Seyfarth Shaw LLP

  Employers looking to enhance their suite of employee benefit programs, and focused on lessons learned during the pandemic on wellbeing, are interested in providing greater access to wellness tools. And, the vendors who support those tools are more than happy to provide them. Global spend in the health and wellness market would be around $24.8 billion in 2023 according to a study by Kilo Health. Wellness apps and wearables…

A new executive order signed by President Biden in August 2023 restricts outbound investment to China in several critical cutting-edge technologies.

New York State’s law on pay transparency in job advertisements went into effect on September 17, 2023.  A few days before the law’s effective date, the state’s Department of Labor published proposed rule making that would clarify key points of the law, while also leaving some questions unanswered. Public comment on the proposed regulations will be received until November 12, 2023. Overview of New York State Law On March 3,…

Anything but casual… In the first of our series examining the Closing Loopholes Bill introduced into Parliament yesterday, we look at the new measures for casual employment. The Orwellian title of the Closing Loopholes Bill foreshadows its intentions: casual employment is double-plus-ungood. Premised on the doublethink notion that casual employment is a bad moon on the rise, the Bill proposes wholesale changes to the casual employment test, including measures to…

Almost precisely a year after the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced its intent to begin the rulemaking process to enact website accessibility regulations applicable to state and local governments under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the DOJ has published its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to the Federal Register for publication today, August 4, 2023. We will follow up with another post with more substantive analysis, but here…

Several U.S. courts are addressing lawsuits brought by artists alleging that AI-generated art infringes on copyrights held by the artists for their artwork. In one of those cases, a California federal judge recently indicated that he would dismiss the bulk of the plaintiffs’ complaint, while giving them a chance to re-plead their claims. A written decision from the court is forthcoming, and that decision could be an important one for…

As the cannabis industry matures, there will be winners and losers.  Losers lack access to the U.S. Bankruptcy Code.  Marijuana related assets cannot be sold free and clear of liens and encumbrances via the tried and true bankruptcy section 363 sale, which leaves the loser’s creditors without the best tool to maximize the value of the loser’s assets, and deprives acquirers of a federal court order conveying assets.  What’s the…

At the beginning of the pandemic, concerns were raised that trade secret misappropriation might take a new form. Indeed, with large swaths of the workforce working from home, spouses, roommates, or others living in the same area had an increased opportunity to purloin confidential information that might not have been available to them previously. But a recent case in Massachusetts highlights that this is not unique to pandemic-era work-from-home setups.…

  Seyfarth Synopsis: The COVID-19 pandemic and wildfire smoke shrouding the skies over the East Coast this summer have drawn more attention to indoor air quality, leading the New York City Council to propose indoor air quality resolutions.  Indoor air quality has long been a source of employee health complaints. While the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) offers industry consensus standards on ventilation rates and federal OSHA…

2023 has brought several states into the privacy limelight. On June 18, Governor Abbott signed the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act (“TDPSA”) into law, making the Lone Star state the eleventh in the U.S. to pass a comprehensive data privacy and security law. The Act provides Texas consumers with the ability to submit requests to exercise privacy rights and extends to parents the ability to exercise rights on behalf…

Seyfarth Synopsis: Effective June 7, 2023, New York State employers are required to comply with expanded obligations under recent amendments to New York Labor Law § 206-c, including the provision of a designated pumping location and the adoption of a lactation policy. The New York Department of Labor issued model materials for employers to consider and adopt to ensure compliance with these newly-effective requirements. As previously reported here, Governor Hochul…

Eight individuals, which included seven women and one man, sued their former employer, S&S Activewear, L.L.C. (S&S), an apparel manufacturer, for sexual harassment under Title VII. The employees alleged that S&S permitted its managers and employees to routinely play “sexually graphic, violently misogynistic” music throughout its warehouse, which, in turn, fostered abusive conduct by some male employees. The Trial Court Decision In December 2021, the federal District Court for Nevada…

Welcome back to The Week in Weed, your Friday look at what’s happening in the world of legalized marijuana. This week, we check in on the move to put adult use on the ballot in Florida. We see that Maryland is working on regulations, as July 1 draws nearer. We note that the FDA is looking at a regulatory framework for CBD. And finally, we note that the Kansas City…

The U.S. Supreme Court has unanimously rejected the Ninth Circuit’s opinion that a poop-themed dog toy should be protected as a parody under the First Amendment. SCOTUS ruled today in Jack Daniel’s Properties Inc. v. VIP Products, Inc. that the right to free expression does not excuse “trademark law’s cardinal sin”—use of another’s trademark “as a trademark.” Although the Court declined to take Jack Daniel’s suggestion that it should completely…

Seyfarth Synopsis: As Canadian wildfire smoke spreads across the Northern United States, employers should review the CDC/NIOSH guidance on occupational exposure to wildfire smoke and implement effective measures to protect employees.  Canadian forests continue to burn, with about 3.8 million hectares (9.4 million acres) burned at the time of this writing, roughly 15 times the annual average.  At least 100 million Americans have been affected by air quality alerts from the…

Already stretched HR, ER, WHS and Legal teams are about to confront a (seemingly) never-ending stream of law changes that will require cross-team collaboration to operationalise. At a time when there are already broader economic and market challenges for businesses, leading employers will need to have sufficient resourcing and planning to confront the changes we know are coming. To take some simple examples: 1 April 2023 – Commonwealth and Queensland…

Seyfarth Synopsis: Companies have been following with interest the Harvard and UNC cases that address affirmative action in the context of higher education.  Both cases were argued before the Supreme Court on October 31, 2022 and rulings are expected very soon. In anticipation of the Court’s decisions, Seyfarth is highlighting key areas of interest for employers. Overview of the UNC and Harvard Cases The two cases are Students for Fair…

  On June 1, 2023, in a resounding 8-1 decision, the United States Supreme Court granted employers an important victory by holding that the National Labor Relations Act and prior precedent did not preempt a state court tort action against a labor organization that sanctioned a work stoppage that was timed deliberately to destroy the employer’s property. By allowing the state court action to proceed, the Supreme Court in Glacier…

The FTC is not alone in taking aim at non-competes. Yesterday, the NLRB’s General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo issued a memo to all regional directors, officers-in-charge, and resident officers at the NLRB stating that non-competes in employment agreements and severance agreements violate the National Labor Relations Act except in rare circumstances. Specifically, Ms. Abruzzo claims that such covenants interfere with workers’ rights under Section 7 of the Act, which protects employees’…

Many in our readership will have embarked (or are embarking) upon a compliance audit of workplace entitlements. Anyone who has done so will appreciate the difficulties associated with what becomes a massive and complex task. The future will see monthly pay reviews as a matter of course rather than large and costly remediation processes. Indeed, a whole industry has been built crunching the numbers on wage/time and attendance compliance. With…

Seyfarth Synopsis: Like the New York City Council, the New York State legislature is considering a bill to effectively abolish at-will employment. If passed, the State bill would prohibit employers from discharging employees absent good cause if the termination occurs after a mandatory probationary period.  As we discussed previously, the New York City Council is considering a bill that would prohibit employers from discharging employees absent just cause or a…