On April 17, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court resolved a decades-old circuit split regarding what amount of harm a plaintiff must demonstrate to bring an employment discrimination claim under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (“Title VII”). In Muldrow v. City of St. Louis, a unified Court ruled that a plaintiff need only show “some”—and not “significant”—harm from an employment decision to plead and prove employment discrimination under Title VII. Before Muldrow, a number of appellate courts dismissed transfer-based Title VII claims unless the plaintiff could show that the transfer resulted i ..read more

Through Board decisions, rule making, and NLRB General Counsel’s (“GC”) memoranda, the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB” or “the Board”) continues to expand the potential penalties for employers found to have committed unfair labor practices (“ULP”). The shift toward an employee-friendly enforcement scheme has continued with GC Jennifer Abruzzo’s latest memorandum, issued on April 8, 2024, wherein the GC stated her desire to expand the availability of remedies for violations of labor law to even those employees who did not file, or are not identified in, ULP charges.  A Growing ..read more

In 2022, the Maryland General Assembly passed the Time to Care Act of 2022 (the “Act”), setting up a paid family and medical leave program for Maryland employees. Through Family and Medical Leave Insurance (“FAMLI”), eligible Maryland employees may receive up to 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave for the various reasons detailed below. FAMLI will be funded by both employer and employee contributions. Though eligible employees are not able to draw from the fund until January 1, 2026, required contributions are currently scheduled to begin on October 1, 2024. Therefore, Maryland employers ..read more

As we previously reported here in March 2020, the implementation of remote work policies heightens the risk of misappropriation of trade secrets in remote work environments and could require businesses to take additional steps to ensure the security of their trade secrets and confidential information. In the last few years, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) has charged several individuals with insider trading after they misappropriated material, nonpublic information obtained as a result of their remote work environment.[1] Most recently, a man was charged with insider tradin ..read more

Starting July 1, 2024, California employers across all industries must have a written Workplace Violence Prevention Plan (“WVPP”) in place. As previously reported, the recently enacted SB 553 established this new requirement, along with mandatory employee training, initial and periodic workplace violence hazard inspections, and maintenance of a violent incident log and other related records. On March 18, 2024, California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (“Cal/OSHA”), the agency responsible for enforcing the new law’s requirements, announced the creation of its Cal/OSHA Workpla ..read more

Tax season is here. As a result, many companies may be seeking to claim the increased tax credits and deductions available under the Inflation Reduction Act (the “IRA”). As we discussed in previous posts you can read here and here, many of the IRA’s tax credits and deductions for various clean energy projects are available only to taxpayers whose projects complied with nuanced and complex prevailing wage and apprenticeship requirements (the “PWA Requirements”). These requirements must be met before a taxpayer files a return claiming credits and deductions under the IRA. While the Treasury Depa ..read more

On February 12, 2024, the Ninth Circuit in Johnson v. Lowe’s Home Centers, LLC, 93 F.4th 459 (9th Cir. 2024) vacated a district court’s dismissal of a former employee’s nonindividual PAGA claims and remanded the nonindividual claims to allow the district court to apply California law as interpreted in Adolph v. Uber Techs., Inc., 14 Cal. 5th 1104 (2023) (“Adolph”). The plaintiff, a former employee of Lowe’s Home Centers, LLC, brought putative class claims for alleged violations of the California Labor Code on behalf of herself and other Lowe’s employees, as well as a claim under California’s P ..read more

Beginning on March 12, 2024, a new social media privacy law for employees and job applicants goes into effect in New York. The new law will amend the New York Labor Law (the “NYLL”) to restrict most employers from accessing the personal social media accounts of employees and job applicants. The new restrictions were approved when Governor Kathy Hochul signed into law two bills, Assembly Bill 836 (A836) and Senate Bill 2518A (S2518A), on September 14, 2023. The New Rules for Employers A836/S2518A amends the NYLL in several ways. First, the new law prohibits employers from requesting o ..read more

In Cantor Fitzgerald, L.P. v. Ainslie, No. 162, 2023, 2024 WL 315193 (Del. Jan. 29, 2024), the Delaware Supreme Court held enforceable a “forfeiture for competition” provision in a limited partnership agreement, upholding “the freedom of contract” and enforcing “as a matter of fundamental public policy the voluntary agreements of sophisticated parties.” Given Delaware’s recent shift from its typically non-compete friendly stance, the Delaware Supreme Court’s ruling is beneficial for employers. In Cantor Fitzgerald, six plaintiffs (the “Former Partners”) challenged the enforceability of a “forf ..read more

In a landmark unanimous ruling late last week, Murray v. UBS Securities, LLC, et al. 601 U. S. ____ (2024), the U.S. Supreme Court held that whistleblowers do not need to prove their employer acted with “retaliatory intent” to be protected under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Instead, all whistleblower plaintiffs need to prove is that their protected activity was a “contributing factor” in the employer’s unfavorable personnel action.  Background The Sarbanes-Oxley Act is a federal law that was passed in 2002 with the goal of improving auditing and public disclosure in response to several ac ..read more