The new overtime rule under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) is going into effect, and employers must ensure that their workplaces follow it. Although ongoing litigation concerning the rule is likely, employers cannot rely on potential outcomes in court cases to delay implementing the rule. The increased salary thresholds for overtime exemptions occur in two phases. The first phase occurred when the threshold Read More

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has upheld a review board decision awarding black lung benefit for a retired miner who smoked cigarettes during his 18-year career in the mines. The Court stated that it would not overturn the administrative law judge’s (ALJ) medical findings since the record contained substantial evidence to support the ruling. The case is Safeco Insurance/Liberty Mutual Read More

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit will continue to consider whether a Texas federal court judge must stay an administrative suit against SpaceX before the National Labor Relations Board's (NLRB) in-house Court. The NLRB requested that the Fifth Circuit pause its deliberations on the issue, stating that it now agrees to the injunction requested by SpaceX to stay the in-house administrative proceedings. Read More

U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman has denied a motion to dismiss a proposed class action in which marketing firm workers claim that the company’s wellness program violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Despite the company's stance that a medical exam for workers was voluntary, the judge found that workers provided sufficient evidence to the contrary that justified the suit moving forward. Read More

Counsel for Disney and Lucasfilm argued that a California federal district court judge should dismiss former “Star Wars” actor Gina Carano’s wrongful termination suit on First Amendment grounds. The media giant argued that the company has a First Amendment right to distance its artistic expression from Carano’s 2020 personal political statements on X, formerly known as Twitter, disparaging the use of pronouns and Read More

The U.S. Supreme Court implemented a stricter four-factor test that courts must apply when the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) seeks an injunction against an employer allegedly engaging in unfair labor practices (ULPs). The case is Starbucks Corp. v. M. Kathleen McKinney, case number 23-367, U.S. Supreme Court. Section 10(j) of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) authorizes the NLRB to seek injunctive Read More

The Wage and Hour Division (WHD) of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) recently issued Field Assistance Bulletin No. 2024-1, entitled “Artificial Intelligence and Automated Systems in the Workplace under the Fair Labor Standards Act and Other Federal Labor Standards.” The bulletin originated from an October 2023 executive order that called for a coordinated federal government approach to the responsible and safe Read More

In response to the final rule that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued implementing the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA), seventeen state attorneys general have filed suit to challenge the rule’s abortion provisions. These states include Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Read More

The Wage and Hour Division (WHD) of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has issued its updated final rule on overtime pay. Originally proposed by the WHD in September 2023, the Defining and Delimiting the Exemptions for Executive, Administrative, Professional (EAP), Outside Sales and Computer Employees will go into effect on July 1, 2024. However, some portions of the rule will not go into effect until January 1, Read More

The state of New York has included paid prenatal leave as part of its $237 state budget for fiscal year 2025. Under the state’s paid prenatal leave policy, which is the first of its kind in the nation, pregnant employees will be entitled to up to 20 hours of paid leave to attend prenatal doctors’ appointments. Gov. Kathy Hochul first proposed a paid prenatal leave policy in January, noting statistics from the Read More