On March 2, 2021, Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued Executive Order GA-34, ending Texas’ statewide mask mandate and allowing all businesses to operate at 100% capacity. The Executive Order will take effect on March 10, 2021, giving employers approximately a week to decide how their operations and policies will change, or if they will change, as a result of the Reopening Order. Read More › Tags:…

Is Wi-Fi sickness a disability? The California Court of Appeal just said it is in Brown v. Los Angeles Unified School District (2d Dist., Div. Eight), Case No. B294240. In a case that tests the limits of California’s liberal pleading standard, the appellate court green-lighted a claim of a woman who asserted a disability of “electromagnetic hypersensitivity,” or, as the concurring justice put it, “Wi-Fi sickness.” Read More › Tags:…

The President recently signed into law the Criminal Antitrust Anti-Retaliation Act (S. 2258) (116th Cong. (2020)), which amends the Antitrust Criminal Penalty Enhancement and Reform Act of 2004. It grants stronger protections to employees who come forward with claims of antitrust violations. Specifically, the law prohibits employers from discharge, demotion, or suspension, as well as any discrimination against any employee who assists in a government antitrust investigation. Read More › Tags:…

The emergence of COVID-19 has changed the workplace as we once knew it. California employers need to be prepared for unprecedented compliance challenges in recent legislation related to the ongoing pandemic, expanding leave protections, wage and hour compliance risks, and much more. Employers will need to review and adapt their policies and procedures in order to keep up in the coming year with California’s ever-changing employment laws. Read More › Tags:…

Ever since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the promise of an effective vaccine has been held out as a key component to a return to normality. Now, with the Pfizer vaccine approved, and the Moderna vaccine on the path to approval shortly, employers have begun struggling to determine what their legal obligations are towards employees who refuse to be vaccinated. While we have addressed these issues recently in a Dec. 16 webinar, the…

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has expanded the definition of close contact to now evaluate exposure cumulatively over a 24-hour period such that “15 cumulative minutes of exposure at a distance of 6 feet or less can be used as an operational definition for contact investigation,”[1] Because the newly expanded definition is not limited, it impacts many different industries (including transportation and logistics, health care, automotive, manufacturing, and educational industries) and different…

As Election Day quickly approaches in the highly anticipated presidential and congressional elections, employers are faced with a slew of questions about their employees’ rights on November 3 and beyond. Read More › Tags:…