BCLP has been tracking enacted biometric privacy statutes and proposed legislation across the United States. This Alert provides a map highlighting the current status of biometric privacy-related laws and pending legislation. Existing laws have led to a boon of class action litigation for claimed violations of biometric privacy rights. It is therefore imperative that businesses remain informed of their obligations, which are increasingly expanding and arising in new jurisdictions. BCLP continues to monitor as newly proposed legislation proliferates. Please check back here periodically for updates.

Click here to read the Alert in full.

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker recently signed into law an amendment to the Illinois Employee Sick Leave Act (ESLA), permitting employees to take leave for a covered family member’s “personal care.”

Enacted in 2017, the ESLA requires Illinois employers to permit employees to use half of their annual accrued sick leave under an existing sick leave policy for absences related to the illness, injury, or medical appointment of certain family members. For example, an employee who accrues 40 hours of sick leave each year is entitled to use 20 hours of such time for family leave purposes. Notably, the ESLA does not require employers to provide paid sick leave—it only applies to those employers who already provide leave to their employees. So, once an employer offers sick leave, it must allow employees to use available leave for family-care purposes listed in the ESLA.  For more information on the ESLA, please refer to this earlier article.

Under the recent amendment to the ESLA, employees must now be permitted to take sick leave for the “personal care” of a “covered family member.”

• “Covered family member” includes an employee’s child, stepchild, spouse, domestic partner, sibling, parent, mother-in-law, father-in-law, grandchild, grandparent, or stepparent.

Employers in the U.S. should remember that they may be required to pay for employees’ COBRA coverage this year.  The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 provides that, for periods of COBRA coverage between April 1 and September 30, 2021, that were triggered by an involuntary termination of employment or a reduction of hours, 100% of the COBRA premium will be paid by the employer, health plan, or insurer, and the premium expense will be reimbursed by the federal government through a refundable FICA tax credit.

For more information, see the helpful blog post by our colleagues in the Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation group, which can be found here: DOL Flies Alone: Guidance on the 100% COBRA Subsidy under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. 

Restrictions on inquiring into, or using, criminal history information are not new to Illinois employers.  For years, Illinois employers been precluded from using an applicant’s arrest history when making hiring or other employment decisions.  And, in 2015, Illinois joined the list of “ban the box” states by precluding employers with 15+ employees from inquiring into or considering the criminal record or criminal history of an applicant until after the applicant was selected for an interview or had received a conditional offer of employment.

Effective March 23, 2021, the restrictions have tightened again, through amendments to the Illinois Human Rights Act (“IHRA”), which borrow concepts from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) and the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”).

Restricted Use of Conviction Records

The new IHRA provisions make it a civil rights violation for an employer to use a “conviction record” as the basis for any employment decision, including hiring, promotion, discipline and discharge, unless:

1. There is a “substantial relationship” between one or more of the previous criminal offenses and the employment sought or held; OR
2. The granting or continuation of employment would involve an unreasonable risk to property or to the safety or welfare of specific individuals
   

Employers preparing to reopen their places of business have many logistical considerations, including compliance with state and local health orders relating to face coverings, temperature and wellness screenings, and other measures designed to help keep employees healthy and safe during the COVID-19 pandemic. Last week, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) updated its own “Return to Work” guidance by adding Q&A guidance on how employers should handle a “high risk” employee, i.e., an employee with an existing and known disability that may make the employee more susceptible to severe illness from COVID-19.  The guidance is a helpful reminder to employers that even actions taken with the best of intentions may not comply with legal obligations and restrictions.  Below are three important questions for employers to consider in light of the EEOC’s updated guidance.

How does the Interactive Process Apply to COVID-Related Requests for Accommodation?

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (the “ADA”), employers are obligated to consider requests from a disabled employee for reasonable accommodations to the employee’s work environment that would permit him or her to perform the essential functions of the job. While the EEOC’s

Our colleagues from the Employee Benefits group have posted several articles important to our Employment and Labor clients. Please click here to see articles on:

Families First Coronavirus Response Act Part 1 of 2: Small Employer Tax Credits Families First Coronavirus Response Act Part 2 of 2: Impact on Employer Health Plans

Today is Time to Talk Day focusing on ending the stigma of mental ill-health in the workplace.

Mental ill-health costs UK employers up to £42 billion annually due to poor productivity, sickness absence and staff turnover. With the number of stress and anxiety workplace-related cases increasing by over 37% just last year, this is a key topic for employers.

Over the last several years there has been a growing recognition of the need for employers to proactively foster mental wellbeing in the workplace and of the benefits this can bring. This is a noticeable shift from the historic approach, which tended to focus more on dealing with the problems only after staff had gone off sick.

#TimetoTalk encourages staff to have conversations about mental health so that they can be more open about the issue and can ask for support if they need it. This reflects key aspects of good practice that employers can adopt to foster good mental health and wellbeing, including:

developing mental health awareness amongst staff by making information, tools and support accessible; destigmatising mental ill-health, for example via networks and support groups, and training up staff to spot the early signs of a mental

Recent figures issued by the French ministry of Justice point out a decrease of litigation cases before the labor court. What are the reasons of such a trend? The French government outlines the positive impact of the Macron’s reforms. On the other hand, Unions replied that now the employees renounce to claim before the labour court. What are the reasons of this decrease? Could you link it or not to political measures?

Francois Alambret recently published an article regarding this subject on Focus RH, a website dedicated to labor and employment topics and specifically to HR directors or managers. Click this link to read it.

https://www.focusrh.com/strategie-rh/organisation-et-conseil/saisir-les-prud-hommes-est-devenu-plus-complique-31482.html

Bryan Cave is proud to present the third version of our in-house counsel’s guide to data privacy and security. The guide provides an overview of laws relevant to a variety of data matters topics, statistics that illustrate data privacy and security issues, and a breakdown of these data-related issues. It covers a range of privacy and security issues that apply in the HR context.

Click Here to download a copy of this new guide.