The New Wage Rule and the $100K Proclamation Will Shape the 2026 H‑1B Cap Season

USCIS has announced that the FY 2027 H‑1B cap registration window will run from March 4 to March 19, 2026. During this period, employers seeking to sponsor H‑1B workers for this year’s lottery (covering employment beginning October 1, 2026) must use a USCIS online account to electronically register each beneficiary for the selection process and submit the required $215 H‑1B registration fee for each entry.

This upcoming cap season will be shaped more than ever by two major policy developments: the new wage‑weighted lottery system and the presidential proclamation imposing a $100,000 fee on certain H‑1B petitions.

Voluntary Disclosure by Applicant of Criminal Conviction History Triggers Protections Under State Ban-the-Box Law (US)

By Caroline Carrier on February 6, 2026 Posted in Ban-the-Box Laws, Employment Law, Hiring

Records of criminal convictions can last a lifetime, and thus can bring a lifetime of difficulty for employees with a criminal conviction history in finding employment, leaving them significantly disadvantaged before they even make it into the interview room. Lack of employment or difficulty assimilating after spending time in the criminal justice system can further increase the chances of re-offending, exacerbating the problem. These issues prompted a wave of state and local “ban-the-box” legislation – laws that delay employers from inquiring into or considering a job applicant’s criminal history until later in the hiring process.

Quick Hits: Updates at the EEOC and NLRB to Start 2026 (US)

By Chase Clark on February 2, 2026 Posted in EEOC, Employment Law, Gender Discrimination, Harassment, NLRB

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) started out 2026 by announcing several new procedural protocols and updated guidance and policy goals.

Pay Transparency vs. Privacy – Who Trumps Whom?

By Marga Caproni on January 28, 2026 Posted in Pay Transparency

If we had to rank the most frequently asked questions regarding the Pay Transparency Directive, the question of its relationship to individual employees’ right to privacy and the GDPR would be pretty high up there.

The concern is clear: the Directive requires employers to share averages of wages of male and female employees per category of employees, either at the request of an individual employee or as part of the (tri-) annual pay reporting. But what should you do if the number of employees of a certain gender in a specific category is very low, and sharing the data per category thereby indirectly comes down to sharing individual employees’ pay data with their colleagues?

Workplace Recording Policy Gets Thumbs Up From NLRB Judge (US)

By Chase Clark on January 26, 2026 Posted in Employment Law, NLRA, NLRB

For a variety of reasons, including confidentiality and protection of trade secrets, many employers maintain policies that prohibit or limit employees from making audio or visual recordings in the workplace. These policies were targeted by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) under the previous Administration, which found them unlawful under the employee and union-friendly standard established under the NLRB’s 2023 decision in Stericycle, Inc. (see our discussion of that decision here). That case did away with the previous test for employer policies under Boeing Co. and LA Specialty Produce Co. and substituted a test that essentially presumes that employer policies that limit employee activities in the workplace, such as workplace recording policies, have an unlawful “reasonable tendency to chill” employees in the exercise of protected rights, unless the employer can show that its policy serves a “legitimate and substantial business interest” that cannot be addressed through more “narrowly tailored” rules.

Rethinking Summary Judgment in Employment Discrimination Litigation (US)

By Isabela Gibson on January 21, 2026 Posted in Discrimination, EEOC, Retaliation, Termination

When Congress passed Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it failed to address how a plaintiff is required to prove employment discrimination in the absence of direct evidence. Since then, a series of tests have evolved articulating how a plaintiff can defeat a defendant-employer’s motion for summary judgment relying on circumstantial evidence. The most famous of these is the McDonnell Douglas framework, referring to the burden-shifting test articulated by the Supreme Court in McDonnell Douglas v. Green, 411 U.S. 92 (1973). In that case, the Supreme Court held that, in a private, non-class action alleging discrimination under Title VII, the complainant has the burden of establishing a prima facie case, i.e., that (i) they belong to a protected class; (ii) they were qualified for the position they held or sought; (iii) though qualified, they were rejected or suffered another adverse employment action; and (iv) the employer sought candidates with complainant’s qualifications or replaced them with a person outside their protected class. Once the complainant has satisfied their prima facie burden, the burden of production shifts to the employer to advance a legitimate, non-discriminatory explanation for the challenged employment action. If it does so, the burden returns to the complainant to establish that the employer’s explanation is pretextual, meaning that it is false and that discrimination was the real reason for the adverse action.

Ohio E-Verify Law Set to Impose New Requirements on Construction Industry (US)

By Gregory A. Wald and Mike Fussell on January 20, 2026 Posted in Compliance, Employment Law, Hiring, Immigration, Ohio

Some Ohio construction businesses may need to prepare now for upcoming changes to state law imposing new requirements related to verifying worker eligibility.

After Months of Anticipation, The FCA Releases Its Guidance on Non-Financial Misconduct

By Alison Treliving, David Whincup, Janette Lucas, Jenna Saffman and Reem Al-Saady on January 15, 2026 Posted in General

On 12 December, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) finally issued its official response to the public consultation on non-financial misconduct (NFM). This was issued through a Policy Statement PS25/23, finalising new binding regulatory rules and accompanying official guidance on NFM.

The Policy Statement

79 respondents contributed to the consultation, including Squire Patton Boggs. At long last, we have the final rules and guidance, which will be binding on all FCA-regulated firms from 1 September 2026. Or so we thought…

Handling Investigations in a Global Workplace

By Morna Mackenzie on January 13, 2026 Posted in General

A concern has been raised to the HR hotline. An employee reports that her manager has been bullying her. She alleges that he has been repeatedly rude to her in team meetings, talking over to her and down to her. She feels belittled and she thinks this may be happening because she is the only woman in the team. She would like this matter to be investigated and then her manager to be dismissed.

“What’s new?”, you might be thinking. Sadly, this is the sort of complaint that employment lawyers and HR practitioners come across all the time. But in this example, the UK employee works in the organisation’s Global Sales Team and her manager is based in Germany. The Sales team are scattered across all continents and those team meetings take place on Teams.

In highly-matrixed multi-nationals with cross-functional teams working across countries and regions, this is not an unusual scenario. A global work environment has implications for investigation procedure, timelines, evidence gathering and the information that must be shared (or not) with parties involved. While there are some initial constraints (overt impartiality, necessary language skills, an understanding of what specifically is in issue with factually and legally, etc.), it gets more complicated very quickly. Careful planning is therefore essential.

Here are our top 5 key issues to consider before you commence the investigation:

Belgium’s action plan to combat long-term absence requires employers to take action too

By Marga Caproni on January 12, 2026 Posted in Absence, Sick Leave, Sickness

In previous blogs, we have mentioned how Belgium is high up in the ranks of countries with employees on long-term absence, and how our new(ish) government wants to tackle this national disease on different fronts.

The first chapter of this ambitious plan came into force on 1 January 2026. We have summarised the changes below, starting with the one that has a concrete call to action for employers: