Allyn & Fortuna LLPPaula Lopez, September 18, 2014. New Jersey has become the sixth state to enact “ban the box” legislation, restricting private employers within its state from inquiring into an applicant’s criminal record during the initial application process. It is called the “Opportunity to Compete Act” and was signed into law by Governor Christie on August 11, 2014, but does not go into effect until March 1, 2015. The version of the law that was passed is a compromise between the employers’ interests in making fully-informed hiring decisions and the…
Paula Lopez, August 27, 2014. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued a ruling in the case Triple Play Sports Bar and Grille affirming the administrative law judge’s decision that two employees who were terminated because of their involvement in Facebook discussions about claims that their employer had made State tax withholding errors were unlawfully discharged in violation of Section 8(a)(1) of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). This decision is significant on two fronts. First, because Vincent Spinella’s (one of the terminated employees) only involvement in the…
Paula Lopez, July 31, 2014. Last week, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed legislation that will provide unpaid interns throughout the State of New York with the same state law protections against discrimination and sexual harassment in the workplace as paid employees. The amended law takes effect immediately. Until recently, only unpaid interns in Oregon and Washington D.C. were similarly protected. Earlier this year, the New York City Council, by unanimous vote, passed an amendment to the City’s Human Rights Law, extending its anti-discrimination and anti-harassment provisions to unpaid interns….
Paula Lopez, May 28, 2014. On April 22, 2014, the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in EEOC v. Ford Motor Co., rejected Ford’s position that its employee’s presence at the workplace is necessary to perform her essential job functions and found that Ford failed to establish that telecommuting, in this instance, would impose an undue hardship on an employer obligated to provide a reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). In doing so, the Sixth Circuit upended the typical deference given to an employer’s…
Paula Lopez, May 8, 2014. As the trend of e-commerce and the offer of goods and services through websites and mobile applications have increased, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has stepped up enforcement under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to ensure that individuals with disabilities have equal access to sites offering such goods and services online. Title III of the ADA prohibits places of public accommodation from discriminating against disabled individuals with respect to access to goods, services, programs, and facilities offered by such public accommodations. The…
Paula Lopez, April 2, 2014. Employers are not blind to employees’ use of social media in and out of the workplace and they have a business interest in protecting confidential information, brand/image, employee morale and productivity, and insulating themselves from legal liability. As a result, employers should establish a social media policy regarding their employees’ use of employer-issued devices and their social media activities. Creating a comprehensive social media policy is important. Such a policy should specifically identify permitted and prohibited conduct, without being overly restrictive, and should…
Paula Lopez, March 6, 2014. On February 26, 2014, in an effort spearheaded by Mayor Bill DiBlasio, the New York City Council passed significant amendments to the Earned Sick Time Act (ESTA), recently enacted in June 2013 and set to go into effect on April 1, 2014. Consequently, in a little over a month before ESTA was slotted to go into effect, several key provisions affecting the size of employer covered under the law, the implementation of the law, the permitted use of sick leave, and the law’s…
Paula Lopez, February 5, 2014. Employers in New York City and New Jersey are now required to provide reasonable accommodations to pregnant employees. While State and Federal laws prohibit employers from discriminating against pregnant employees, none of these laws require employers to provide reasonable accommodations. Instead, reasonable accommodations have only been required to the extent that they are available to similarly-situated non-pregnant employees. Effective January 30, 2014, the New York City Human Rights Law was amended to prohibit discrimination based on pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions. And,…
Paula Lopez, January 2, 2014. After cautiously avoiding a ruling on the issue of the legality of state bans on same-sex marriage it is increasingly likely that the U.S. Supreme Court will be forced to decide this issue. In Windsor v. United States, decided in June 2013, the Supreme Court struck down a provision of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) barring federal marital benefits to same-sex couples who had been married in states where same-sex marriages are legal. In its ruling, the Court expressly limited its holding…