April 18, 2024 By: Leah Lively and Alexandra Shulman The Supreme Court of the United States issued an opinion on Wednesday, April 17, 2024, that will make it easier for employees to pursue discrimination claims against their employers based on job transfers or other non-pecuniary personnel decisions. In Muldrow v. City of St. Louis, Muldrow, a female police officer, alleged that she was transferred to a less desirable unit because a new supervisor preferred a male officer for the role ...
2024 By: Melody Mohammadi Since their inception, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (“FIFA”) in 1904 and the Union of European Football Associations (“UEFA”) in 1955, football’s most important governing bodies, have aimed to promote fairness and act as representative democracies over arguably the most international sport to date ...
April 12, 2024 By: Charles Whiteman and Daniel C. Silva Friendship only goes so far, at least in the case of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani (“Ohtani”), and his former interpreter and de facto personal manger, Ippei Mizuhara (“Mizuhara”). On April 11, 2024, the U.S ...
April 2, 2024 By: Leah Lively and Alexandra Shulman On June 6, 2024, new amendments to Washington State’s noncompetition statute (RCW 49.62) will go into effect, which place further limitations on the use of noncompetition agreements in Washington. Substitute Senate Bill 5935 introduces several modifications to RCW 49.62 that Washington employers (and employers with Washington employees) should be aware of: Broader definition of “noncompetition covenant ...
March 25, 2024 By: Daniel C. Silva and Ross Garrett In March 2024, the Northern District of Alabama held that Congress exceeded its Constitutional authority by enacting the Corporate Transparency Act (“CTA”). The CTA requires variety corporate entities—everything from LLCs to trusts—to disclose beneficial ownership information to the U.S. Treasury Department ...
By: Stephen Best, Clayton Barnett, and Brian Adkins February 7, 2024 Whether you are a passionate supporter of college athletics or a casual sports fan, nearly everyone has heard the three letters, NIL. NIL (or name, image, and likeness) has quickly become part of the national sports lexicon ever since the United States Supreme Court opened the door for student-athletes to receive monetary compensation under National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Alston in 2021 ...
By: Leah Lively and Alexandra Shulman The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) mandates that employers compensate employees for each hour worked. Nonetheless, the Department of Labor guidance permits rounding of employee time punches so long as, among other things, the rounding is conducted in a neutral manner and, if any favor is shown, it benefits the employee. For example, using rounding, if an associate clocked in any time from 7:53 a.m. to 8:07 a.m ...
By: Sarah Andrzejczak With a new year comes new employment laws, and Colorado is no exception. The following is a brief, non-exhaustive list of key law changes employers should be aware of for the 2024 year: Colorado’s FAMLI program will begin providing paid leave benefits to employees as of January 1, 2024 ...
By: Leah Lively and Alexandra Shulman On January 9, 2024, the U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”) issued a new final rule, “Employee or Independent Contractor Classification under the Fair Labor Standards Act,” aimed at clarifying the distinction between employees and independent contractors under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) ...
By Christina Morgan and Steve Nakasone This year alone, seven new states have passed comprehensive consumer privacy laws. Businesses operating nationwide will soon have to contend with twelve separate consumer privacy laws. A current list of the states with consumer privacy laws, and their effective dates, is below ...
January 2, 2024 By: Braeden Mansouri and Alicia Guerra The California Legislature’s laser focus on addressing the state housing crisis did not subside during the 2023 legislative session. While legislators proposed over 150 housing bills, only a fraction of those bills were approved by both chambers. Still, Governor Gavin Newsom signed 56 housing bills into law ...
January 2, 2024 By: Leah Lively and Alexandra Shulman It is a new year, which means new employment laws for employers in the Pacific Northwest. The following is a brief overview of significant new laws and changes for Washington and Oregon employers (all effective January 1, 2024). Washington Increased Minimum Wage: The Washington state minimum wage is now $16.28 per hour. Local minimum wage rates are higher: The Seattle minimum wage is now $19 ...
By: Daniel Silva, Sanjay Bhandari, and Manisha Malhotra The Paycheck Protection Program (“PPP”) emerged as a lifeline for small businesses grappling with the unprecedented challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lenders navigated a landscape of regulations that Congress quickly drafted in response to the pandemic. These regulations and obligations evolved, subtly yet materially, from the first and second rounds of PPP “draws ...
December 27, 2023 By: Philip Nulud and Sylvia Cheong In October, 2023, Korea passed a new trademark law to add flexibility to its strict trademark registration requiring that later-filed marks need to be completely unique from existing senior marks. Under current trademark law in Korea, a later-filed mark that is similar to a senior mark already registered with the Korean Intellectual Property Office (“KIPO”) would be rejected for registration ...
December 2023 By: David J. Elkanich and Amber Bevacqua-Lynott There is no question that the practice of law has evolved over the past decade. At one time, lawyers would meet mostly with clients in person in their “brick and mortar” offices, and would principally represent clients in their home jurisdiction (where the client was physically located and where the lawyer is licensed). But times have changed ...
December 1, 2023 By: Leah Lively California Business and Professional Code sections 16600 to 16607 already invalidate agreements restricting California employees from pursuing any lawful profession, trade, or business, with limited exceptions mainly in the sale of businesses. Starting January 1, 2024, things are going to get more difficult (and potentially costly) for employers ...
November 17, 2023 By: Michael Flynn In an effort to promote “open banking” and reduce “sticky banking”, make it easier for consumers to compare their current financial institution to competitors, and to generally increase competition among financial institutions, on October 19, 2023, the CFPB proposed a new Personal Financial Data Rights Rule, which, if it becomes final, will likely take effect early in 2024 ...
By: Anne Marie Ellis, John Epperson and Peter McGaw OEHHA is proposing a significant change to the Proposition 65 “short-form warning” to require that this warning identify a specific Proposition 65 (“Prop. 65”) chemical. Currently, the short-form warning requires identification of a toxicological endpoint (i.e. cancer or reproductive harm) but not the chemical that has triggered the warning requirement ...
By: Daniel Silva, Sanjay Bhandari, and Marshall Olney After dozens of high-profile criminal prosecutions and a growing wave of civil investigations, the Department of Justice’s (“DOJ”) Covid-19 Fraud Enforcement Strike Force is poised to continue its pursuit of fraud, abuse, and waste related to various Covid-19 relief programs ...
By: Adam Smith, Chris Mason, Jennifer M. Misetich, Kathryn Fox and Thomas M. O’Connell Executive Summary The National Labor Relations Board adopts a joint-employer rule that expressly incorporates reserved and indirect control over essential terms and conditions of employment, as factors to be analyzed when determining if two or more entities are joint employers ...
October 26, 2023 By: Jarrett Osborne-Revis In Breanne Martin v. Leslie Gladstone, the Second District Court of Appeal recently decided a case that could reverberate throughout the receivership and bankruptcy industries. This case comes at a propitious moment as bankruptcy proceedings and receiverships – particularly for distressed commercial real estate entities – trend upward in California ...
October 18, 2023 By: Leah Lively California Governor Gavin Newsom recently signed SB 525 into law, which amends the California Labor Code to set industry minimum wage requirements for nearly all healthcare workers, whether they are hourly or salaried employees, or independent contractors. The law also provides these workers with an independent private right of action to enforce these minimum wage requirements ...
If you have been doing business with entities in the European Union, chances are that you have struggled to figure out how to transfer data from the EU to the US without running afoul of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). You are not alone. The EU and US have struggled to create “adequate” safeguards for the transfer of personal data since 2000. The first set of guidelines, the Safe Harbor Privacy Principles, was adopted in 2000 ...
