By: Jessica Jackler On February 19, Gov. Pritzker signed the “Lifting Up Illinois Working Families Act” into law, incrementally raising the state’s minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2025. The minimum wage is scheduled to increase with a series of hourly rate adjustments over the next five years until […]

By: Jessica Jackler On January 23, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals held that the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) does not extend to disparate impact claims for job applicants. In Kleber v. CareFusion Corp., No. 17-1206 (7th Cir. 2018), the 58-year-old plaintiff applied for a senior in-house attorney position […]

By: Jessica Jackler and Storrs Downey The Illinois Supreme Court has unanimously ruled against Six Flags Entertainment Corp. in a landmark Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) case. The ruling will certainly impact claims against employers in the future for failing to properly notify and obtain consent from employees about the collection […]

By: Jessica B. Jackler Now that we have entered 2019, there are a number of changes to Illinois law that employers should be familiar with and update their policies accordingly. Recent amendments to the Illinois Human Rights Act (IHRA) broaden employee rights and require affirmative actions by employers. Although some of […]

By: Jessica B. Jackler The 2018 Illinois General Election will take place on Tuesday, November 6. Under the current political climate, the push to encourage voters to make it to the polls is palpable. Employers may be wondering what their obligations are to provide time off for their employees to vote. […]

By: Jessica B. Jackler Earlier this month, the Seventh Circuit ruled that the district court erred in granting the defendant’s pretrial motion for summary judgment in plaintiff’s action under Title VII and the Illinois Human Rights Act. In Frey v. Hotel Coleman, No. 17-2267 (September 11, 2018), plaintiff alleged that the […]

By: Jessica B. Jackler On September 14, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) announced that it would publish a “Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” in the Federal Register regarding its joint-employer standard. The proposed rule will adopt the pre-Browning-Ferris standard for determining if two or more employers are joint employers of employees. Under […]

By: Jessica Jackler FLSA Amendment Revises Tip Pooling Rules In late March 2018, President Trump signed into law Congress’s omnibus budget bill, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2018, which in part amended the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) by providing that an employer “may not keep tips received by its employees […]

By: Jessica B. Jackler, Associate The Supreme Court ruled last Monday that arbitration clauses contained in employment agreements that ban class actions do not violate federal labor laws and are enforceable under the Federal Arbitration Act. The Court held that such contracts can include clauses that force employees to settle disputes […]

By: Jessica B. Jackler, Associate Some say spring is the time of rebirth, which seems like a good starting point to discuss pregnancy in the workplace. As the presence of women in Corporate America continues to grow, so should your knowledge base regarding associated legal rights of your female workforce. […]