Employment & Labor

February 21, 2020

The keen follower of IR35, for there must be such a person, will have seen reports in the Press about the blanket approaches to PSC contractors being taken by some businesses of a size and/or reputation that they don’t need to worry too much about the views of those who may wish to work for them. Some have gone for the nuclear option of just not dealing with PSC contractors at all, and some prefer…

California Peculiarities Employment Law Blog

Justice Delayed, Justice Denied, in the Eastern District of California?

By Scott P. Mallery

February 21, 2020

Seyfarth Synopsis: Judge Dale Drozd in the Eastern District of California issued a standing order establishing procedures limiting the access of civil litigants as an emergency measure to deal with an onerous judicial workload amid reports of severe under-funding of judicial resources. As you may have noticed, Washington, D.C. has not earned a reputation as the place where “things get done.” The political gridlock there is having deleterious effects on the California litigating public. For…

Employer Perspectives

Shared Parental Pay: Court of Appeal decision stands as the law

By George Aldous & Christopher Fisher

February 21, 2020

The Supreme Court has this week declined to hear the appeal in what had been the highly anticipated case of Hextall v Chief Constable of Leicestershire Police. Mr Hextall had sought permission to appeal a decision of the Court of Appeal from last year, which found that it was not sex discrimination for his employer to provide only the statutory rate of Shared Parental Leave (“SPL”) pay to men, while providing enhanced maternity pay to…

Wage & Hour - Developments & Highlights

Flushed Down The Toilet: Port-a-Potty Company Settles FLSA Overtime Collective Action

By Mark Tabakman

February 21, 2020

Employers often do not like to pay overtime, although they must, and they sometimes come up with creative arrangements not to do so. That is fine, until an employee, often one who has been fired, files a lawsuit. Then, the company must resolve the lawsuit and fix the “problem” going forward. A recent example of this model just occurred involving a portable toilet company, involving almost 1,300 toilet technicians. The case is entitled Vargas v.…

Employment Law Worldview

Inability To Perform A Specific Job Is Not A Substantial Impairment On Ability To Work, Says Second Circuit In ADA Case (US)

By Melissa Legault

February 20, 2020

In Woolf v. Strada, decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in February 2020, the court considered whether the plaintiff’s inability to perform his particular job as a result of migraines and stress arising from the circumstances surrounding his job gave rise to a qualifying disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”), as amended.…

New York Labor & Employment Law

New York Human Rights Law Now Applies to All Employers

By Jessica Baquet

February 20, 2020

The New York Human Rights Law has long prohibited employers from engaging in unlawful discrimination or harassment of employees. It has historically applied only to employers with four or more employees. However, as of February 8, 2020, the law applies to all employers in New York, regardless of size. This change in the law means that every employer must familiarize itself with statutory anti-discrimination and anti-harassment obligations. That task is made more difficult by the…

ADA Title III

2019 Was Another Record-Breaking Year for Federal ADA Title III Lawsuits

By Seyfarth Shaw LLP

February 20, 2020

By Minh Vu, Kristina Launey and Susan Ryan Seyfarth Synopsis: The ADA Title III federal lawsuit numbers in 2019 topped 11,000 for another all-time record. Plaintiffs filed at least 11,053 ADA Title III lawsuits in federal court in 2019 — 890 (or 8.8%) more than in 2018. This is the highest number since we started tracking these lawsuits in 2013, when there were only 2,722 such lawsuits. These numbers include Title III lawsuits filed…

Labor & Employment Law Blog

DHS Issues New I-9 Form — Required by May 1 for New Hires and Reverifications

By Greg Berk

February 20, 2020

DHS recently issued a new I-9 form. This new version is mandated starting May 1. The old form expired last year and DHS had temporarily extended its validity. The new form is essentially the same as the older version. DHS made minor technical updates to the instructions. All of the pre-existing I-9 rules and regulations remain intact. The new I-9 form can be found at: https://www.uscis.gov/i-9…

California Employment Law

Whistleblower Protections: Don’t Fire the Messenger!

By Nancy Yaffe

February 20, 2020

One of the hottest issues in employment law is Whistleblowing. Did you ever wonder why the President can fire people who testify against him, but a California employer would be sued in a hot minute for doing so? Or why certain high profile figures can be “handsy” or “flirty” (or way more) and get away with it, but others are being “outed” by victims with time-barred claims, crushed with job loss, litigation (and maybe even…

Workplace Privacy, Data Management & Security Report

New York Adopts New Data Security and Privacy Regulations for Schools and Their Vendors

By Frank J. Fanshawe

February 20, 2020

We observed in a post on this blog that government agencies, businesses, hospitals, universities and school districts are frequent targets of data breaches that can affect millions of individuals. Cyberattacks on school districts continue to appear in the news. In January, students in the Pittsburg Unified School District (California) were left without internet access as a result of a ransomware attack, which compromised the schools’ servers and email. The Richmond Community Schools in Michigan suffered…