In August 2018, Illinois governor Bruce Rauner signed House Bill 1595 (“HB 1595”) amending the Illinois Nursing Mothers in the Workplace Act (the “Act”) to provide paid break time to nursing mothers “as needed” to express milk during work hours. The new requirement took effect immediately, and applies to all Illinois employers with more than five employees. HB 1595 changes the Act in the following ways: Nursing breaks “may” still run concurrently with other breaks.…

Medical marijuana occupies a gray space within the United States. Marijuana is an illegal drug under federal law and is included on the Drug Enforcement Administrations’ Schedule I, along with heroin and LSD. The drugs on this schedule are considered to have “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.” In spite of the federal prohibition, thirty states have passed some form of legislation allowing for the medical use of marijuana. This…

The recent Equifax breach data and public missteps in handling the breach has companies revisiting their cybersecurity measures and refreshing their breach response plans.  Although not every company has consumer data likely to be targeted by hackers, employment files may be compromised, such as when breaches of U.S. government databases exposed the personally identifiable information (PII) of 22.1 million people, including not only federal employees and contractors but their families and friends.  Breach incidents have…

We have been watching with some concern recent developments in a much-publicized gender discrimination action filed in DC federal court by a female partner and practice group head in the Washington, D.C. office of Proskauer Rose LLP. The plaintiff filed her $500 million gender bias suit under a Jane Doe pseudonym on May 12, 2017, alleging that the firm engaged in salary discrimination and retaliation.  Proskauer vehemently denied Jane Doe’s allegations, and maintains that she…

On April 4, 2017, the Seventh Circuit became the first federal appellate court in the country to extend the protections afford by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.  The 8-3 decision came after they held a rare en banc hearing on Kimberly Hively’s case (Hively v. Ivy Tech Community College). The majority opinion written by Chief Circuit Judge Diane P. Wood cited several U.S. Supreme…

In May 2016, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) published “Employer-Provided Leave and the Americans with Disabilities Act” The EEOC published the guidance as it observed a “troubling trend:” employment policies that deny or restrict leave as a reasonable accommodation for employees with disabilities.  It has been a year since this guidance was published and it is worth revisiting this issue. The issue arises as follows.  An Employer determines whether an employee is…