Labor & Employment Law Update

In January 2019, we reported on the Illinois Supreme Court’s decision, Rosenbach v. Six Flags Entertainment Corp., where the highest court in Illinois unanimously found that an individual need not allege (or show) an actual injury to qualify as an “aggrieved” person under the Illinois’s Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). This decision opened up the floodgates for additional, class action litigation under this Illinois statute.

Then, last week, in Patel v. Facebook, (a case that was originally filed in Illinois but later transferred to the Northern ...

MAJOR CHANGES TO ILLINOIS EMPLOYMENT LAWS:  NEW MANDATORY SEXUAL HARASSMENT TRAINING, REPORTING AND DISCLOSURE REQUIREMENTS, RESTRICTIONS ON EMPLOYMENT AGREEMENTS, & SEVERAL OTHER MANDATES

ATTENTION Illinois employers of ALL sizes… Are you ready?  Today (August 9, 2019), Governor Pritzker signed Senate Bill 75 – the Workplace Transparency Act – into law.  Effective January 1, 2020, major new changes will forever alter how Illinois employers manage harassment and discrimination issues as well as other workplace controversies.

In fact, the changes will require ALL ...

This past February we reported that the Supreme Court agreed to review the Fifth Circuit’s ruling in Fort Bend County v. Davis on the viability of claims brought in federal courts where the claimant had not first filed her claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). On June 3, 2019, the Supreme Court issued its decision holding that Title VII’s charge-filing requirement is a non-jurisdictional claim-processing rule that may be forfeited if not timely asserted. 

Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, an employee is required to first bring his ...

With much fanfare, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signed into law major amendments to the Illinois Equal Pay Act (IEPA) that now bar Illinois employers from asking job applicants or their prior employers about salary, wages or benefits history. On average, women in Illinois are paid only 79% of what men receive, according to information recently released from Gov. Pritzker’s office. Gov. Pritzker and Illinois legislators hope that the IEPA amendments will help correct the disparity. Gov. Pritzker told a crowd at the recent signing ceremony that “[w]e are declaring that ...

A federal court in Pennsylvania recently ruled that a former employee presented sufficient evidence to warrant a jury trial on a claim she was retaliated against after she resigned. The decision serves as a good reminder that anti-retaliation protections extend beyond the end of the employment relationship to protect former employees.

Cherie Leese complained of sexual harassment while employed by a state agency. She later filed a charge alleging she was issued discipline in retaliation for her report. The parties eventually settled. As part of that settlement, Leese resigned ...

Several years ago, a trend was emerging that consisted of third-party, private marketplaces where employers could have their employees purchase health care with an “allowance” of sorts. This “allowance” could be facilitated by an employer that set up a stand-alone Health Reimbursement Arrangement (HRA). The emerging trend was analogous to the way traditional pension plans evolved to 401(k)s. Then, before things could take off, the Affordable Care Act put a halt to it. Essentially, the ACA said that these stand-alone HRA plans broke the rules because they had ...

The state of California recently passed legislation that amends the definition of race under the California Fair Employment and Housing Act (the California State statute that prohibits employment discrimination, among other things) to include “traits historically associated with race, including but not limited to, hair texture and protective hairstyles.”  The legislation defines “protective hairstyles” to include, without limitation, hairstyles such as “braids, locks, and twists.”  In passing this legislation, California’s Legislature made clear that ...

In case you missed it, on July 1, 2019, the Chicago and Cook County Minimum Wages increased as follows:

·         Chicago: $13.00 per hour for non-tipped employees and $6.40 for tipped employees.

·         O’Hare and Midway Airport Certified Service Providers: $14.10 for non-tipped employees and $7.60 for tipped employees.

·         Cook County: $12.00 per hour for non-tipped and $5.25 for tipped employees.

July 1, 2019 also marks the 2-year anniversary of the implementation of the Cook County and Chicago Paid Sick Leave Ordinances.  While the full details are nuanced, these laws require all companies with ...

On June 26, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed the continued viability of Auer deference, an interpretive doctrine that requires courts to defer to an agency’s reasonable reading of a genuinely ambiguous regulation. In confirming the use of Auer deference, the Supreme Court also narrowed its scope, setting out clear limits to courts’ use of this doctrine. This decision came in the case Kisor v. Wilkie, which involved an ambiguous regulation of a Department of Veteran Affairs rule.  

In affirming Auer deference as a viable interpretive tool for courts to employ ...

Did you know that when a private sector employer has evidence that a union has lost support from a majority of its bargaining unit members, the employer can refuse to recognize the union as their bargaining representative?  In 2001, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled that employers can unilaterally withdraw recognition from an incumbent union based upon “objective evidence” (typically, a petition signed by at least half of the bargaining unit members indicating that they no longer wished to be represented by a union) that the union has lost majority support ...