Labor & Employment Law Updates
As we approach the end of the year, employers should be aware that minimum wages are set to increase in twenty-one states in 2019. The following table, which supplements The Rocky Mountain Employer’s post earlier this year, sets forth the upcoming 2019 increases in minimum wages and tipped employee minimum wages.
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An employer did not violate federal law by firing an employee for copying confidential coworker personnel files in an effort to support her discrimination claim, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled. The court in Netter v. Barnes rejected the plaintiff’s argument that stealing confidential personnel files for the purpose of proving a discrimination claim is protected conduct under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (“Title VII”).
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This week, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the denial of a preliminary injunction in a case challenging the legality of public sector unions.
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Plaintiffs bringing failure-to-accommodate claims under the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (“Title VII”) based on religion must prove they suffered an adverse employment action such as a termination, demotion, or decrease in pay, under a recent federal district court case in Colorado.
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Campbell Litigation and the Rocky Mountain Employer wish you a happy and safe Thanksgiving. We will resume postings next Thursday, November 29, 2018.
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The Kentucky Supreme Court has ruled that employers in that state may not require employees to sign an employment arbitration agreement as a condition of employment, as such a condition violates state law.
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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.
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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.
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Although elections in Colorado and other states increasingly rely on mail-in ballots, employees may soon be requesting time off to vote on election day—November 6, 2018. Most states require employers to give employees time off to vote, and many states require employers pay for time spent voting during work hours. Below are voting leave requirements for employers operating in Colorado, California, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.
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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.
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The #MeToo movement has caught the attention of state legislatures across the country. So far, twelve states—Arizona, California, Delaware, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Nebraska, New York, Oregon, Tennessee, Washington State, and Vermont—have enacted new laws providing protections related to sexual harassment in private and public sector workplaces.
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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.
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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.
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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:
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The number of sex harassment claims filed against employers has increased in the year since the #MeToo movement began. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (“EEOC”) preliminary 2018 figures show that just under 10,000 sexual harassment claims have been filed to date in 2018, which is a three percent increase over the previous year.
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Under a recent appellate decision, employers in Colorado and several other Western states must litigate clearly untimely discrimination lawsuits, which in the past were summarily dismissed by federal courts for lack of jurisdiction.
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In the ongoing journey towards a possible rewrite of the white-collar exemptions contained in the “Overtime Rule,” the Department of Labor recently announced an upcoming series of listening sessions being held around the country to gather input from all those interested, primarily employers.
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The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) claims that the Home Depot violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”), which prohibits disability discrimination in employment and requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to disabled employees, unless such accommodation would cause an undue hardship. According to the EEOC, the Home Depot refused to allow an employee with irritable bowel syndrome and fibromyalgia a short bathroom break and instead fired her for abandoning her post at a register when she left to use the restroom. The Home Depot denied the allegations, and denied knowing Plaintiff had irritable bowel syndrome, but despite these facts, the EEOC claims that a short break to care for herself and return to work was an ADA reasonable accommodation that the Home Depot could have—and should have—provided to accommodate the employee’s disability.
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California employers must compensate employees for all regularly occurring pre-shift and post-shift tasks that take just a few minutes and are difficult to track, the California Supreme Court recently held.
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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.”
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