In Bradsbery v. Vicar Operating, Inc., a California Court of Appeal answered a question that many California employers may not have known even needed to be answered—whether California employees can prospectively waive their mandatory meal periods.  Given the almost universal use of such waivers by employers (based on the assumption that the waivers are…

On April 23, 2025, President Trump issued a new executive order aimed at repealing disparate impact liability.  The order, titled “Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy”  (https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/restoring-equality-of-opportunity-and-meritocracy/), frames equal treatment under the law as “equality of opportunity, not equal outcomes.”

Disparate impact is a theory of liability that grew out of equal employment…

On Friday, March 14, 2025, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals lifted a preliminary injunction on President Trump’s Executive Orders regarding DEI.  In concurring opinions, the judges expressed varying levels of support for employers’ DEI initiatives.  However, the appellate panel agreed that the district court’s pre-implementation preliminary injunction was premature, and the Fourth Circuit stayed…

In the most recent indication of what employers can expect from the National Labor Relations Board under President Trump’s second term, the acting General Counsel for the Board, William Cowen, recently rescinded a series of memoranda issued by his predecessor, Jennifer Abruzzo, that employers regarded as overprotective of employee rights under the National Labor Relations…

On his second day in office, January 21, 2025, President Trump issued an Executive Order “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.”  This Executive Order reverses roughly 60 years of federal policy and leaves many employers with questions about the future of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies and affirmative action programs (AAPs).  Federal contractors…

On January 21, 2025, the White House announced an Executive Order entitled “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.”  The Order instructs federal agencies to take administrative and legal action against diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”) programs, which it defines as systems of race- and sex-based preferences.  The Order is directed at both public- and…

Since 2019, employers have relied heavily on the management rights clauses in collective bargaining agreements to make unilateral workplace changes involving operational decisions.  They did so with the protection of the “contract coverage” standard established by the National Labor Relations Board (“Board”) in the 2019 case MV Transportation Inc., 368 NLRB No. 66, where…

On October 30, 2024, a Texas federal court issued a preliminary injunction to halt an enforcement action by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) against ABM Industry Groups, LLC, a federal contractor. This case, while directly impacting only one contractor, could have significant implications for the broader landscape of OFCCP enforcement through Administrative…