SimplyHR | Employment & Labor Blog 

We are finally moving past the plethora of pandemic-era employment laws that riddled this blog over the past two years. However, not all will be quiet in 2023, as the breadth of pending U.S. Supreme Court cases and issues agencies are reviewing is wide and has the potential to disrupt several industries. This recap and forecast highlights a few of those topics.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) recently issued a new poster titled "Know Your Rights: Workplace Discrimination is Illegal" that all covered employers are required to display in the workplace.

New EEOC guidance advises employers to ensure that any hiring tools based on algorithms or artificial intelligence (AI) do not negatively impact applicants with disabilities. This obligation includes offering reasonable accommodations to applicants in hiring practices that incorporate AI or algorithmic decision-making.

A strong push continues for states to adopt stricter pay equity laws and enforce efforts to combat pay inequities for certain protected classes, including women and individuals of color. Many states, including Illinois, have prioritized pay equity by passing laws designed to reduce wage gaps.

On March 23, 2021, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed into law Senate Bill 1480, the Employee Background Fairness Act. This impacts certain Illinois employers because it imposes new reporting and registration requirements concerning employee demographics and pay under the Illinois Business Corporation Act (IBCA) and the Illinois Equal Pay Act (IEPA), and creates new whistleblower anti-retaliation protections under the IEPA. The amendments take effect immediately.

In a year marked by federal responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, federal agencies managed to finalize some non-pandemic legal developments in 2020: the Department of Labor’s (DOL) new overtime rule and joint employer test both went into effect, and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) overturned a handful of Obama-era precedents. With Joe Biden’s election as president in November 2020, the coming four years will likely bring some reversal of the impact of the Trump administration, particularly on the DOL and NLRB. The 2019-2020 Supreme Court term was relatively busy for employment, including a major development for Title VII. Of course, much of the energy and resources of the federal agencies overseeing employment laws were spent on providing guidance to employers related to COVID-19 issues. Below is a summary of major federal employment law headlines from last year and a look at what employers can expect in 2021.

On December 16, 2020, the EEOC issued an update that addresses the availability of COVID-19 vaccinations and questions they may raise under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (Title VII), and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA). If an employer elects to administer a COVID-19 vaccine or contract with a third party to do so, the employer must meet certain requirements under federal anti-discrimination laws.

On April 9, 2020, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued its updated Technical Assistance Questions and Answers titled “What You Should Know About COVID-19 and the ADA, the Rehabilitation Act, and Other EEO Laws” addressing several questions that have arisen since the beginning of this national emergency and reminding us that even during a pandemic, employers need to be cognizant of their obligations under the ADA and other EEO laws. A summary of the questions and answers is provided below.

A more comprehensive guide from the EEOC can be found in “Pandemic Preparedness in the Workplace and the Americans With Disabilities Act,” which was drafted during the prior H1N1 outbreak and last revised on March 21, 2020, to address COVID-19.

The theme for last year’s federal developments was reversal of Obama-era rules. The Department of Labor and National Labor Relations Board were especially active in this respect.

After a relatively quiet Supreme Court term for employment law in 2018-19, the stage is set for the court to rule in 2020 on highly anticipated topics. Below is a summary of major federal employment law headlines from last year and a look at what employers can expect in 2020.

In a unanimous decision, the U.S. Supreme Court held that an employee’s failure to exhaust administrative remedies is not a jurisdictional prerequisite to filing a lawsuit, rather it is a procedural requirement that could be waived by the employer’s failure to timely raise the issue.

In Fort Bend County, Texas v. Davis, --- S.Ct. ---- (U.S. June 3, 2019) the plaintiff, Davis, filed a charge of discrimination alleging sex discrimination and retaliation. While that charge was pending, Davis was told to report to work on a Sunday. When Davis refused due to a prior church commitment, her employment was terminated. Intending to amend her earlier charge, Davis submitted an EEOC Intake Questionnaire on which she handwrote “religion” under “Harms or Actions” and checked the boxes for “discharge” and “reasonable accommodation.” However, Davis made no change to her formal charge of discrimination document to allege discrimination on the basis of her religion.