Employment Law Blog

ALERT – Federal Court Blocks Overtime Rule

The impending change to federal overtime regulations has been put on hold by the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Texas. The court granted a nationwide preliminary injunction against the Department of Labor’s implementation of the rule, as the rule faces challenges from 21 states.  More >

The EEOC Retaliates on Retaliation, and Employers are Caught in the Crossfire

NOTE: The EEOC guidance on retaliation can be found here:
https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/retaliation-guidance.cfm

One of the hands-down most difficult positions an employer may find itself in is the time period immediately following an employee reporting discrimination. If the employee engages in some form of conduct that is protected by a nondiscrimination statute such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or the Americans with Disabilities Act, any adverse action taken by the employer against that employee may be scrutinized as sign of retaliation, which is prohibited by these laws. Thus, the reporting of potential discrimination or the filing of any claim with the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (“EEOC”) and other investigators produces a chilling effect on the discipline or even termination of that employee, even for unrelated issues.  More >

EEOC Issues Fact Sheet on Transgender Restroom Access

On Monday, May 2^nd, 2016, the EEOC issued a fact sheet entitled “Fact Sheet: Bathroom Access Rights for Transgender Employees Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” The fact sheet comports with the agency’s stance that Title VII protects gender identity under the prohibitions on discrimination based on sex and serves as a reminder to employers that federal law – and the EEOC’s interpretation of it – trumps state law on this issue, despite recent attention-grabbing media headlines.  More >

ALERT – DOL Issues Final Overtime Rule

The Department of Labor (“DOL”) issued the long-awaited Final Rule on overtime exemptions on Wednesday, May 18, 2016, providing hard numbers and a plan for incremental increases to the “white collar” salary exemption. More >

DOL Quietly Moves to ‘All Liquidated Damages, All the Time’ Footing

The Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) has always provided for liquidated damages for violations, but in the past, the Wage and Hour Division (“WHD”) generally pursued the liquidated damages only when forced to litigate. Liquidated damages are effectively punitive in nature and amount to the full amount of back wages, doubling the hit to employers who find themselves in such a predicament. In recent years, however, the WHD has steadily increased the frequency with which it assesses these damages, which proves to be double the burden on employers. More >

New Overtime Rules May Be Here Sooner than Expected

The timeline for adoption of the Final Rule of proposed changes to the white collar overtime exemption has been hard to pin down. In early November of 2015, Solicitor of Labor M. Patricia Smith, during a panel discussion at the American Bar Association’s Labor and Employment Law Conference in Philadelphia, mentioned that the proposed changes would not be issued until late 2016, leading many to believe that they would not take effect until 2017. Later that month, the Department of Labor (“DOL”) Wage and Hour Division estimated that the rule would be published in July 2016, not quite as late as earlier implied. Then, Labor Secretary Thomas Perez stated in December in an interview with Bloomberg BNA that it seemed likely to him that the new rule would be out by spring of 2016. In February of 2016, Smith reiterated the Wage and Hour Division’s projected timeline of a July 2016 publication with an effective date 60 days later. On March 14^th, 2016, the Department of Labor made the surprising move of sending its overtime rule to the White House Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”), which means that all bets are off and the rule may here sooner than predicted. More >

EEOC Not Feeling So Well After Loss over Wellness Program

In prior blogs, I discussed pending cases that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) was bringing against wellness programs in the interim before clear guidance was given by the agency on how to craft these programs. Wellness programs, expanded and encouraged under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”), run the risk of triggering provisions of federal antidiscrimination laws, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (“GINA”), according to the EEOC. EEOC brought several high-profile cases against employers in the enactment of their wellness programs, highlighting the bounds of what they view as accepted policy in employer wellness programs. In what is a sure to be a setback for the EEOC, however, it recently lost one of those cases at the trial level. More >

Political Speech in the Workplace: Can I Just Make It Go Away?

Every four years like clockwork, it happens: presidential politics becomes the focus of our national attention, seemingly dominating all aspects of our lives. The national conversation becomes one of campaign rhetoric, and anecdotal evidence suggests that it has only gotten more divisive. The conventional wisdom says that the two things one is never supposed to discuss at work are religion and politics, yet the political conversation can’t help but spill into the workplace, with the attendant potential for division and conflict. As an employer trying to foster productivity and keep the peace in the workplace, is there anything you can do? As it turns out, there’s quite a lot. More >

Employers, Beware: New EEOC Proposed Rule Would Gather Data, but Not Context

Every year, employers with 100 or more employees are required by the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (“EEOC”) to invite employment applicants to self-identify their gender, race, and ethnicity on an EEO-1 report. On February 1^st, however, the EEOC published a Proposed Rule that requires these employers to also include pay data and hours worked for all employees. This new regulation will provide a fairly powerful tool to the EEOC, but it could also prove to be a nightmare for employers. More >

Federal Contractors: Proposed Sick Leave Regulations May Leave You Feeling Sick

As a further push in the Obama Administration’s “Lead on Leave” initiative, the Department of Labor (“DOL”) issued proposed regulations on February 25^th that would implement Executive Order 13706, requiring federal contractors to provide up to 56 hours of annual paid sick leave to employees. These regulations are far-reaching in scope, covering not just the amount of paid sick leave, but also when the leave can be used, whether unused leave carries over to the next year, how employees request the leave and which employees are eligible. These regulations will affect employers that enter into contracts with the federal government beginning January 1, 2017, therefore government contractors (and prospective government contractors) should begin now to understand these regulations and how their workforce will be affected. More >