Latest from Law and the Workplace - Page 3

On April 23, 2024, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) voted 3-2 to issue a proposed final rule (“Final Rule”), which, absent a successful legal challenge, will ban most noncompete agreements in the United States. 

Despite more than 26,000 comments from the public, the Final Rule does not narrow the rule first proposed by the FTC in January 2023 (“Proposed Rule”),

Today the Federal Trade Commission voted 3-2 to approve a Final Rule that, absent a successful legal challenge, will ban most noncompete agreements in the United States beginning 120 days after publication in the Federal Register.

Key provisions in the Final Rule are as follows:

  • New noncompetes
    • Banned for all workers, including “senior executives,” following the effective date.
    • “Senior executive”

The Illinois Equal Pay Act (“IEPA”) was previously amended to require private businesses with more than 100 employees in Illinois to obtain an Equal Pay Registration Certificate (“EPRC”) by March 23, 2024, and every two years thereafter.  We previously posted about this requirement here and here.

Since the IEPA was amended, the Illinois Department of Labor (“IDOL”) has provided

In a win for businesses that rely on restrictive covenants to protect their assets and investments, on January 29, 2024, the Delaware Supreme Court unanimously reversed a Chancery Court decision that invalidated a “forfeiture-for-competition” provision in Cantor Fitzgerald’s limited partnership agreement.

As we previously reported on this blog, last January the Chancery Court invalidated the forfeiture-for-competition provision in Cantor

After months of speculation and intense lobbying, New York Governor Kathy Hochul vetoed a bill that would have imposed a near-total ban on employee non-competition agreements in New York State.

Governor Hochul has long expressed her support for legislation banning non-compete agreements for “low and middle-income” employees, but generally balked at the idea of a blanket prohibition covering even highly

In what we believe are her first public statements on the New York Legislature’s proposal to ban ostensibly all non-compete agreements in New York, Governor Hochul on Thursday, November 30 reportedly told a group of reporters:

  • “What I’m looking at right now is striking the right balance between protecting low and middle-income workers, giving them flexibility to have mobility
  • On August 31, 2023, the Delaware Court of Chancery held, with respect to a non-compete provision in an employment agreement, that: (1) the choice of law provision selecting Delaware was “not necessarily binding”; and (2) the non-compete was unenforceable. Centurion Service Group, LLC v. Wilensky, No. 2023-0422-MTZ. This is that court’s second decision in a week invalidating a non-compete.

    On August 18, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit expanded the types of employment actions that may constitute “adverse employment action” under Title VII in Hamilton v. Dallas Cnty., 5th Cir. en banc. No. 21-10133, 8/18/23. Overruling its nearly 30-year precedent that actionable employment actions under Title VII must relate to “ultimate employment decisions,” the Fifth

    On August 4, 2023, Illinois Governor Pritzker signed HB2862 (the “Bill”) into law.  The Bill requires temporary staffing agencies to provide certain temporary workers with the same pay and benefits as the workers’ directly employed counterparts with “the same level of seniority at the company and performing the same or substantially similar work on jobs the performance of which requires