Hunton Employment & Labor Perspectives

Recently-introduced federal legislation could have a significant impact on equal pay class actions. On January 30, 2019, Democratic legislators reintroduced the Paycheck Fairness Act (H.R.7), which provides for various changes to the Equal Pay Act of 1963 (“EPA”).  Earlier versions of this bill, which was originally introduced in 1997, have all died in Congress. However, on February 26, 2019, the House Committee on Education and Labor voted in favor of H.R.7, which means the legislation will now be presented to the full House for a vote.

Some key features of the newly-proposed legislation include:

The Seventh Circuit recently upheld a local ordinance in Grande Chute, Wisconsin that banned all private signs on public rights-of-way despite challenges from a local labor union.

In 2014, the town of Grande Chute passed a zoning ordinance that banned all private signs on public rights-of-way.  Under the authority of the zoning ordinance, two town officials ordered a local chapter of the Construction and General Laborers’ Union to remove the labor union’s large, 12-foot inflatable rat, which, like other unions across the country, had become a longstanding feature of the Union’s strike tactics.  Specifically, the Union had placed the inflatable rat in a median across from a car dealership that it was targeting.

We recently highlighted DOL opinion letter 2018-27, which rescinded the 80/20 rule and was a welcome change for employers in the restaurant industry.  However, less than two months after the DOL’s policy change, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri rejected the DOL’s new guidance, claiming it is “unpersuasive and unworthy” of deference.

As a refresher, the 80/20 rule requires businesses to pay tipped workers at least minimum wage (with no tip credit) for non-tip generating tasks when these tasks take up more than 20% of the tipped workers’ time.

Two years after jointly issuing its 2016 Antitrust Guidance for Human Resource Professionals with the FTC, the DOJ is now taking active steps to clarify its stance on no-poaching agreements.  On January 25, 2019, the DOJ filed a Notice of Intent to File a Statement of Interest in three different class action lawsuits brought by employees of fast-food franchises against their employers alleging that no-poaching agreements in franchise agreements violate antitrust law.

This morning, the U.S. Supreme Court punted a key Equal Pay Act (“EPA”) case back to the Ninth Circuit because the decision’s author, Judge Stephen Reinhardt, passed away shortly before the decision was formally issued.

Yovino v. Rizo is a significant EPA case that has been winding its way through the courts for years.  In 2017, a Ninth Circuit panel held that a wage differential based on prior salary can qualify as a “factor other than sex” under the EPA.  But, in 2018, the Ninth Circuit, sitting en banc, came to the opposite conclusion: “prior salary alone or in combination with other factors cannot justify a wage differential.”  The en banc opinion was authored by Judge Reinhardt, who passed away 11 days before the decision was issued.  The opinion acknowledged the Judge’s passing with a footnote stating that voting had been completed and the decision was written prior to his death. 

If your background check forms include too much information about rights under state law, or even grammatical errors, you might be in trouble according to the Ninth Circuit.  In Gilberg v. California Check Cashing Stores, the appeals court recently ruled against an employer for using background check disclosure forms that violate both the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), and California’s Investigative Consumer Reporting Agencies Act (ICRAA).

As anticipated and previously reported, the Republican-controlled Board is overturning Obama-era rulings. For example, in a recent decision, SuperShuttle Inc. DFW, Inc. (16-RC-010963), the National Labor Relations Board affirmed the Board’s adherence to the traditional common-law agency test.  This decision overrules the NLRB’s 2014 Decision, FedEx Home Delivery, 361 NLRB No. 65, which had modified the NLRB’s long-standing test for independent contractor status.

As we discussed in a previous post , the courts, the Congress, and the Department of Justice (the “DoJ”) continue to grapple with the scope of Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (the “ADA”) as it relates to the accessibility of private businesses’ websites for disabled people.  A decision by one state trial court in California seems to adopt a more strict reading of the definition of “public accommodation” than previous cases in California and in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (which includes the federal courts in California) on the subject, which further demonstrates the difficulty that many courts, including this one, are having with these ADA website accessibility cases.

The California Second Appellate District has held that retail employees who were required to “call in” two hours before their scheduled shift to find out if they actually needed to report to work were entitled to reporting time pay. The Court held that California retail employees do not need to physically appear at the workplace in order to “report for work,” and be entitled to reporting time pay, under the Industrial Welfare Commission (“IWC”) Wage Order 7.  Given the robust dissent and sweeping change this decision could bring about, this is a case to watch as it may find its way to the California Supreme Court.

Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP is pleased to announce that Los Angeles partner Julia Trankiem has been named one of Los Angeles Business Journal’s Most Influential Minority Attorneys.