Takeaways

After a sleepy fall, New York State has expanded employment laws yet again with a ban on most worker repayment agreements, express recognition of the disparate impact theory for providing discrimination claims, and a ban on checking job applicants’ and employees’ credit histories. The state is also stepping up workplace violence prevention. New York City has expanded its sick leave law beyond that of most jurisdictions, and will be requiring its largest employers to begin reporting annual pay data by gender, race and ethnicity.  Throughout the tri-state area, minimum wage levels have all increased with the new year.  New Jersey has added its own recognition of the disparate impact theory for proving discrimination and prohibited employer “captive audience” meetings. Connecticut expanded FMLA to private schools, and the federal government is defending Americans against national origin discrimination and preparing to challenge state laws regulating AI.

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Federal regulatory landscape shifts continue, with scale-down of rules and enforcement in wage and hour, workplace health and safety, labor practices, and affirmative action compliance, amid a continued push to attack employers who maintain DEI initiatives.  Recent Supreme Court decisions have addressed related activities, including the penchant for nationwide injunctions and the standard for those in the majority to sue for discrimination.  At the state and local level, New York has new child labor laws and issued materials on the new Retail Worker Safety Act, New Jersey issued materials on its new pay transparency law, and New York City amended its sick leave rules to align with prenatal leave requirements.  New laws in New York and Connecticut seek to undue court decisions in those states that had created large damages exposure for employers, while an appellate court decision in Connecticut addressed remote work as a reasonable accommodation.  All this and more in a chock-full, extended length issue for Summer 2025.

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100+ days into an evolving employment law landscape under the Trump administration, with significant policy shifts coming from the EEOC, radical change and reductions directed for OFCCP, and new worker classification guidelines from the DOL.  This issue also covers new worker protection laws in New York, a concerted federal focus against noncompetes, and court decisions on reasonable accommodation, commissions and wage laws, and entitlement to attorneys’ fee awards.

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We are covering all the DEI, affirmative action, gender diversity, and related EEOC, OFCCP, and NLRB actions at the federal level.  This issue also includes state and local developments on discrimination protections, wage law requirements, new government notices, important court rulings from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and the U.S. Supreme Court, and a few surviving employment law developments at the NLRB, CFPB and elsewhere under the Biden administration that affect employers.

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Court decisions dominate employment law changes in Q2/Q3 2024, including Supreme Court decisions impacting federal agency actions, Connecticut courts defining parameters of state law discrimination claims, and New Jersey courts considering non-disparagement clauses, wage theft penalties, and the Temporary Workers’ Bill of Rights.  Other changes include new paid break time for expressing breastmilk, New York State workplace violence protections for retail workers, changes in federal wage law, expansion of Connecticut’s paid family leave, U.S. Department of Labor assessments on use of artificial intelligence in workplace decisions, and New Jersey’s expansive application of its anti-discrimination laws.

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