Compliance Stuff

Washington just became the latest state to enact a so-called “trigger” labor law, which will allow the state’s labor board to regulate private-sector labor relations if the federal framework fails. The new legislation, which takes effect June 11, is part of a growing effort by states to fill perceived gaps at the federal level – a movement that the National Labor Relations Board strongly opposes and is actively challenging in courts . We’ll explain everything employers need to know, plus what you can expect next. Overview Gov. Bob Ferguson signed a bill ( HB 2471 ) into law on March 23 that will expand the power of the state’s Public Employment Relations Commission (PERC) over matters currently reserved for the NLRB under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) – if certain triggering conditions are met. HB 2471 emphasizes that protecting workers’ rights under established labor law and maintaining stable labor-management relations is a vital state interest, but the NLRB is pushing bac...

Employers have become highly efficient at onboarding new hires. Electronic systems now allow employees to complete tax forms, benefits elections, and employment paperwork before their first day of work. That efficiency has created a surprisingly common compliance problem with Forms I-9, the document employees must complete to establish their legal right to work in the United States. Many employers assume that if a new employee completes onboarding paperwork before their first day, that earlier date becomes the “hire date” for I-9 purposes. Others use the date the offer was accepted or the date the employee was entered into the HR system. None of those dates are correct. For I-9 purposes, the correct date is the employee’s first day of work for pay . Misunderstanding that rule leads to errors that regularly surface during immigration audits. The Legal Definition of “Hire” Federal immigration regulations define “hire” as the commencement of employment for wages or other remuneration. In ...

Colorado’s legislature enacted one of the first comprehensive U.S. artificial intelligence (AI) laws in 2024, the  Consumer Protections for Artificial Intelligence  (aka, the Colorado AI Act). Now, a working group convened by Gov. Jared Polis  proposed  a near-total rewrite of that law on Tuesday. This isn’t a technical cleanup—it meaningfully changes  how  AI is regulated and  where  legal risk shows up.  The Colorado AI Act currently focuses on “high-risk AI” and imposes heavy governance requirements, impact assessments, and risk programs, while the new proposal narrows the scope to automated tools that “materially influence” meaningful decisions and shifts compliance toward consumer notice, post adverse-decision disclosures, and meaningful human review. In sum, the proposal provides a more business friendly approach to AI regulation. But can the bill cross the finish line? What are the key provisions?  Narrows scope to cover more si...

Key point: Oklahoma becomes the 20th state to enact a broad consumer data privacy law. On March 20, 2026, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt signed  SB 546  into law. In doing so, Oklahoma becomes the 20th state to enact a broadly applicable consumer data privacy law. Passage of a consumer data privacy law in Oklahoma has been a multiyear process. The Oklahoma House first passed a consumer data privacy bill authored by then-Representative Collin Walke in 2021, but the bill stalled in the Senate. The House again passed a bill in 2022, and it again stalled in the Senate. The new law is a more business-friendly blend of the 2022 version of Virginia’s consumer data privacy law and the Texas consumer data privacy law. Ultimately, entities subject to other state privacy laws will not have any new compliance obligations. In the below article, we provide an overview of the new law. Applicability The law applies to controllers and processors that conduct business in Oklahoma or produce a p...

On March 23, 2026, Washington Governor Bob Ferguson signed into law a bill banning nearly all noncompete agreements for employees and independent contractors, e ffective June 30, 2027. The law, Substitute House Bill (SHB) 1155, declares that all “noncompetition agreements” are “void and unenforceable” after that date, and prohibits employers from enforcing such restrictions. 00:00 24:53 Quick Hits On March 23, 2026, Washington Governor Bob Ferguson signed a bill into law that will ban noncompete agreements for employees and independent contractors. The law will declare all current employment-based and independent contractor-based “noncompetition agreements” to be void and unenforceable, and will prohibit employers from enforcing them. The law will prohibit entering into new employment-based and independent contractor-based noncompetition covenants. The ban will not apply to certain other restrictive covenants, including narrowly-drafted nonsolicitation agreements. The law takes effect ...

Most employers already collect emergency contact information during onboarding. It is one of those routine HR forms that gets completed on day one and then quietly sits in a personnel file. Until now. A new California requirement means that emergency contact forms are no longer just administrative paperwork. They are now part of your legal compliance obligations. By March 30, 2026, you must give current employees the opportunity to designate an emergency contact and indicate whether that person should be notified if you have actual knowledge that the employee has been arrested or detained during work hours. Going forward, you must provide the same opportunity to employees at the time of hire. If you have not updated your forms yet, now is a good time to take a look. What the Law Requires The rule itself is fairly straightforward. You must give employees the opportunity to: designate an emergency contact update that contact information during employment indicate whether that contact sh...