Hunton Employment & Labor Perspectives

On January 21, 2016, the EEOC announced that it will seek public input on proposed enforcement guidance addressing retaliation and related issues under federal employment discrimination laws.  The EEOC issued its last guidance update on the subject of retaliation in 1998.  The EEOC’s 73 page draft guidance is available for review here and the 30-day input period ends on February 24, 2016.

As previously reported, the EEOC announced on January 29, 2016 its proposal to require businesses with 100 or more employees to annually turn over pay data by gender, race and ethnicity.   The public has until April 1, 2016 to submit comments on the proposal.  Both the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have issued statements that the proposed requirements would be overly burdensome for employers and would result in the collection of data that would fail to provide any meaningful insights as to whether employer pay practices are discriminatory.  ...

This webinar will discuss President Obama’s Executive Order on federal contractor blacklisting and its potential impact on government contractors. A final regulation is on the horizon, and this program will tell you what you need to know NOW to be prepared.

Thursday, February 18, 2016
1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. ET

Register Here

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) is asking the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals to recognize that discrimination based on an employee’s sexual orientation constitutes unlawful discrimination “because of . . . sex,” in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The EEOC advances this argument in an amicus brief in support of Barbara Burrows, a lesbian college professor and administrator who claims she was subjected to sex discrimination by her former employer, the College of Central Florida, based on her same-sex marriage and how she looked and acted. The District Court granted summary judgment in favor of the College, holding that Burrows’s sex discrimination claim was “merely a repackaged claim for discrimination based on sexual orientation, which is not cognizable under Title VII.” Burrows appealed, and the case is currently pending before the Eleventh Circuit.

Under a new California law that took effect on January 1, 2016, California employers may face civil penalties of up to $10,000 for misusing E-Verify, the federal electronic employment verification system some employers use to verify employment eligibility of newly hired employees.

The new E-Verify law makes it more difficult for some California employers to comply with both federal and state laws relating to workers’ employment eligibility.

On January 20, 2016, the administrator of the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD), David Weil, issued an “Administrator’s Interpretation” (AI) regarding the agency’s interpretation of joint employment under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act (MSPA). The new AI purports to clarify the WHD’s position that joint employment under these statutes “should be defined expansively.” When considered alongside the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB or the Board) controversial ...

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced on January 29, 2016 its proposed revision to the Employer Information Report (EEO-1) that would obligate businesses with 100 or more employees to annually turn over pay data by gender, race and ethnicity. Although employers will not have to divulge specific pay rate information for individual employees, they would have to report pay bands across 10 different job categories.

We previously reported on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Mach Mining, LLC v. EEOC, 135 S.Ct. 1645 (2015), wherein the Court held that a court may review the EEOC’s conciliation efforts.

On remand, the EEOC renewed its motion for partial summary judgment on Mach Mining’s failure to conciliate affirmative defense. On January 19, 2016, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois granted the motion, finding that the Supreme Court had expressly rejected Mach Mining’s position that it is entitled to receive demand calculations and additional information during the conciliation process. EEOC v. Mach Mining, LLC, No. 11-cv-00879, 2016 BL 13454 (Jan. 19, 2016).

On January 20, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in Campbell-Ewald Co. v. Gomez, affirming the Ninth Circuit’s decision that a defendant cannot moot a putative class action by offering full relief to the individual plaintiff.

In the second half of December 2015, the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) issued 16 rulings on the illegality of mandatory arbitration agreements containing class and collective action waivers, even in situations where the agreements allow employees to opt out of, or into, the waiver. The NLRB continues to hold firm that these types of waivers violate the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”) because they infringe upon the employees’ protected right to engage in concerted activity—despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s continued favoring of class action waivers, see, e.g., DirecTV, Inc. v. Imburgia, 577 U.S. __, 135 S. Ct. 1547 (2015), and the Fifth Circuit’s express rejection of the NLRB’s position in D.R. Horton, Inc. v. NLRB, 737 F.3d 344 (5th Cir. 2013), and in Murphy Oil USA, Inc. v. NLRB, No. 14-60800, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 18673 (5th Cir. Oct. 26, 2015).