Compliance Stuff

On June 30, 2026, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced that it had rescinded two documents relating to permissible affirmative action 1 under Title VII of the U.S. Civil Rights Act: (1) its regulatory guidelines 2 on “appropriate” affirmative action under the statute; and (2) section 607 of its Compliance Manual, which addressed those guidelines and the agency’s enforcement positions with respect to permissible affirmative action and affirmative action plans.  Both the guidelines and the related portion of the Compliance Manual explained that voluntary affirmative action plans were only permitted under federal equal employment opportunity laws when designed to remedy past or present discrimination or to address manifest imbalances in traditionally segregated job categories and carefully structured to avoid unlawfully disadvantaging other employees. The documents emphasized that to be lawful, a plan had to be temporary, flexible, and narrowly tailored, and ...

Each new year, employers in the United States are accustomed to hearing about all the laws that go into effect on January 1. State legislatures across the country, however, are active all year long, and as we have said before, July is the new January. Following is our summary of the notable labor and employment laws taking effect from July 1 through October 1, 2026. Some of the laws are industry specific, but the list is not all-inclusive and does not contain minimum wage updates, which are addressed in a separate publication . Virginia enacted the most new laws taking effect this summer, including laws relating to pay transparency, child labor, non-competes, workplace violence, and employee background checks for certain employers. Several other states, including Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, and Kentucky have also enacted laws relating to employee background checks, particularly for employers in healthcare-related fields. Laws relating to non-compete agreements have been another po...