The Rocky Mountain Employer

The United States Supreme Court ruled that federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (“ADEA”) prohibits age discrimination against all state and local government employees, no matter the size of their employer. The ADEA expressly applies only to private employers with 20 or more employees, but is silent as to whether it applies to all public employers, regardless of size. The unanimous decision in Mount Lemmon Fire District v. Guido settles a split among federal appellate courts as to whether the ADEA applies only to public employers with 20 or more employees.

Plaintiffs bringing failure-to-accommodate claims under the Americans With Disabilities Act (“ADA”) must prove they suffered an adverse employment action such as a termination, demotion, or decrease in pay, under a recent Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals decision.

The United States Supreme Court’s 2018-2019 session is underway and the employment cases on its docket may have a significant impact on employers, particularly regarding employment arbitration agreements.

Colorado employers should prepare for an increase in the state minimum wage from $10.20 to $11.10, per hour, and from $7.18 to $8.08 per hour for tipped employees, effective January 1, 2019. The increase comes as a result of Amendment 70, under which Colorado’s minimum wage increases annually by $.90 until it reaches $12.00 per hour in 2020.

The National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) has proposed a joint employer rule change that would upend a controversial Obama-era decision that drastically expanded who can be subject to liability for unfair labor practices and deemed an essential party for collective bargaining. The NLRB’s proposed rule reinstates the “traditional test,” whereby an employer may be considered a joint employer of another employer’s employees only if it possesses and actually exercises substantial direct and immediate control over the employees’ essential terms and conditions of employment.

As guidance to the U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”) in its efforts to determine how best to increase the minimum salary for the White Collar Overtime Exemptions, a large gathering of employee and employer advocates from the Rocky Mountain region told the DOL to increase the current annual $23,660.00 salary threshold modestly over a period of several years, at the DOL Listening Session held in Denver on September 14, 2018. Campbell Litigation attended the Session and provides the following summary of participants’ responses to the following questions:

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) is in the midst of a nationwide surge in employer I-9 audits, making good on the agency’s previous pledges to step up workforce enforcement efforts and “create a culture of compliance among employers.”

An employee who posted a damning, but stolen, document on Facebook lost the protections of the National Labor Relations Act, under an Advice Memorandum issued by the National Labor Relations Board’s (“NLRB”) Division of Advice.