Hunton Employment & Labor Perspectives

A federal district court in Florida recently declined to conditionally certify a nationwide collective action brought under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) because the plaintiff did not show sufficient evidence that she was similarly situated to other restaurant managers who wanted to join.

We are pleased to announce that the Labor and Employment team at Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP has been recognized as practice leaders in Immigration and Labor and Employment Disputes (Including Collective Actions): Defense by The Legal 500. Eleven individual lawyers on HuntonAK’s Labor and Employment and Immigration Team also were acknowledged.

Originally published by SHRM, Jayde Brown and Amber Rogers discuss challenges employers may face when vacation scheduling conflicts arise once employees return to work.  Read more here.

In a 6-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination based on an employee’s sexual orientation and/or transgendered status.  Though Title VII does not expressly mention “sexual orientation” or “transgender,” the Court held that “homosexuality and transgender status are inextricably bound up with sex” and that “it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex”—a protected class under Title VII.

An interdisclipinary effort navigating all aspects of workplace hazards, safety and compliance through all phases of the global health pandemic.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP has been advising some of the largest companies in the country regarding COVID-19 in the workplace, including assisting companies in developing workplace policies and procedures, advising on compliance with agency guidance and shutdown orders, assessing future claims risk and developing mitigation strategies to reduce risk. As the inevitable first wave of COVID-19 ...

As indicated in our previous blog on this topic, on May 30, 2020, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a two page order invalidating five elements of the NLRB’s 2019 election regulation, based on Count One of the plaintiff’s complaint.  On June 7, the court issued its promised memorandum opinion further explaining that order.

The opinion makes three key points.

Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP partners Deidre Duncan, Amber Rogers and Emily Burkhardt Vicente were named among Profiles in Diversity Journal’s 2020 Women Worth Watching^®. The honorees, whose profiles will appear in the journal’s summer issue, represent women executives from nonprofit, corporate and government sectors whose accomplishments and contributions have broken new ground.

Based in Washington, DC, Duncan is the Environmental Practice Leader and focuses on environmental, energy and administrative law relating to water and natural resource issues ...

Under ERISA, a plaintiff must file a lawsuit within six years of an alleged breach of fiduciary duty, or within three years if the plaintiff had “actual knowledge” of the breach. There has been a longstanding split among the circuits regarding what constitutes “actual knowledge” for purposes of determining whether ERISA’s three-year limitations period should apply. On February 26, 2020, the Supreme Court settled this issue in Intel Corp. Investment Policy Committee v. Sulyma, 140 S. Ct. 768 (2020).  In that decision, the Supreme Court held that a participant must have a genuine subjective awareness of information, and, therefore, the mere availability of plan disclosures will not, in itself, establish “actual knowledge” of a potential breach of fiduciary duty under ERISA.

As we have previously reported here, here, and here, Virginia has enacted several new labor and employment laws that are poised to dramatically change the legal landscape for employers in Virginia.  In addition to the laws discussed above, Virginia has also enacted “ban the box” legislation for simple possession of marijuana.

On May 14, 2020, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a final rule stating that group health plans, including employer-sponsored health plans, are not required to count the value of drug manufacturer coupons toward participant deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums (the “Final Rule”).  The Final Rule, published in HHS's Notice of Benefit and Payment Parameters for 2021, allows group health plans to exclude the value of drug manufacturer coupons from participant annual cost-sharing amounts even where no medically appropriate generic drug is available.