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Recently the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a decision interpreting the applicability and legality of Washington’s paid sick leave law to the airline industry. The paid sick leave law, enacted in 2016, requires employers provide Washington-based employees at least one-hour of paid sick leave for every 40 hours worked.

On May 27, 2021, a federal judge denied a business group’s initial attempt to stop enforcement of the Colorado Equal Pay for Equal Work Act, which MSE reported on in December.

On May 17, 2021, the Eaton City Council authorized the City to pay $185,000 to the plaintiff fire captains and EMS lieutenant to settle an overtime lawsuit filed by MSE. The fire captains and lieutenant alleged that the City had wrongly failed to pay them overtime in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

In Benson et al. v. Enterprise Leasing Company of Florida LLC, two workers sued their former employer, the parent company of car rental firms including Enterprise Rent-A-Car, after being laid off from their jobs without notice in violation of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (“WARN”) Act.

Your state may offer big damages for emotional distress in discrimination and whistleblower cases. In a recent example, the Oregon Supreme Court held that an Oregon statute limiting emotional distress damages for personal injury does not limit a worker’s recovery for emotional distress damages under the state’s anti-discrimination and whistleblower law.

On May 7, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reinstated part of a federal employee’s whistleblower complaint. The appellate court found that a Merit Systems Protection Board (“MSPB”) administrative judge had wrongly concluded that numerous actions taken by the employee were not protected under the Whistleblower Protection Act (“WPA”).

President Biden’s administration has made several changes to wage and hour regulations and guidance within its first 100 days. The Department of Labor (“DOL”) revised the Fair Labor Standard Act (“FLSA”)’s tip regulations.

A trial court in Austin, Texas dismissed claims brought by taxpayers represented by the Goldwater Institute and the State of Texas that attempted to challenge the “association business leave” provision of the collective bargaining agreement between the Austin Fire Fighters Association (AFA) and the City of Austin.

On April 29, 2021, the Office of Personnel Management (“OPM”) provided more information regarding the emergency paid leave for federal employees included in the American Rescue Plan of 2021 (“ARP”).

On April 29, 2021, MSE sued the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Bureau of Prisons on behalf of 235 current and former DOJ Bureau of Prisons employees at Federal Correctional Institution McKean, Pennsylvania, to recover hazardous duty pay, environmental differential pay, and backpay for overtime wages that were incorrectly calculated, after they were required to work on a daily basis in the hazardous work environment caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic.