Employment, Labor & Benefits

We want to dedicate our August Bubbler feature to our readers, who have helped Mintz’s blog achieve such an august reputation. This month’s namesake (Emperor Caesar Augustus) would have been proud to see all of the activity out of the Empire State recently.

California Governor Jerry Brown recently signed into law A.B. 2770, creating new protections for employers, witnesses, and complainants from defamation lawsuits related to making, assisting, or discussing good-faith sexual harassment claims and investigations.

Earlier this month, Governor Jerry Brown signed A.B. 2282 into law, clarifying several unanswered questions concerning California’s salary history ban.

In a series of blog posts going back to last August, we reported on certain amendments to the Massachusetts Employer Medical Assistance Contribution (EMAC) rules. As we previously explained, the EMAC contributions are required of employers with more than five employees in Massachusetts.

This is the first post in a blog series exploring the U.S. Department of Labor’s recently issued final regulation governing Association Health Plans (AHPs). While AHPs can be either fully-insured or self-funded, the final regulation provides rules that are generally more useful to the former than the latter.

Our colleague Alden Bianchi was a guest on a recent episode of Bloomberg Tax’s “Talking Tax” podcast, discussing the U.S. Department of Labor’s new rules for Association Health Plan.

Welcome to July! As we head deeper into the summer, the employment law world continues to heat up (and we’re not just talking about the record temperatures across the country!). We have rounded up the most recent developments impacting employers here.

It is not unusual for a creditor of a debtor to cry foul that a non-debtor affiliate has substantial assets, but has not joined the bankruptcy.

On June 28, 2018, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker signed a law affecting all employers in the Commonwealth by creating a paid family and medical leave program funded by a state payroll tax, increasing the state minimum wage, and eliminating premium pay requirements for work performed on Sundays and certain holidays.

In our sister blog, ADR: Advice from the Trenches, Don Davis explores back-to-back decisions by New York’s intermediate appellate court that applied very narrow state law principles permitting vacatur of an arbitration award on public policy grounds to vacate an arbitrator’s award that had reduced the employer-posed penalty of termination to a brief suspension.

“Ban the Box” laws prohibit or limit an employer’s ability to ask a job applicant about his or her criminal record. States, counties and cities have enacted this legislation to help applicants with criminal records combat additional barriers to securing employment. We’ve written about these laws as enacted in New Jersey, Washington, D.C., New York City, and California.

With the summer kicking off, it is a good opportunity for employers to review and refresh their employment practices to ensure compliance with developments on the federal, state and legal landscape.This Bubbler Post will review our earlier guidance and (hopefully!) prompt you to review your employment practices:

On May 15, 2018, Governor Hogan signed into law the “Disclosing Sexual Harassment in the Workplace Act of 2018” (the “Act”). The Act will go into effect on October 1, 2018, and contains two new obligations with which Maryland employers will need to comply.

In a landmark opinion on an important issue to employers, the Supreme Court held yesterday that employers can enforce class action waivers in arbitration agreements – leaving employers nationwide asking “what does this decision mean for us?”  This post aims to answer that question.

Over the past several years, health care entities have increasingly become the target of private and government plaintiffs complaining of disability discrimination. A crescendo of litigation has engulfed the health care industry

The California Supreme Court issued an important decision this week addressing the test for whether a worker is an independent contractor or an employee.  The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a Seventh Circuit decision upholding an employer’s rule that a months-long leave of absence was not a reasonable accommodation.

Following in the footsteps of neighboring jurisdictions such as New York City, Albany County, and Massachusetts, on April 10, 2018, Westchester County enacted legislation to ban inquiries into a job applicant’s salary history.

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy recently signed into law a bill that provides equal pay protections for members of certain protected classes. Governor Murphy also signed into law a bill that requires New Jersey employers to provide paid sick leave to employees.

This week, the California Supreme Court rejected the old “totality of circumstances” test to determine if a worker was properly classified as an independent contractor in favor of a new “ABC test” under which employers will be required to classify most workers as employees.

In a series of recent posts (available here and here), we discussed the expanded Massachusetts Employer Medical Assistance Contribution (EMAC) requirements, including the adoption of a new EMAC supplemental contribution.