Compliance Stuff

  Educating employees about sexual harassment — what it is, that it is unlawful, that your organization won’t tolerate it, how to prevent it, how to respond to it, etc. — can contribute to safer and more productive workplace, plus reduce exposure to successful harassment claims. Recognizing that, on their own, many employers have implemented sexual harassment prevention training programs. In several jurisdictions, however, such programs are not a matter of choice. Instead, the jurisdiction mandates them. Others encourage employers to adopt them. Here is an overview. California Under California Code §12905.1,  California Code, GOV 12950.1 , employers with five or more employees must give California-based employees sexual harassment and abusive conduct prevention training; one hour every two years for non-supervisory employees and two hours every two years for supervisors. New supervisors must be trained withing six months after they assume their supervisory responsibilitie...

  The Supreme Court on Monday, Jan. 13, 2025, declined to take up a decision addressing the president’s authority under the Procurement Act to issue a minimum wage mandate for employees working on federal government contracts. The denial of the petition for certiorari keeps a circuit split intact, and leaves federal contractors to navigate the wage mandate’s uncertain legal status while complying with the latest minimum wage hike to $17.75 per hour, which took effect Jan. 1. President Biden issued Executive Order (EO) 14026 in 2021, which increased from $10.95 to $15 the minimum hourly wage for employees working on federal government contracts, and provided for annual increases to the minimum wage. In 2022, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued regulations implementing the EO. In the case rejected by the Supreme Court, a Colorado federal court refused to grant a preliminary injunction barring enforcement of the wage mandate. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affir...

  In the absence of federal regulation, several states have either passed or are considering legislation aimed at mitigating the risk of an employer’s use of an AI system resulting in algorithmic discrimination. This Insight provides a roundup of state and local AI laws impacting employers, and notable pending measures. “Algorithmic discrimination” refers to the use of an artificial intelligence (AI) system that results in differential treatment or impact disfavoring an individual based on protected characteristics ( e.g ., age, color, ethnicity, disability, national origin, race, religion, veteran status, sex, etc.). It is well settled that AI systems have the potential to create discriminatory results, whether from system training with flawed or unrepresentative data, or because the system found and replicated patterns of human discrimination within the training data. Such discrimination is particularly troublesome in the context of employers that use AI systems to make employme...