Compliance Stuff

The Virginia Covenants Not To Compete poster has been updated. The Virginia Covenants Not To Compete poster has been updated to reflect an amendment to the law. T he new law prohibits employers from enforcing noncompete agreements against employees terminated without cause, unless the employees receive severance benefits or other monetary payments . The benefits or payments must be disclosed to the employees upon execution of the noncompete. This posting appears on the Virginia Combination Poster. This is a mandatory change. Statutory language regarding this posting: Senate Bill 170, signed by Governor Abigail Spanberger on April 13, 2026, prohibits employers from enforcing noncompete agreements against employees who are terminated by employers without cause, unless the employers provide severance benefits or other monetary payment to the employees in connection with termination. These benefits or payments must be disclosed to the employees upon execution of the covenant not to compete...

  Employers should be thinking about whether to address the following areas of workplace compliance in 2026. These items on the employer to-do list are not all for the month of January, but don’t forget to come back to them throughout the year. Routine Use of Artificial Intelligence.  Does your workplace have a policy on how employees  may use AI in performing their jobs ? D o you have a preferred platform, or do you require certain settings to be used when employees use AI? Does your confidentiality policy address how employees can engage with AI and still protect your data? Or do you pretend that employees don’t use AI at all? Training Managers to Understand Requests for Accommodation Under the Pregnant Worker Fairness Act (PWFA).   This act has been in effect since June 27, 2023, and there have been a number of recent settlements, lawsuits, and charges against employers for failing to accommodate known limitations due to pregnancy. Recent EEOC enforcement exampl...

Real World Impact:  Governor Ron DeSantis has allowed Florida’s expansive noncompete bill to become law without his signature. As discussed in our May 19, 2025  Alert , the Florida Contracts Honoring Opportunity, Investment, Confidentiality, and Economic Growth (CHOICE) Act significantly expands the enforceability of noncompete agreements in Florida. The law addresses both garden leave agreements and noncompete agreements. With regard to noncompete agreements, the law expands the permissible duration of noncompete agreements from two years to a maximum of four years and contains no geographic scope limitation . Thus, noncompete agreements that comply with the CHOICE Act can last two years longer and can extend to employees who move out of Florida . The law’s salary requirement means it will not apply to lower wage workers (employees or contractors who do not earn a salary, excluding benefits or discretionary compensation, greater than twice the annual mean wage of the county...

  Louisiana noncompete agreements must comply with a statute—La. R.S. 23:921—to be enforceable. Does this statute also apply to employee nonsolicitation—or “anti-poaching”—agreements? A Louisiana appellate court recently held it does not, but such agreements must nevertheless be reasonable in scope and duration. Quick Hits A Louisiana appellate court held that the state’s noncompete statute did not apply to employee nonsolicitation agreements, but such agreements must nevertheless “be reasonable in scope and duration.” The court found that the nonsolicitation provision at issue was void of any indication as to the duration of the prohibition, implying an infinite duration. The court’s refusal to reform the agreement aligns with state case law exhibiting hostility to contractual limits on a former employee’s freedom to compete with his or her former employer. While noncompete agreements prohibit employees from working for a competitor after leaving their former employer, employee no...

  The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo issued a memo to board regional directors doubling down on her position that overbroad noncompete agreements are unlawful and asserting that certain “stay-or-pay” provisions violate employees’ rights under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). We’ve gathered articles on the news from SHRM and other outlets. General Counsel’s Reasoning Under stay-or-pay provisions, an employee must pay their employer if they separate from work, Abruzzo explained. Such provisions “infringe on employees’ Section 7 rights in many of the same ways that noncompete agreements do,” she wrote. Section 7 of the NLRA guarantees employees “the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection,” as well as the right “to ...