Employers and Human Resources (HR) departments have seen major changes in employment law throughout 2025. These rapid changes underscore the need for employers and HR professionals to stay ahead and adapt to them as swiftly as they develop.  Executive Orders President Donald Trump issued more than 200 executive orders (EOs) in 2025, which is more than any president in the last 50 years. Many of these EOs, which Read More

According to a White House Office of Management and Budget notice, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has delivered its new independent contractor rule under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). DOL previously identified the regulation as one to revisit in August and September 2025, but the new regulation has only surfaced now. The White House has provided no further information as to when it might publish the new Read More

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has issued a final rule that fundamentally changes existing civil rights enforcement under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by eliminating disparate-impact liability cases. The new rule states that DOJ will focus its enforcement efforts on intentional discrimination rather than on disparate impact. According to the DOJ, the enforcement shift complies with the original Read More

Insurance company Guardian recently surveyed more than 2,000 employers and employees concerning mental health issues. Over 81% of employers said that mental health issues increased absences at their workplaces, 50% reported seeing an increase in mental health claims, and 30% admitted to an increase in claims related to postpartum depression.  In turn, as more employees take leave based on mental health issues, Read More

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has announced that the Georgia Institute of Technology will settle a whistleblower qui tam suit for $875,000. The case is U.S. ex rel. Craig and Koza v. Georgia Tech Research Corp., Case Number 1:22-cv-02698, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. Two former cybersecurity team members of Georgia Tech’s research arm alleged that it had purposely failed to comply Read More

Washington State’s federal courts are seeing a rash of employment litigation. Much of the litigation involves laws barring restrictive covenants and encouraging wage transparency, which have spurned suits claiming that employers failed to disclose wages or salary ranges in job positing. Other suits involve legal challenges to employers that refuse to allow workers to moonlight at second jobs. Targets of these suits Read More

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has announced that it will not seek penalties against employers for failure to meet reporting requirements concerning overtime compensation and cash tips for the 2025 tax year. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) that President Donald Trump signed into law on July 4, 2025, instituted new IRS reporting requirements and penalties for employers who failed to meet those Read More

A New Jersey federal district court judge has preliminarily approved a $5.75 million settlement between National Freight, Inc. (NFI) and a class of truck drivers working for the company. However, the settlement goes well beyond a mere business dispute. This case strikes at the heart of an industry that has long perpetuated the ongoing, intentional misclassification of truck drivers as “independent contractors” rather Read More

A judge for the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas has approved a $13.5 million settlement in a wage claim suit against Bayada Home Health Care. The class, which includes about 11,000 nurses who worked for the company between August 2013 and the present, filed suit alleging that Bayada failed to pay them for work performed while off the clock. The terms of the settlement provide that two named plaintiffs will each Read More

The parties in a $500 million proposed class action lawsuit over unpaid severance—including terminated Twitter employees, X Corp. (the company formerly known as Twitter), and owner Elon Musk—have reached an impasse in settlement negotiations. Currently, law firms for individual plaintiffs — Lichten & Liss-Riordan PC and Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight LLP — are arguing in court over how to proceed, with Sanford Read More