Employment

Whether an employer makes the requisite offer of group health plan coverage is critical to the application of the Affordable Care Act’s employer shared responsibility rules as reflected in final implementing regulations issued earlier this year (and see here for a useful IRS summary of those rules).

Following up on our Week 22 ACA Countdown to Compliance post, yesterday, the D.C. Court of Appeals granted the government’s petition for en banc review in Halbig v. Burwell, which held low income subsidies to purchase coverage through public insurance exchanges established by the Affordable Care Act were unavailable to residents of states

In the past few years the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) has taken an increased interest in whether workplace policies prohibiting employees from discussing the terms and conditions of their employment on social media such as Facebook and Twitter violate the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”) by interfering with workers’ rights to engage in concerted activity.

With two seemingly simple and straightforward definitions in the final regulations implementing the Affordable Care Act’s pay-or-play rules—i.e., definitions of “employer” and “employee”— the Treasury Department and IRS have raised a host of concerns for third party staffing arrangements.

Law360 quoted my colleague Don Schroeder in an article entitled NLRB ‘Like’ Ruling Sheds Light On Social Media Protection in which he comments on the new standards this decision brings to social media cases. The article focuses on this significant NLRB ruling on an employee’s legal rights on social media.

My colleague Jen Rubin was quoted in this SHRM article entitled Workplace Racism Persists, Diversity Training Needed, in which she comments on ways employers can ensure effective diversity training programs. The article focuses on racism in the workplace and steps employers can take to decrease its prevalence in their companies.

Recently, litigation consultant TrialGraphix Inc. sued its competitor FTI Consulting, Inc. and four former high-ranking employees in New York Supreme Court for allegedly scheming to steal its trade secrets and gain access to its clients.

Employers have recently enjoyed some victories in the U.S. Supreme Court and in the California Supreme Court regarding the use of class/collective action waivers in employment arbitration agreements (e.g. Italian Colors and Iskanian).

The Affordable Care Act’s employer shared responsibility, or “pay-or-play,” rules require “applicable large employers” (generally employers with 50 or more full-time and full-time equivalent employees) to offer group health plan coverage (i.e., “play”) or face the prospect of having to pay money to the government (i.e., “pay”).

Earlier this summer, a New Jersey appellate court, in Rodriquez v. Raymours Furniture enforced a provision in an employment application that reduced the period in which an employee could sue an employer to six months from the date of the adverse employment action.

More bad news for employers: Maryland’s Court of Appeals (its highest court) has now put to rest any question about an employee’s right to recover treble damages in connection with an unpaid overtime claim.

Last week, the NLRB took an exceptionally broad view of what constitutes “concerted activity” and what kind of efforts are aimed at “mutual aid or protection” under the National Labor Relations Act. For employers, this could mean increased Board scrutiny of internal investigations into employees’ complaints of harassment.

In somewhat of a surprise move, in the same week that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie signed into law the Opportunity to Compete Act, which prohibits employers from inquiring about job candidates’ criminal histories early in the hiring process (which we wrote about here), the Governor vetoed a bill prohibiting discrimination against the unemployed

My colleague Jennifer Rubin is quoted in this Sirius Decision blog post in which she responds to questions about employee LinkedIn use and other social media websites. The post focuses on establishing company guidelines for online behavior and networking.

An earlier post explained the two principle methods—the “monthly measurement method” and the “look-back measurement method”—available to applicable large employers to identify full-time employees for purposes of determining exposure for “assessable payments” under the Affordable Care Act’s employer shared responsibility rules.

Law360 recently quoted me in an article about the rise of FMLA lawsuits.

We previously wrote (here and here) about New Jersey’s proposed “ban the box” measure, known as the Opportunity to Compete Act, a law that would prohibit employers from inquiring about job candidates’ criminal histories early in the hiring process.

Understanding the mandates of the Americans with Disabilities Act and similar state and local laws is easy: employers cannot discriminate against individuals with disabilities.

Remember last fall when all we could talk about was the government shutdown?  The 16-day government shutdown captured the attention of a nation once again gripped by seemingly-manufactured political crisis.

In a previous post we discussed Foster v. Mountain Coal Company LLC, the District of Colorado’s decision invalidating a waiver of an employee’s claims against his employer under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) after the employee was terminated in connection with a reduction in force (RIF).