The Stoel Rives Labor & Employment Law Blog
The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to pregnant workers and protects workers from discrimination and retaliation for seeking accommodations. The PWFA has been in effect since June 27, 2023, and the EEOC issued a final rule to implement the PWFA, which took effect on June 18, 2024.
Here’s what…
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the federal appellate court with jurisdiction over much of the western United States (including Washington, Oregon, California and Idaho), ruled last week that an employee’s temporary impairment can qualify as a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”). The Ninth Circuit’s decision resolves an important…
While many employers initially were hesitant to institute mandatory COVID vaccinations, the recent surge driven by the Delta variant and announcements from large organizations—including the U.S. military, United Airlines, and major health care systems across the country—have caused many employers to revisit mandatory vaccination policies.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and U.S. Department of Justice…
Just before we headed off for the holiday weekend, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) released updated guidance related to the COVID-19 vaccine. The guidance largely tracks earlier guidance and practices that many employers had already adopted. Here are the highlights:
*This article was originally published as a Legal Alert on December 17, 2020.
With the COVID-19 vaccine becoming available to some and just around the corner for others, the question on many employers’ (and employees’) minds is whether they can (or should) mandate employees be vaccinated as a condition of employment. The Equal Employment Opportunity…
As employers continue to react to and prepare for workplace challenges due to the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak around the country, the EEOC has updated some of its guidance on the Americans With Disabilities Act (“ADA”) and the Rehabilitation Act. The EEOC addresses situations such as whether employer can require that employees showing symptoms…
Employers in the Ninth Circuit (which includes Washington, Oregon, California, Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Arizona, and Hawai’i) can no longer justify pay differentials between male and female employees based upon employees’ prior compensation. In an April 9, 2018 decision, Rizo v. Yovino, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overruled prior Circuit law to hold that an employee’s previous compensation, either alone or in combination with other factors, cannot form the basis of a wage differential between men and women.
While the Equal Pay Act permits “a differential based on any other factor other than sex,” the Court held that an employee’s prior compensation is not a “factor other than sex.” Specifically, the Court held that the above “catchall” exception under the Equal Pay Act is intended to allow employers to rely upon only job-related factors, such as experience, educational background, ability, or prior job performance. Prior compensation, the Court opined, is not job-related.
Continue Reading Ninth Circuit Rules That Basing Employees’ Wages on Their Prior Compensation Violates the Equal Pay Act
Employers can breathe a sigh of relief. The Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”) announced this week that it was removing a requirement that EEO-1 reports contain employee pay data. The now-defunct Obama-era requirement announced in 2016 would have required employers to disclose compensation information to the EEOC regarding all employees, including executives – which many employers consider to be highly confidential. The OMB also announced that it extended the EEO-1 reporting deadline from September 30 of this year to March 31, 2018.
Continue Reading Employers Need Not Disclose Pay Data on EEO-1 Reports; September Deadline Moved to 2018
Employers with 100 or more employees take note: a major new reporting requirement may be coming your way next year.
On January 29, 2016, President Obama announced that beginning in September 2017, employers with 100 or more employees must report the earnings and hours worked for all of their employees. That’s right. Employers must disclose compensation information for all employees, including executives – which many employers consider to be highly confidential – to the EEOC.
Employers will be required to disclose this compensation data as a new category on the EEO-1 report, which employers already provide to the federal government and which contains workforce data sorted by race, ethnicity, gender, and job category. Specifically, the “revised EEO-1 will collect aggregate W-2 data in 12 pay bands for the 10 EEO-1 job categories” already used. The EEOC noted that it does not intend to require employers to track hours worked by salaried employees, but that it is seeking input on the issue.Continue Reading EEOC Promotes Gender Equality by Imposing Another Burden on Employers
A number of recent legal changes will have a notable impact on employee benefits law both now and in the future. Some of the most significant of those changes are the U.S. Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, and the expansion of Title VII’s discrimination protections to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (“LGBT”) individuals by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) and some federal courts.
Same-Sex Marriage: Windsor and Obergefell v. Hodges
In the 2013 Windsor decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the federal government must recognize same-sex marriages for purposes of federal law. After Windsor, the federal government issued guidance that it would look to the law of the state where the same-sex couple was married (state of celebration), rather than to the state law where the couple lived (state of residence), in most instances under federal law to determine if the same-sex couple was validly married. On June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court held, in a 5-4 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, that state laws banning same-sex marriage are unconstitutional, and mandated that states both permit same-sex couples to marry and recognize same-sex marriages lawfully performed in other states. As a result of Obergefell, the “state of celebration” test for determining whether to recognize a same-sex couple’s marriage is no longer relevant under federal law.
Continue Reading Developments in Employee Benefits Law: Same-Sex Marriage and Title VII’s Protection for LGBT Employees
