A recent case from the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals (whose rulings apply to all Texas employers) provides a valuable lesson. The case involved a teacher who—to her credit—proceeded on her own without a lawyer. The...
Employment Law Letter
On April 29, 2024, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) published its “Enforcement Guidance on Harassment in the Workplace,” which is meant to update, consolidate, and replace the previous guidance...
One of the benefits of workers’ compensation is that it shields an employer from much more expensive types of injury claims. The injured worker trades the chance for a huge recovery in favor of an easier, more rapid...
The Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) is kind of like Godzilla. It arose as an artificial nuclearization of our labor code and then kept growing to obtain powers that weren’t fully imagined or understood at the start...
California’s jurisdiction law is called a “longer arm statute” because it confers to its court’s jurisdiction as broadly as the California and United States Supreme Courts will allow. As taught in this case, that...
The Wage and Hour Division (WHD) of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued a final rule making significant changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) regulations regarding the minimum salary threshold for white...
The employer and employee signed an arbitration agreement and agreed thereafter that their dispute should be resolved in arbitration. As we have seen so many times before, the employer was a few weeks late paying the...
We have been reminding you for the past eight months of the new California Labor Code sections 6401.7 and 6401.9 creating a July 1, 2024, deadline to have your workplace violence prevention program in place. This...
Fruit farm Ayoquezco Farms, Inc., and its owner, Juan Rafael Cruz, agreed to pay $100,000 to settle a sex harassment and discrimination lawsuit filed by the California Civil Rights Department (CRD) and former employee...
Q We provide laptop computers to all our personnel. Many employees damage them during employment or return them with damage upon leaving employment. What are our options for recouping from employees the costs of...
Last year, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a proposed rule to ban most noncompete agreements nationwide, with very limited exceptions. The sweeping rule forbids any contractual term between an employer and a...
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas has issued an aggressive scheduling order that “should allow prompt resolution of” one of the initial challenges to the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC)...
Q When crafting a severance agreement, should you follow the guidelines of the state the employee resides/works in or the state where the company is incorporated? The answer depends on a number of factors. Often...
Recently, the Texas Supreme Court set aside a verdict against an employer when the plaintiffs’ lawyer made appeals to racial prejudice and gender bias during the trial. Car crash An employee of New Prime Inc. rear-ended...
To add to a very busy two weeks of employment law developments, on April 15, 2024, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued its final rule and interpretive guidance to implement the Pregnant Workers...