Beginning on September 1, 2023, the Texas Labor Code will prohibit race discrimination on the basis of an employee’s hair texture or a protective hairstyle commonly or historically associated with race.  Protected hairstyle includes braids, locks, and twists. Twenty states have pass similar laws commonly referred to as CROWN Acts.  CROWN is an acronym for

A recent decision of the National Labor Relations Board (the “Board”) concluded that standard nondisparagement and confidentiality provisions found in many employee severance agreements violate federal labor law because they have a reasonable tendency to interfere with and restrain employees’ prospective rights to engage in protected concerted activity, bargain collectively and form unions for their

Also included in the omnibus spending bill are expanded accommodations for women that need to express breast milk in the workplace.  The Providing Urgent Maternal Protections for Nursing Mothers Act or the PUMP for Nursing Mothers Act expands the federal workplace protections for women with a need to express breast milk passed in 2010

Several provisions of the $1.7 trillion, 4,400-page Omnibus spending bill passed by Congress and expected to be signed by the President, are additional employment protections for pregnant women.  Today we cover the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (“PWFA” or “Act”) that requires covered employers to provide reasonable accommodations to women with limitations caused by pregnancy, childbirth,

President Biden recently signed the Speak Out Act, the latest in a set of bills focusing on workplace sexual harassment and sexual assault. According to the legislative findings of the Act, 81% of women and 43% of men have experienced some form of sexual harassment or sexual assault throughout their lifetime, one in three

On November 16, 2022, the Department of Labor announced that it had recovered $1.2 million in back wages from four different home health care agencies on behalf of 599 home healthcare workers.  One of the responsible employers, Guardian Angels Care Services, Inc., owed $160,477 in overtime back wages for misclassifying its employees as independent

With the spectacular crash of the centralized cryptocurrency exchange FTX and the potential bankruptcy of a second high-profile cryptocurrency exchange called BlockFi, now is a good time to revisit whether an employer would want to pay or employees receives all or part of their wages in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency.

Let’s go back to

Want to evaluate whether you need to improve your company’s sexual harassment and gender discrimination policies or get recommendations for potential improvements to those policies?  A company can spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to engage a large law firm to study the company’s policies and make recommendations for improvement.  Alternatively, a company