By: Rachel V. See Seyfarth Synopsis: EEOC Commissioner Keith Sonderling, a Republican who first joined the EEOC in 2020, has announced his departure from the Commission in August 2024. Sonderling’s tenure was marked by his significant contributions to discussions on artificial intelligence in employment, establishing him as a leading authority on the subject. His departure leaves the EEOC with a 3-1 Democratic majority, and so it does not alter the Commission’s current political balance. EEOC Commissioner Keith Sonderling has announced publicly that he will be departing the EEOC in August and ..read more

By: Matthew J. Gagnon Seyfarth Synopsis: Government agencies and private plaintiffs’ counsel alike send a clear message: employers must take pay equity seriously. One way employers can address this message is by considering periodic audits of their pay practices and/or investigations of any unexplainable pay gaps or irregularities. Employers are often concerned about how those audits and investigations could be used against them if an employee were to bring an equal pay lawsuit in court. Several recent decisions have clarified the extent to which audit and investigation files can be kept ..read more

Authors: Christopher Kelleher and Andrew Scroggins Seyfarth Synopsis: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) has issued guidance tailored to the construction industry regarding compliance with anti-harassment laws. This lines up with our prediction in early 2024 that the EEOC had put the construction industry squarely in its sights. The guidance is important for construction-industry leaders and employers to understand to prevent and remedy workplace harassment, and to avoid potential harassment liability. On June 18, 2024, the EEOC issued its Promising Practices for Preventing ..read more

In a significant legislative development, the Illinois House of Representatives has overwhelmingly approved Senate Bill 2979, with a vote of 81 to 30, which amends the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) to limit damages to one violation per individual, rather than each instance their biometric information is captured, collected, disclosed, redisclosed, or otherwise disseminated. The bill also amended the definition of “written release” to include an electronic signature. Last month, we reported on the Illinois Senate’s passage of the bill by a vote of 4 ..read more

By: Matthew J. Gagnon Seyfarth Synopsis: It has been nearly a decade since some states began enacting changes to their equal pay statutes that appeared to some to differentiate those statues from the federal Equal Pay Act (“EPA”) in significant ways. Although those changes garnered plenty of press and speculation from commentators, the courts themselves have been rather slow to address those differences. Almost a decade on, there are still very few cases that interpret those state-level changes as differing in any meaningful way from the federal standards. A recent decision from the Seco ..read more

By: Yoon-Woo Nam, Alexandra R. Hassell, and Christopher DeGroff Seyfarth Synopsis: The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) recently released its 2023 Annual Performance Report and a new dashboard highlighting resolved cases. Compared to the prior fiscal year, the EEOC contacted substantially more potential claimants and filed a great number of merits lawsuits in 2023. It also released a new tool called “EEOC Explore” to track litigation statistics across the country. EEOC Litigation Lurches Forward In Fiscal Year 2023 The EEOC released its Annual Performance Report for fiscal ..read more

By: Matthew J. Gagnon We are pleased to announce the publication of the latest edition of Developments in Equal Pay Litigation, available as an eBook here. This report contains our annual analysis of trends and developments in the relentlessly dynamic body of law that is the equal pay litigation and legislation landscape. It was released along with Seyfarth’s 50 State Equal Pay Reference Guide, Global Pay Equity Desktop Reference, and Pay Transparency Wage Range Disclosure Compendium reports. We hope our readers will find these resources useful as a guide to these developing legal issues ..read more

Author: Seyfarth Shaw LLP Each year, our team at Seyfarth analyzes every EEOC case filing—as well as EEOC-related legal decisions from around the country—to compile the definitive A-Z desk reference for “everything EEOC.” As we turn the page into 2024, we are pleased to announce the publication of Seyfarth Shaw’s 2024 Edition of its EEOC-Initiated Litigation Report. This year’s Report comes amidst a surge in EEOC lawsuit filings following notable personnel changes at the Commission. In the last Fiscal Year alone, the EEOC launched a 52% increase in merit filings, going from 95 cases in FY 202 ..read more

By: Connor Bateman, Michael Jacobsen, and Yoon Woo-Nam Seyfarth Synopsis: For the final blog in this series regarding the legacy of TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez (“TransUnion”), the Workplace Class Action blog closes its survey of federal Circuit Courts with key rulings from the Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, and D.C. Circuits. TransUnion at a Glance Among other things as we have discussed, the U.S. Supreme Court held in TransUnion that every class member must have Article III standing in order to recover individual damages, as well as that an informational injury that causes no adverse e ..read more

By: Michael Jacobsen, Chris Kelleher, and Yoon Woo-Nam Seyfarth Synopsis: As reported here, for the two-year anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings regarding Article III standing in TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez (“TransUnion”), the Workplace Class Action blog is providing a survey of how each of the federal Circuit Courts have applied the Supreme Court’s teachings. In our prior installment, we analyzed how the First, Second, Third, and Fourth Circuit Courts of Appeals have interpreted TransUnion. Now, we discuss rulings from the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Circuits that employers s ..read more