On April 29, 2024, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued the final version of its Enforcement Guidance on Harassment in the Workplace (the “Guidance”) by a 3-2 vote. The Guidance updates prior EEOC...more
As has been widely reported, the White House issued a comprehensive and sweeping (some might say overly broad) Executive Order on October 30 about “the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development, and Use of Artificial...more
We have written recently about state legislative proposals to significantly restrict employers’ use of non-compete agreements with employees and about court decisions that have limited the enforcement of non-competes. Many...more
A female gymnastics coach at Towson University in Maryland has filed a lawsuit claiming that the University fired her because of her gender, while she was pregnant and after she complained about being treated differently than...more
State and federal courts shut down all in-person operations in March 2020 based on the COVID-19 health emergency. Since then, many have struggled to reschedule the significant backlog of jury trials. While most courts adopted...more
Last month, the mayor of the District of Columbia signed a near-total ban on noncompete provisions used by D.C. employers to protect their business interests. We have previously written about a possible federal noncompete ban...more
In July, we reported on new DOL COVID-19 guidance relating to leave under the Families First Coronavirus Relief Act and the Family Medical Leave Act, as well as telework considerations governed by the Fair Labor Standards...more
Maryland Governor Larry Hogan issued an Executive Order yesterday, March 23, 2020, to close all non-essential Maryland businesses, effective at 5:00 PM the same day, and to announce a $175 million business relief program for...more
An Illinois appellate court decision that recently overturned an employer’s effort to protect against the disclosure of its trade secrets by a departing employee gives guidance to employers about drafting and enforcing...more
A pending federal appeals court case is the latest to highlight the challenges employers face when considering accommodation requests from an employee with a medical condition. As we have written before, leave and...more
Despite having only three active members on its five-member Commission and having no General Counsel, the EEOC has remained quite busy in its strategic enforcement of federal workplace discrimination laws. You may remember...more
Ride-sharing services Uber and Lyft suffered a recent setback before the state of Washington’s Supreme Court in their efforts to protect trade secrets from disclosure under a state public records law.
In its recent...more
On an almost daily basis, the news is filled with reported allegations of harassment by news anchors, Hollywood titans, Senate candidates, sitting congressmen, celebrity chefs, network executives and even the president. The...more
Handling workers’ compensation claims can present a number of challenges, such as determining whether an injury is work-related and evaluating back-to-work accommodation requests. Another challenge arises when you consider...more
7/12/2017
/ Criminal Penalties ,
Employee Handbooks ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Employment Policies ,
Hiring & Firing ,
Medical Leave ,
Reasonable Accommodation ,
Retaliation ,
State Labor Laws ,
Workers' Compensation Claim ,
Wrongful Termination
On January 25, 2017, a federal appeals court that covers Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and North and South Carolina was the latest to craft a joint employer test, holding that a Maryland general contractor was the joint...more
As we have previously discussed, in its 2015 “Browning Ferris” decision, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) set a new standard for determining whether two entities are joint employers under federal labor law. Since...more
Representatives of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), as well as the Department of Labor and the Department of Justice (DOJ), participated in an American Bar Association Equal Opportunity Law conference in...more
4/20/2016
/ Class Action Arbitration Waivers ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
E-Verify ,
EEO-1 ,
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) ,
Equal Pay ,
Gender-Based Pay Discrimination ,
Hiring & Firing ,
LGBTQ ,
Sexual Orientation Discrimination ,
Soccer ,
Strategic Enforcement Plan ,
Wage and Hour
There is little debate that best practices for employers include periodically refreshing the company’s key employment documents like personnel policies, confidentiality and nondisclosure agreements. Quite often, there are...more
Has your company decided yet whether it will conduct criminal background or credit checks? If you are already using that tool as part of your job screening process, are you keeping up with legal developments in every city,...more
6/24/2015
/ Background Checks ,
Ban the Box ,
Class Action ,
Conditional Job Offers ,
Consent ,
Credit Checks ,
Criminal Background Checks ,
Disclosure ,
Due Diligence ,
Employee Privacy Rights ,
Employees ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) ,
Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) ,
Hiring & Firing ,
Job Ads ,
Job Applicants ,
Job Offers ,
Notice Requirements ,
Required Documentation
When discussing trade secrets and strategies to protect valuable proprietary information, most companies focus on their outbound risk. In other words, companies pay close attention to protecting their own valuable trade...more
You have just learned that a senior member of the company research and development team has resigned. The employee had access to important confidential information about your company’s product development, manufacturing...more
A federal court in Connecticut recently concluded that a fired employee could have a valid disability harassment claim based on statements prohibiting all harassment contained in the employer’s personnel manual. The company...more
Disputes regarding trade secrets and corporate espionage are becoming perpetual fixtures in the news. One of the most common scenarios is that a key employee departs to join a competitor and his or her former employer quickly...more
Many employers require new hires to sign non-compete agreements and we have advised previously about best practices for employers to refresh their non-compete terms on a regular basis. A recent decision by a Maryland federal...more
As you consider the tasks you did not quite finish in 2013 and look ahead to 2014, we recommend including on your to-do list a review of your company’s practices and procedures for protecting its valuable, proprietary...more