SimplyHR | Employment & Labor Blog 

2016 was a busy year for employment law developments on a national level, and 2017 promises to follow suit. To help employers navigate the changes, here is a summary of major developments that may affect your business this year.

Whether it’s using a company laptop at home or accessing social media and other personal sites via an office desktop computer, the lines between an employee’s personal and work lives are increasingly blurred.

As revealed by the recent Ashley Madison website hack, many employees across the United States use business computers and business email accounts for very personal reasons — reportedly over 15,000 email addresses used to register accounts were linked to government or military servers. However, dealing with an employee who “cheats” on an employer’s computer, Internet or email use policy may not be as simple as it seems.

The United States District Court for the Northern District of California recently dismissed a proposed class action alleging that LinkedIn was a Consumer Reporting Agency (“CSA”) under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”) and violated the law when it provided an online feature that allows businesses to check applicants’ references on the site without the applicants’ knowledge. Sweet v. LinkedIn Corp., 5:14-cv-04531-PSG (N.D. Cal. April 14, 2015). The Plaintiffs unsuccessfully argued that the site’s “Reference Search” feature produced “Consumer Reports” (“CR”) under the law.