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.

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.

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.

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.

As we explained last week, a federal judge recently ruled that all employers who are required to submit EEO-1 surveys must report 2018 employee pay data by Sept. 30, 2019. In that ruling, the court also ordered the EEOC to collect a second year of pay data and gave the agency a choice between collecting employers’ 2017 data with the 2018 pay data or waiting to collect 2019 pay data next year. 

A federal judge reportedly ruled April 25 that all employers who are required to submit EEO-1 surveys on employee demographic data must report employee pay data by Sept. 30, 2019.  This includes employers with at least 100 employees and federal contractors with at least 50 employees and a contract of $50,000 or more with the federal government. 

2018 was a relatively quiet year in federal employment law developments, but the stage is set for a much more active 2019. Below is a summary of major federal employment law headlines and a look at what employers can expect in 2019.

For Missouri and Illinois employers, a review of 2018 state updates and a look forward at 2019 can be found here.