Compliance Stuff

It’s hard to keep up with all the recent changes to labor and employment law, especially since the law always seems to evolve at a rapid pace. In order to ensure you stay on top of the latest changes and have an action plan for compliance, here is a quick review of some critical developments we tracked in July and a c hecklist of the essential items you should consider addressing in August and beyond. _____ Get Ready for the   First-Ever National Heat Safety Rule.  OSHA proposed regulations on July 2 that could soon require you to implement robust measures to safeguard your employees from extreme heat both indoors and outdoors.   The proposal still needs to wind its way through a months-long administrative process and could even be derailed by new standards set by the Supreme Court that take aim at agency overreach, so you’ll want to follow the process closely.  Here are the 10 steps you should consider taking to prepare for the new rule . _____ Prepare for the Impac...

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises et al. v. Raimondo and Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce, Nos. 21-5166/22-1219, (June 28, 2024) overturning the Chevron doctrine left open the future scope of judicial deference to National Labor Relations Board decisions. On July 5, 2024, in Hotel De La Concepcion v. NLRB, No. 22-01272, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued a ruling that minimizes the impact of Loper Bright on Board decisions. The Court of Appeals Decision In Hotel De La Concepcion, the employer sought review of a Board decision finding it violated the National Labor Relations Act by, among other actions, unilaterally reducing work schedules and temporarily closing a department. The employer claimed it had the right to act unilaterally under its collective bargaining agreement with the union representing its employees. The Board rejected the employer’s contention. The employer appealed the decision to the D.C. Circuit, but the Court...

On the second-to-last day of its term, the US Supreme Court issued its decisions in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless, Inc. v. Dep’t of Commerce. These decisions overruled Chevron USA. v. National Resource Defense Council, the 40-year-old precedent that established the “Chevron” doctrine, which gave federal agencies a certain amount of deference to interpret statutes they administer. The Chevron doctrine provides that when a statute is ambiguous — that is, when it is unclear whether US Congress has spoken directly to the precise issue at hand — courts must defer to the interpretation of the relevant agency as long as the agency interpretation of the statute is reasonable. Since 1984, the Chevron doctrine has played a foundational role in administrative law and placed federal agencies as the primary interpreters of the statutes they administered. In recent years, many scholars and policy advocates have questioned whether the Supreme Court should, or would, overrule Ch...

The Supreme Court just upended the legal world by significantly reducing the power of federal regulators and placing more authority in the hands of judges – a move that will have a major impact on workplace regulations for years to come. In today’s ruling, SCOTUS overturned the decades-old Chevron doctrine which required courts to defer to a federal agency’s position on the law when a statute is open to interpretation. As we predicted earlier this year, the Court tossed out that standard in favor of judicial interpretation, enabling courts to strike down agency rules much more easily and giving employers a powerful tool to fight back against regulatory overreach. Here’s what you need to know about today’s momentous ruling and what it means for employers. What Happened? In two separate cases, commercial fishing groups claimed that a federal agency exceeded its power by forcing their fishing vessels to pay the salaries of observers on board. After lower federal courts upheld the agency r...