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No More Secrets: States Introduce Legislation to Preclude Confidentiality Provisions in Settlement Agreements Involving Harassment Allegations

Allegations of sexual misconduct against celebrities and high-profile individuals continue to occupy the national spotlight. State legislators around the country have started to propose new laws which ban confidentiality and nondisclosure provisions in settlement agreements that resolve disputes arising from sexual harassment allegations. As we wrote about in an early blog post, critics of confidentiality provisions claim these clauses enable victimizers to conceal and continue long-running patterns of sexual misconduct, and prevent discussion of the accusations among the victims and co-workers.

We have summarized the proposed legislation here:

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The Department of Labor Reinstates Seventeen Bush Era Opinion Letters

Earlier this year, the United States Department of Labor (“DOL”) reinstated seventeen George W. Bush Era opinion letters which were issued in January 2009, but later withdrawn by the Obama Administration. Opinion letters are official guidance from the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division that provide employers with detailed responses to fact-specific questions pertaining to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), and the Davis-Bacon Act (DBA).

In 2010, the DOL stopped issuing opinion letters and instead began issuing “administrative interpretations,” which offered a more general interpretation of the law rather than a response to specific questions posed by employers or employees.

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How the New Tax Law Will Impact Employers in 2018

Just before the holiday break, Congress passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (H.R. 1), which was signed into law by President Trump on December 22, 2017. Although the far-reaching implications of the new tax law won’t be fully realized for some time, there are several noteworthy provisions that will impact employers immediately.

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California at Work: New Labor Laws for 2018

*Originally published by CalCPA in the January/February 2018 issue of California CPA — the original article can be found here.

You may not have expected that the California Legislature in 2017 designated an official state dinosaur (Augustynolophus morrisi) and four state nuts (almond, pecan, walnut and pistachio), which are technically seeds, but that’s a separate article. Less surprising is that employer regulation and employee rights continue to expand in our state, the sixth-largest economy of the world. The rate of expansion, however, seems to have taken another pendulum swing: 304 bills introduced in 2017 mention “employer,” compared to 569 bills in 2016 and 224 in 2015. Most of those bills did not pass, and of the ones that did, most were not signed into law by Gov. Brown. Essential elements of several bills that became law affecting private employers, effective Jan. 1, 2018, unless noted otherwise, follow.

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Amid Continuing Sexual Misconduct Scandals, Legislators Target NDAs and Confidentiality Agreements

As allegations of sexual misconduct continue to surface almost daily against high-profile individuals, some legislators have responded by proposing legislation curtailing the use of non-disclosure (NDA) and confidentiality agreements. Critics have opined that such agreements (particularly as used by Harvey Weinstein) have enabled victimizers to conceal and continue long-running patterns of sexual misconduct, in that they prevented discussion of the accusations among both the victims and others, such as co-workers, who knew of the victimization.

In October, California State Senator Connie Leyva announced that she would introduce “legislation to ban secret settlements (confidentiality provisions in settlement agreements) in sexual assault, sexual harassment and sex discrimination cases” when the California Senate reconvenes in early January 2018. On November 15, Pennsylvania State Senator Judy Schwank stated in a press conference that she would introduce a bill that prospectively bans contractual provisions “prohibit[ing] a person from revealing the identity of a person who committed sexual misconduct” and voids any such provisions entered into under duress or incapacity, or by a minor, prior to the law’s enactment.

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Key New California Laws for 2018: What Employers Should Know

Governor Jerry Brown signed several laws in 2017 that will impact California employers next year. A summary of some of the key new laws follows, in numerical order by Assembly Bill (AB) and/or Senate Bill (SB). All of the laws outlined below are effective beginning January 1, 2018.

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