While all eyes are on the General Assembly for the developments for this year, we’re still dealing with a law passed several years ago raising the minimum wage.

Effective June 1, 2023, the minimum wage is now at $15 per hour.

Public Act 19-4 requires the minimum wage to increase five times over a five-year

Sure, I know you probably want to read about the NLRB’s decision this week questioning the legality of confidentiality and non-disparagement clauses in severance agreements for employees who aren’t supervisors. We’ll have more on that soon. (For now, Jon Hyman’s summary is a worthy substitute.)

But in the meantime, I wanted to highlight something

The last several years have seen significant pieces of legislation pass the Connecticut General Assembly impacting employers in several ways.

Think about the following items in the last few years:

  • Ban on
  • Twas the day before the night before Christmas
    And all thru the law office
    Not a creature was stirring
    Except the employment lawyers reading the new Congressional Omnibus spending bill and looking for the employment law provisions tucked neatly inside.

    In a parting gift for employers and employees, Congress passed a broad spending bill on

    Engaging in the interactive process is an important — and sometimes overlooked — part of an employer’s response to a request for a reasonable accommodation under state and federal law.

    I talked about this way back in 2008 (!) when the state Supreme Court released it’s landmark Curry v. Allen S. Goodman decision expanding the

    If you look at the state Department of Labor website, you’ll find a notation about “proposed amended FMLA regulations” that have not yet been put into place. It adds “approval pending”.

    As the modern saying goes: Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet.

    In fact, last month – as I previewed in

    A while back, my colleagues and I talked about new final proposed regulations implementing the revised CTFMLA law.

    Turns out that “final” doesn’t actually mean FINAL.

    On June 28, 2022, the Legislation Regulation Review Committee (LRCC) rejected the so-called “final” regulation without prejudice and asked that a number of corrections be made to the regulations.

    It would be easy to say that the Supreme Court’s decision on Friday has nothing to do with the workplace and therefore presents no employment law issues.

    But such an approach would not only be foolish, it would be wrong.

    The full impact of the decision will be felt for an entire generation while a full analysis of the decision’s impact will take some more time too (though my partners have done a great job with one here).  But it’s apparent from the first few reads of the Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is that it presents a real challenge for employers and is so disruptive in so many ways both for employers and employees.

    First, the decision minimizes (at best) or ignores (at worst) the concept of “stare decisis” which is that the Court’s prior decisions become binding precedent — and therefore have meaning.  People can rely on those decisions to predict what will happen next and respect the decision once it gets made.  If the Court undermines that concept, it risks becoming exactly like the much maligned National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB is a federal agency that, some would argue, changes its mind depending on how the Board is composed (whether Democrat majority or Republican).  For example of such a flip flop, see one of my prior posts about the NLRB here.

    This is not a good thing; the Rule of Law depends on people having some faith in the institution itself.  If people think the system is rigged to whatever party is in power, then the more likely they will be to minimize its importance or keep fighting until they think the system is in their favor.  Stare Decisis provided some measure of comfort to parties and gave employers the opportunity to plan for the future.Continue Reading Dobbs and the Impact of the Court’s Decision for Employers