With holidays and a new year fast approaching, it is an excellent time for employers to consider reviewing and revamping their Employee Handbooks or stand-alone policies that address company-recognized holidays.

Continue Reading Happy Holidays! For some, or for all? Revamping Your Employee Handbook Holiday Provisions to Ensure Inclusivity.

While diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility have slowly made their way to the forefront of many employers’ minds, two dimensions of diversity are often overlooked in these discussions—neurodiversity and ability diversity. More than 1 billion people, 15% of the global population, live with a disability. Thus, employers must ensure that neurodiversity and employees and applicants with disabilities are properly represented in DEIA initiatives.

Continue Reading Best Practices for Hiring and Retaining Individuals with Disabilities

General Counsel Abruzzo continues in her efforts to micromanage your workplace by any means possible. She has issued one General Counsel Guidance Memo after another in her attempts to over-regulate your workplace. The basic premise with respect to her most recent GC memo, 23-02, is her alleged concern that electronic surveillance by employers is impairing employees’ ability to engage in protected concerted activity and keeping that activity confidential from their employer. In doing so, the General Counsel refers to case law that is, for the most part, dated and well-known in terms of the “do’s and don’ts” of improper employer surveillance in the workplace.

Continue Reading The NLRB and Electronic Monitoring in the Workplace

Key Points

  • On October 6, 2022, President Biden issued a full pardon for all federal convictions for simple possession of marijuana, urged state governors to pardon state-level possession convictions, and encouraged rescheduling of marijuana under federal law.
  • The pardon only applies to simple marijuana possession convictions under federal law and the District of Columbia’s criminal code.
  • The pardon does not extend to any state marijuana offenses or any federal offenses other than simple possession.
  • Pardoned convictions will still appear on an individual’s record but will be accompanied by a certificate of pardon.
  • Pardons “forgive” the conviction and remove any restrictions on a person’s right to vote, hold office, or sit on a jury that may have been imposed by the conviction.


Continue Reading President Biden’s Pardon of Federal Marijuana Convictions and Its Impact on Employers

Key Points

  • On October 13, 2022 the Department of Labor (DOL) published a notice of proposed rulemaking advising that it intends to alter the test used to distinguish “independent contractors” from employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).
  • The proposed rule will rescind the 2021 Independent Contractor Rule and replace it with a multifactor, totality-of-the-circumstances test that will likely cause an increase in the number of workers classified as employees.


Continue Reading Department of Labor Proposes New Rule to Distinguish Independent Contractors from Employees

In a recent decision, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held that an employer did not violate the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) despite excluding pregnant workers from its “Temporary Alternative Duty” (TAD) policy. In the process, the Seventh Circuit provided valuable guidance related to an employer’s burden of production in pregnancy discrimination litigation and the propriety of exclusionary TAD policies.

Continue Reading Seventh Circuit Upholds Exclusion of Pregnant Workers from Temporary Alternative Duty Policy

On August 1, 2022, the California Court of Appeals issued an opinion that will put a stop to website accessibility discrimination cases against online-only businesses brought pursuant to the state’s Unruh Act. The case, Martinez v. Cot’n Wash, Inc., clarified that websites standing alone are not places of public accommodation under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
Continue Reading Some Clarity At Last: California Court of Appeals Holds Websites Are Not Places of Public Accommodation Under the ADA

Key Point

  • Federal contractors and subcontractors who filed Type 2 EEO-1 Reports for the years 2016-2020 are advised that the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) intends to release the data from such filed EEO-1 Reports unless they file written objections asserting Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) objections by no later than September 19, 2022


Continue Reading OFCCP Intends to Release Contractor Provided 2016-2020 EEO-1 Data Unless Contractors File FOIA Objections to Protect Confidential Information