On Monday, September 20, New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced that the City’s private sector COVID-19 vaccine mandate will expire on November 1, 2022. For now, the approximately 184,000 employers currently covered by the mandate will have to continue to exclude their unvaccinated workers from the workplace. However, beginning November 1, businesses will have … Continue Reading
UPDATE (04/29/22): On April 28, 2022, the New York City Council approved an amendment to the City’s pay transparency law, delaying its effective date to November 1, 2022. The law, as amended, also: Clarifies that the pay range required to be included in any advertised job, promotion or transfer opportunity refers to either the annual … Continue Reading
Welcome to Part 2 of the 2021 Year-End Edition of the State Law Round-Up, covering states in the second half of the alphabet. Part 1, covering the first part of the alphabet, can be found here. Maine: Maine’s “ban-the-box” law, HP 845, went into effect October 18, 2021. The law prohibits private employers from requesting … Continue Reading
From Labor & Employment Partner Katharine Liao and our Data Privacy & Cybersecurity colleague Kristin Bryan, below is a post from Squire Patton Boggs’ Consumer Privacy World blog covering recent legal developments involving electronic monitoring of employees in New York State. Beginning on May 7, 2022, employers in New York State who engage in electronic … Continue Reading
As expected, New York City published guidance yesterday designed to help covered employers implement the City’s recently announced order mandating COVID-19 vaccines for private sector workers. What Is Required? For any Workplace in NYC, Covered Employers must ensure that they receive proof of vaccination against COVID-19 from all of their in-person workers by December 27, … Continue Reading
UPDATE (12/10/21): Justice Frank Nervo issued an amended order, filed December 9, 2021, clarifying that New York City’s municipal-worker mandate remains in effect until the scheduled December 14, 2021 hearing. On Monday, December 6, 2021, New York City’s outgoing mayor, Bill de Blasio, announced a “first-in-the-nation” COVID-19 vaccine mandate, requiring that all private sector employees … 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
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 part of Squire Patton Boggs’ ongoing focus on COVID-19 pandemic challenges and opportunities, on November 5, 2020 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern, William J. Kishman and Laura Lawless of the firms’ Labor & Employment Practice Group will host an hour-long discussion aimed at healthcare employers that will focus on some of the key issues that are front … Continue Reading
In June 2020, we added a post to Employment Law Worldview addressing the complicated situation employers are in when employees express – sometime respectfully, sometimes not – different, and indeed, opposite views on COVID-19 issues (e.g., legitimate public health emergency versus hoax or “plandemic”), racial justice (“Black Lives Matter” versus “All Lives Matter”), and politics … Continue Reading
With Election Day just a few weeks away, it’s an appropriate time to refresh our understanding of state voting leave laws and the obligations imposed on private sector employers by those laws. Although absentee voting by mail and universal mail voting have become more common since the last presidential election in 2016, many voters undoubtedly … Continue Reading
As we reported here, among the sweeping pieces of legislation signed during the early periods of the COVID-19 pandemic was the passage of New York’s permanent statewide sick leave law. Under the New York statewide sick leave law, all employers in New York State are required to provide sick leave. The law takes effect on … Continue Reading
In light of the ongoing pandemic crisis, on April 6, 2020, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that he is extending the “PAUSE” restrictions in New York State, which means that non-essential businesses will remain closed until at least April 29, 2020. Additionally, last week on April 3, 2020, Governor Cuomo signed the FY 2021 Executive Budget: … Continue Reading
New York State’s COVID-19 sick leave law has been in effect since March 18, 2020 (see our prior posts here and here). Since then, several questions have remained largely unanswered for both New York employers and employees as they navigate the eligibility and application requirements of the new law, which offers individual job-protected paid or … Continue Reading
With the number of coronavirus cases now topping 7,000 in New York state, on Friday, March 20, 2020, Governor Andrew Cuomo officially declared that all workers in non-essential businesses across New York state are required to remain at home starting Sunday evening, March 22 in order to combat the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Businesses that do … Continue Reading
On March 18, 2020, New York Governor Cuomo issued an Executive Order that all non-essential businesses shall reduce their in-person workforce by March 20 at 8 pm. On March 19, guidance was released clarifying that in-person workforces at each location must be reduced by 75% from pre-state of emergency declaration employment levels. Employees are of … Continue Reading
On March 18, 2020, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed into law providing emergency paid sick leave to New Yorkers. The proposed bill provides job-protected leave benefits for employees affected by COVID-19. Effective March 18, 2020, employees subject to mandatory or precautionary orders of quarantine or isolation issued by the state of New York, the … Continue Reading
COVID-19 Paid Sick Leave On March 17, 2020, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a three-way agreement with the New York Legislature on a paid sick leave bill for New Yorkers. The proposed bill provides job-protected leave benefits for employees affected by COVID-19. Effective immediately upon passage (which is expected in the next few days), … 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
Joining the growing list of states enacting privacy and data security laws, on July 25, 2019, New York’s governor signed into law the “Stop Hacks and Improve Electronic Data Security” Act (the “SHIELD Act”), amending the state’s data breach notification and cybersecurity law. The SHIELD Act applies to “any person or business that owns … … Continue Reading
Riding on the 2018 wave of workplace sexual harassment legislation, on June 19, 2019, the New York state assembly and senate voted to toughen the state’s anti-discrimination and anti-harassment law (S. 6577/A. 8421 and related amendment S. 6594/A. 8424). Governor Cuomo, a proponent of the bill, is expected to sign the bill into law. … Continue Reading
New York City New York City has enacted a first-of-its kind law (Intro. No. 1445-A) prohibiting pre-employment drug testing for the presence of marijuana or tetrahydrocannabinols. The law makes it an unlawful discriminatory practice for an employer, labor organization, employment agency, or agent thereof to require a prospective employee “to submit to testing for the … Continue Reading
Both New York City and California have recently taken steps to ban hairstyle-based discrimination. On Monday, April 22, 2019, the California State Senate passed the CROWN Act (Create a Respectful and Open Workplace for Natural Hair), which seeks to amend California’s anti-discrimination statute, the California Fair Housing and Employment Act (“FEHA”). The CROWN Act, if … Continue Reading
