For the first time in 25 years, on April 29, 2024, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) published final guidance on harassment in the workplace, updating the federal workplace guidelines to provide protections for transgender workers related to misgendering and the denial of bathroom access. This new guidance reflects the 2020 U.S Supreme Court’s … Continue Reading
It certainly wasn’t the main talking point in Westminster in the middle of the country’s own meteorological hot flush earlier this month but on 19 July the government published its Response to Menopause and the workplace: how to enable fulfilling working lives, an independent report commissioned by the then Minister for Employment and published in … Continue Reading
On March 14, 2022, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) released a new technical assistance document, “The COVID-19 Pandemic and Caregiver Discrimination Under Federal Employment Discrimination Law,” reminding employers that caregiver obligations continue notwithstanding our gradual return to normal. The 10-page document warns that, even as pandemic conditions change, many employers, schools, and daycare … Continue Reading
Squire Patton Boggs Summer Associate Taylor Hamel summarizes guidance recently released by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission relating to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Discrimination. On June 15, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, holding that the prohibition against sex discrimination in Title VII of the … Continue Reading
State legislatures have been busy in 2021 passing new employment-related laws. Here we look at some of the highlights of new laws in Connecticut, Illinois, Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. Connecticut is the latest state to prohibit discrimination based upon traits historically associated with race, including hair texture, protective hairstyles such as wigs … Continue Reading
On Monday, March 15, 2021, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, in part, a district court’s order denying a federal Equal Pay Act (“EPA”) claim filed by a former University of Oregon tenured psychology professor who claimed she was paid significantly less than her male colleagues. The decision serves as a reminder to employers … Continue Reading
In Part One of our year-end State Law Roundup, we covered national minimum wage developments and developments in states at the beginning of the alphabet: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, and Hawaii. In Part Two below, we look at developments in the rest of the states (and localities), from Illinois to Washington D.C. Illinois: Illinois employers … Continue Reading
As we (thankfully) reach the end of 2020, we wanted to provide a year-end update on recent and upcoming state law developments. Despite the fact that state and local governments had their hands full with the COVID-19 pandemic (and passed many laws relating to that topic, which we will not cover here), they managed to … Continue Reading
Except for a brief hiatus between 2010 and 2017 (see here), the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has for decades issued formal opinion letters in response to requests from employers, employees, and others for the DOL’s official interpretation of novel or complex issues relating to the application of the minimum wage and overtime compensation provisions … Continue Reading
The Tenth Circuit – covering Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming – just became the first federal appellate court to explicitly rule that employees can bring “sex-plus-age” claims against employers under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964—a claim alleging discrimination on the basis of gender against individuals over the age … Continue Reading
Resolving a question that previously had vexed lower courts and resulted in inconsistent rulings across the country, on Monday, June 15, 2020, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the prohibition against sex-based discrimination in employment set forth in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 includes claims of sexual orientation and gender … Continue Reading
Our colleague at Squire Patton Boggs’ Sports Shorts blog discussed the recent ruling in the Equal Pay Act and Title VII case brought by members of the U.S. women’s national soccer team against U.S. Soccer alleging that they were discriminated against by being paid less than their male counterparts. On Friday, May 1, 2020, Judge … Continue Reading
The United States currently is experiencing an unprecedented public health emergency due to the COVID-19 virus. The economic fallout of this crisis has been sudden and brutal on US employers, with vast numbers of businesses ordered to close and nearly 1 million new unemployment claims filed in the past two weeks alone. In response, Congress … Continue Reading
On December 6, 2019, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (which hears appeals from federal district courts located in Connecticut, New York, and Vermont) unanimously held that employees can allege gender-based pay discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act even if they cannot show that a … Continue Reading
On October 29, 2019, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered that the EEOC must continue to take all steps necessary to complete EEO-1 Component 2 data collection for calendar years 2017 and 2018. As we recently discussed here, the EEOC filed a motion on October 8, 2019 asking the court to … Continue Reading
As we most recently reported here and here, as of September 30, 2019, employers with 100 or more employees (and federal contractors with 50 or more employees) were required to report to the federal government pay data for 2017 and 2018 for their workforce (known as “Component 2” data), broken down by race/ethnicity, sex, and job … Continue Reading
On August 9, 2019, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signed into law the Illinois Workplace Transparency Act (“WTA”), imposing new requirements and modifying existing laws in ways that will impact nearly all Illinois employers – and may be a signal of things to come in other US states. The WTA aims to address concerns raised through … Continue Reading
It’s been an active few weeks since our last State Law Round-Up in mid-April 2019, with a number of bills being signed into new laws and case developments impacting employers in many US states over the past few weeks. Colorado Failure to Pay Wages as Theft Effective January 1, 2020, an employer’s failure to pay … Continue Reading
In April 2012, the EEOC held for the first time in Macy v. Holder that transgender discrimination is sex discrimination and that Title VII sex discrimination prohibits discrimination of a job applicant based upon her status as a transgender woman. The opinion relied heavily on the US Supreme Court’s decision in Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, … Continue Reading
In the current political environment, employers and employees alike may be wondering – what, if any, political conversation in the workplace is acceptable or appropriate? Tones of “freedom of speech,” “freedom of association,” on one hand, intersect with tenors of “workplace harassment” or simple annoyance, on the other. Although like the political debates themselves, the … Continue Reading
Last month, the New York City Council approved legislation that bars employers from asking prospective hires to disclose their past salary. In passing the measure, New York City joins Massachusetts (see our post here), Puerto Rico and the city of Philadelphia in banning the question from job interviews and on applications. (Also see our post here … Continue Reading
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has provided additional time for public comment on its recently-issued proposed guidelines on unlawful harassment. The 75-page draft, which issued on January 9, 2017, expands upon existing interpretations of many aspects of workplace harassment, including prohibited bases for harassment, conduct constituting illegal harassment, the role of social media, … Continue Reading
The wait is over! Yesterday the UK Government issued the revised Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017. Technically the Regulations are still in draft (as they have yet to be approved by Parliament), but the content should not change between now and when they are due to come into force on 6 … Continue Reading
So here they are, out yesterday, a strange parallel universe where months last 30.44 days and years 365.25, and where you don’t include pay for periods of leave except when you do. In past blogs here we have criticised Government Regulations and statutory Guidance as too vague, leaving employers unclear whether they are caught by … Continue Reading
