Labor & Employment Developments Blog

On March 15, Governor DeWine announced that Ohio will broaden the requirements to qualify for the state’s unemployment insurance policy.  The following changes are expected to be made through an executive order:

On March 11, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the Coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic. The CDC has also declared the Coronavirus outbreak a pandemic so several modified requirements are now applicable under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

The city of Cincinnati's salary history ban is set to take effect this Friday, March 13, 2020. Passed in 2019 in an effort to address gender and race-based pay discrepancies, the ordinance provided employers with one year to prepare for its implementation. 

On April 9, 2019, Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin (R) signed the Pregnant Workers Act, SB 18, which requires employers who have at least 15 employees in Kentucky to provide reasonable accommodations to employees for pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions. The law becomes effective on June 27, 2019.

A common provision in employment agreements may no longer be enforceable, at least for employers in Kentucky.

Recently, many health care employers and other large corporations have implemented programs requiring their employees to get a flu vaccination. Some legal experts have suggested that these mandates may be problematic for employers.  Specifically, employers may face religious based objections under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, or disability based objections under the Americans with Disabilities Act.  According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, it has filed lawsuits in recent years against employers under Title VII where employees were fired for objecting to a vaccination for sincere religious beliefs.  The EEOC has also stated that a company would likely violate the ADA, if it were to take adverse action against an employee who refused to get a flu vaccination for a disability related reason, such as an allergic reaction to the vaccine.

The new term of the Supreme Court began last Monday, October 2, and the first case up has the potential to affect millions of employers and employees across the country. The case, Epic Systems Corp v. Lewis (which was consolidated with two other cases, Ernst & Young LLP v. Morris and National Labor Relations Board v. Murphy Oil USA) examines whether employment agreements requiring employers and employees to resolve employment-related disputes through individual arbitration and waive class and collective proceedings are enforceable under the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), notwithstanding the provisions of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).

On Tuesday, the Seventh Circuit sitting en banc announced its decision in Hively v. Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana, creating a circuit split and setting the stage for a potential Supreme Court battle over the scope of Title VII.

The annual NCAA Basketball Tournament, a/k/a March Madness, starts today. More on that below but there is another kind of “March” for employers to be concerned about.

As anticipated, the Department of Labor’s (DOL) final overtime rules were issued on May 18, 2016. Effective December 1, 2016, these new regulations will impact all companies with salaried employees earning less than $47,476 annually. KMK will be offering training sessions to assist our clients in developing effective strategies to implement the new overtime rules.