October 13, 2013, marked the last day for California Governor Jerry Brown to sign or veto bills the Legislature sent to him for approval in the first half of the 2013-14 Regular Session. Of the bills we tracked as most relevant to our clients that made it to the Governor’s desk, the vast majority—18 of 23—will become law.
View a full summary each of the approved, vetoed, and “two-year” (i.e., bills that did not make it to the Governor’s desk and that may resurface in 2014) bills here.
We’ve already blogged about the new bills that the Governor approved prior to the October 13 deadline. In the coming weeks, we’ll blog about how more of the new laws, including the following, may affect employers doing business in California, and our thoughts for Workplace Solutions:
• Changes to protected statuses, pre-employment inquiries, and leaves of absence/time off work;
• New retaliation prohibitions for immigration-related practices;
• New wage and hour laws including:
o Liquidated damages for failure to pay minimum wage;
o Amendment to Labor Code section 226.7 to include “recovery periods”;
o Penalty for failure to remit withheld wages to the appropriate agency;
o Specify no administrative exhaustion requirement for certain Labor Code provisions;
o Impose up to $10,000 penalty upon employers for violation of Labor Code section 98.6;
o Not to mention the minimum wage increase, which we reported here.
• Farm labor contractor successor liability
• Governor’s VETO of the law that would have modified the mixed-motive instruction (prompted by the ruling in Harris v. Santa-Monica).
Stay tuned.