The employment law landscape in Virginia will undergo a seismic shift effective July 1, 2020. Since April 2020, Governor Ralph Northam has signed roughly two dozen bills into law that will significantly impact employers, employees, and the broader Virginia workforce. The Virginia Values Act, for example, amends the Virginia Human Rights Act (“VHRA”) to, among other things, add sexual orientation and gender identity as protected characteristics. While this provision of the Virginia Values Act has garnered the most media attention, the conflux of bills substantially expands employer obligations by:

• extending the scope of the VHRA’s coverage to be nearly coextensive with the reach of federal law,
• creating new private rights of action for wage violations and worker misclassification,
• providing whistleblower protections to employees, and
• limiting the use of non-compete agreements.

These bills collectively will usher in extreme changes to employment in the Commonwealth of Virginia. This panel will outline the impending changes, discuss the practical effects of the new laws, and provide strategies for operating in this new reality.

Speakers

Garen E. Dodge
Member of the Firm
Epstein Becker Green
gdodge@ebglaw.com

Nathaniel M. Glasser
Member of the Firm
Epstein Becker Green
nglasser@ebglaw.com

Ellen Rice
Assistant General Counsel, Employment
VMware, Inc.
ricee@vmware.com

Registration is complimentary, but pre-registration is required.

For additional information about the event, please contact Julie Choudhury.

Epstein Becker Green will not be providing Continuing Legal Education (CLE) credit for this webinar.