Starting January 1, 2022, Colorado agricultural employers must pay their workers minimum and overtime wages under the Colorado Wage Act, and comply with the Colorado Labor Peace Act (“LPA”).
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The Democrat-controlled Colorado General Assembly has introduced a bill that would allow cities to set their own minimum wages. Colorado law currently prohibits municipalities from setting minimum wages higher than the state rate (currently $11.10 an hour, with an increase to $12.00 an hour in 2020).
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The same judge who preliminary enjoined the Obama-era Department of Labor (“DOL”) Final Rule raising the minimum salary level for overtime exemption two weeks before it was set to take effect on December 1, 2016, struck down the rule on August 31, 2017. The rule would have raised the minimum salary for an individual to be exempt from overtime pay from $455 per week ($23,660 annually) to $913 per week ($47,476 annually). Judge Amos L. Mazzant of the U. S. District Court of the Eastern District of Texas, who was nominated to the bench by former President Obama in 2014, granted summary judgment for the groups of plaintiffs that challenged the rule, consisting of the Plano Chamber of Commerce, more than 50 business groups from Texas and across the nation, and 21 other states.
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Last week, the Acting Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) announced that the Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”) was immediately suspending, and would further review, Obama-era pay data reporting rules. The decision is a relief to larger businesses, many of which had decried the significant administrative expenses and burdens of Obama administration’s reporting rules.
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The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that an Iowa company in the business of selling fertilizer, nutrients, and crop-management services could not enforce a noncompetition agreement against a former independent contractor, a sales representative. In AG Spectrum Co. v. Elder, the noncompetition provision prohibited the sales representative from competing with the company for three years if either party ended the contractual relationship. The court found that the company did not show that the noncompetition provision in its independent contractor agreement was reasonable – the governing test under Iowa contract law. In Iowa, the ultimate goal of enforcing noncompetition agreements is to prevent unjust enrichment.
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On April 4, 2017, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (which covers Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin) ruled that sexual orientation is a protected status under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (“Title VII”). With this significant ruling, the Seventh Circuit has created a split among U.S. Circuit Courts, making the issue ripe for a definitive ruling by the Supreme Court.
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As the use of social media has become ubiquitous in today’s society, so has the necessity to obtain evidence in litigation from the social networking websites of employees, former employees, and witnesses. However, the use of social media in litigation poses unique ethical and practical challenges for counsel, particularly during the course of discovery. This article briefly identifies two such areas of issues: (1) ethical issues counsel faces when obtaining evidence from social networking websites; and (2) spoliation issues counsel must consider with their client’s social media presence.
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The Colorado Supreme Court recently upheld an employer’s right to terminate an employee who tests positive for marijuana at work when the employee is legally allowed to partake of marijuana off-duty. See Coats v. Dish Network LLC, 2015 Colo. 44 (2015). In Colorado, employees are protected by a legal off-duty statute that prohibits an employer from terminating an employee for engaging in legal activity off-duty.[i] Colorado legally allows for the medical use of marijuana.[ii] The intersect of these two laws, combined with an employer’s drug policies, provided for some uncertainty for Colorado employers. The Coats decision has cleared up any confusion.
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