rules state that reproductive care is,…

The first article in this series provided a general overview of the OSH Act and OSHA; the second article examined OSHA’s rulemaking process; the third article reviewed an employer’s duty to comply with standards; and the fourth article discussed the general duty clause. This article addresses OSHA’s recordkeeping requirements. Quick…