Melissa Legault

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State Law Round-Up: Wage Theft Laws (MN, NJ) and Restrictions on Non-Compete Agreements (ME, MD, NH, OR, RI, WA) (US)

By Ariel Cohen & Melissa Legault on September 17, 2019

Wage Theft Laws In response to Minnesota’s wage theft law, which we previously reported about here, the city of Minneapolis has passed its own wage theft law, Ordinance No. 2019-031, which will go into effect on January 1, 2020. The law applies to any employee that works for an employer for at least 80 hours per year within the geographic boundaries of the city of Minneapolis.…

Employment Law Worldview

Summer Vacation Is Definitely Over At The NLRB (US)

By Daniel Pasternak & Melissa Legault on September 16, 2019

Between August 29 and September 10, the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB” or “Board”) issued four decisions that resolve important issues that have been the subject of long-running disputes. It also issued an invitation to submit briefs in a case that provides an opportunity for the current Board majority members to revise the standard for when employee conduct loses protection under the National Labor Relations Act. Misclassification of Employees As Contractors Alone Does Not Violate…

Employment Law Worldview

State Law Round-Up: Minnesota Criminal Penalties for Wage Law Violations; New York Wage Gap and Hairstyle Discrimination; Pregnancy and Nursing Protections in Maine (US)

By Ariel Cohen & Melissa Legault on July 24, 2019

Minnesota Enacts Criminal Penalties for Wage Law Violations Minnesota governor Tim Waltz recently signed legislation that imposes criminal penalties (including felony charges) on employers who engage in “wage theft.” Effective August 1, 2019, employers will be guilty of a felony if they wrongfully withhold an employee’s pay by virtue of underpayment, misclassification, or refusing to pay an employee for mandatory breaks or overtime. To enforce this law, the Department of Labor and the Attorney General…

Employment Law Worldview

Obesity Continues to Divide Courts: Washington’s High Court Says Obesity Qualifies as an Impairment (US)

By Melissa Legault on July 17, 2019

As we previously discussed here and here, courts are split regarding the extent to which obesity qualifies as a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”). The Second, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Circuit Courts of Appeal have held that obesity must be accompanied by an underlying physiological disorder for it to constitute a disability, whereas the First Circuit and some district courts have come to the opposite conclusion, particularly when the plaintiff presents…

Employment Law Worldview

DOL Offers New Wage and Hour Compliance Advice (US)

By Melissa Legault on July 10, 2019

On July 1, 2019, the U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”) Wage and Hour Division issued a trio of fact-specific opinion letters offering employers guidance on various pay practices, specifically relating to calculating overtime pay as part of nondiscretionary bonuses, exemptions for paralegals, and rounding practices for calculating hours worked.…

Employment Law Worldview

Growing Trend Towards Unlimited Paid Time Off: Best Practices (US)

By Melissa Legault on June 18, 2019

Unlimited paid time off (“PTO”) is one of the new “it” workplace policies. Adopted as both a means to attract and retain employees as well as to avoid having to coordinating and track specific grants of paid PTO or vacation– a task which can be arduous, particularly for smaller businesses – some employers have done away with traditional accrual-based PTO and vacation policies and instead offer employees the opportunity to take as much PTO as…

Employment Law Worldview

Seventh Circuit: Obesity Alone Is Not A Disability Under the ADA (US)

By Melissa Legault on June 17, 2019

As we previously reported here, the issue of whether obesity is a legally-protected impairment is complex, and jurisdictions differ on the extent to which they consider obesity to be a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”). On June 12, 2019, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit joined the Second, Sixth, and Eighth Circuits in holding that without evidence that an underlying physiological disorder caused the individual’s extreme obesity,…

Employment Law Worldview

State Law Round-Up: Developments in Wage and Hour (CO, MA, ME, WA), Non-Compete (WA), Commuter Benefits (NJ), Sexual Harassment (DE), and Sick Leave (Dallas and Minneapolis) Laws. (US)

By Shennan Harris & Melissa Legault on May 20, 2019

It’s been an active few weeks since our last State Law Round-Up in mid-April 2019, with a number of bills being signed into new laws and case developments impacting employers in many US states over the past few weeks. Colorado Failure to Pay Wages as Theft Effective January 1, 2020, an employer’s failure to pay wages will be classified as criminal theft in Colorado. Under the new law, an employer commits wage theft when…

Employment Law Worldview

EEOC Will Begin Collecting 2017 and 2018 Pay Data from Employers in Mid-July 2019 (US)

By Melissa Legault on May 3, 2019

A federal judge recently ordered that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) collect two years of Component 2 EEO-1 data, including employees’ hours worked and W-2 compensation information, from employers with 100 or more employees (and federal contractors with 50 or more employees) by September 30, 2019 (see our post here). The agency was given two options: (1) require employers to provide 2017 pay data in addition to the 2018 data by September 30,…

Employment Law Worldview

Title VII And LGBT Discrimination: The Path To The High Court (US)

By Melissa Legault on May 1, 2019

Expanding on her previous post on the subject, on May 1, 2019, Law360 published the following expert analysis authored by Squire Patton Boggs labor and employment attorney Melissa Legault. After 11 private conferences during which the U.S. Supreme Court justices debated whether to hear the cases, the Supreme Court granted certiorari[1] in three cases involving the extent of protection — if any — provided by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 against employment-based discrimination…

Melissa Legault

State Law Round-Up: Wage Theft Laws (MN, NJ) and Restrictions on Non-Compete Agreements (ME, MD, NH, OR, RI, WA) (US)

Summer Vacation Is Definitely Over At The NLRB (US)

State Law Round-Up: Minnesota Criminal Penalties for Wage Law Violations; New York Wage Gap and Hairstyle Discrimination; Pregnancy and Nursing Protections in Maine (US)

Obesity Continues to Divide Courts: Washington’s High Court Says Obesity Qualifies as an Impairment (US)

DOL Offers New Wage and Hour Compliance Advice (US)

Growing Trend Towards Unlimited Paid Time Off: Best Practices (US)

Seventh Circuit: Obesity Alone Is Not A Disability Under the ADA (US)

State Law Round-Up: Developments in Wage and Hour (CO, MA, ME, WA), Non-Compete (WA), Commuter Benefits (NJ), Sexual Harassment (DE), and Sick Leave (Dallas and Minneapolis) Laws. (US)

EEOC Will Begin Collecting 2017 and 2018 Pay Data from Employers in Mid-July 2019 (US)

Title VII And LGBT Discrimination: The Path To The High Court (US)

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