Employment

Commencing with plan and policy years beginning on or after January 1, 2014, the Affordable Care Act amends the Public Health Service Act (“PHS Act”) to make three important changes to the rules governing health insurance underwriting practices that apply to the individual and group markets (but not to grandfathered arrangements):

A recent decision from a Massachusetts superior court reinforces what we’ve known for quite some time – be extremely mindful of the actions you take with respect to an employee lodging a complaint under M.G.L. 151B, the state’s anti-discrimination statute, or else you may face retaliation claim and hefty monetary damages.

Templates are available here in English and other available languages.  Make sure to also provide this notice to any new hire on a going forward basis.

Many employers are surprised to learn that the employment relationship does not automatically convert to “at-will” when an employee’s fixed employment term expires. Instead, when asking for clarification on this issue, employers are usually on the receiving end of their least favorite lawyerly answer: “It depends.”

With so much attention focused on the particulars of the employer shared responsibility and, to a slightly lesser extent, reporting rules, it’s easy to lose sight of other important changes—including final regulations issued under the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 (MHPAEA)

Two recent victories for the EEOC should remind employers that rejecting a job applicant over a medical condition, even when the condition appears directly related to job performance, can expose the employer to serious legal consequences under the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA).

Judge Selya’s recent First Circuit opinion in Rivera-Diaz v. Humana Insurance of Puerto Rico, Inc., hammers home the importance of strictly abiding by Title VII’s procedural requirements for filing discrimination claims in federal court under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)

Mintz's Privacy Team maintains a summary of the US state data breach notification laws, which it refers to as the “Mintz Matrix," and updates on a quarterly basis or more frequently if developments dictate.  This week, the Privacy Team updated the Matrix once again, this time to reflect recent changes to Kentucky and Iowa’s laws.

I was quoted in an article published today on Law360 about the ADA's interactive process requirement.

Last week, President Obama issued two important directives aimed at ending gender pay disparities. The first, an Executive Order, prohibits federal contractors and subcontractors with government contracts exceeding $10,000 from retaliating against employees who discuss their compensation with their co-workers.

Particularly with the issuance of final regulations under the Affordable Care Act’s employer shared responsibility rules, employers have been concerned—justifiably—with the pay-or-play penalties.

Our colleague, Sarah Hogan, recently posted a fantastic entry on Mintz's brand new Technology Matters blog about Massachusetts' proposed non-compete legislation, with practical guidance for what its passage might mean for your business.

For “applicable large employers” (i.e., generally, those employers who employed an average of at least 50 full-time employees on business days during the preceding calendar year), determining which employees are “full-time” employees is central to their efforts to comply with the employer shared responsibility provisions of the Affordable Care Act.

We have written a few times about the EEOC’s closer inspection of background checks and the use of criminal records in employment decisions because of their potential adverse impact on classes of applicants.

Recently, New York Mets player Daniel Murphy was criticized for taking a few days off at the start of the season to bond with his newborn.  In this Law360 Article, I comment on this issue and weigh in on what employers should be doing to comply with the Family and Medical Leave Act.

The recent release of Notice 2014-19 and IRS FAQs provide some initial pieces of the guidance that the IRS first promised in September 2013 regarding administrator obligations when amending employee benefit plans to account for the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Windsor and Rev. Rul. 2013-17.

The NLRB is back at it, finding last week in Hills and Dales General Hospital, that seemingly innocuous policies prohibiting negativity and gossip in the workplace and requiring employees to represent their employer in a positive and professional manner violates the National Labor Relations Act.

In baseball, the beginning of spring means hope for fans of even the most hard luck teams. Unfortunately for one erstwhile fan, the first days of spring ushered in a dismissal of his putative wage and hour class action.

In a rare display of bipartisanship, Congress voted to eliminate the Affordable Care Act’s separate cap on deductibles that applies to individual and small group insurance products. (These limits never applied to large fully-insured groups or to self-funded plans.)

The New York City Earned Sick Time Act goes into effect today. In other news, the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs has released proposed rules to “establish requirements to implement the [paid sick leave] Act and meet its goals, and provide guidance to covered employers and protected employees.” The proposed rules are available here.