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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

Since March of 2020 (has it really been a year?!), the Governor has ordered employers to allow employees to work from home if they can in many industries.  Many other employers have just decided to do it anyways.

Working from home has been far from a temporary thing; it’s THE thing.

But what about providing…

Where are the clusters of COVID-19 coming from?

That was the subject of a state report that was recently reported on by The Hartford Courant.

When a team of Connecticut officials traced 84 coronavirus clusters to their origin points, they found that the vast majority of those clusters stemmed from four places: restaurants, workplaces, homes

…

It’s supposed to snow Friday here in Connecticut.

In October.

For those of us with memories, we all remember the last time we got substantial snowfall in October in 2011. It ended with lots of power outages and many downed trees. So let’s first hope the snow is just more nuisance than anything else.

Far…

13 years ago this week, I started this blog. But rather than dwell on another anniversary (and six months since working from home), I’d rather spend the time hitting a few (ok, 13) items in employment law because have been quite a few developments.

  1. Governor Lamont issued new Executive Orders this week amending the travel

…

Conneticut’s Travel Advisory Quarantine has been among the most confusing of the orders to arise from the pandemic.  No doubt that it was not intended to be that complicated.

But the last few weeks have had change after change made to the rules.  And then came the announcement last week that Rhode Island was on…

You may have noticed that this blog has been a little quiet of late.  Like a lot of people, I’m pretty sure that after four months of non-stop pandemic-related employment law work, I had reached a breaking point.

And so I took vacation last week. Of course, like a lot of you, we didn’t go…

So if last Tuesday’s post about the latest Connecticut Supreme Court decision on travel time was for employers, this post is for the ones who love the nuances of the law.

Dan Klau on his Appealingly Brief blog did a deep dive into the decision. And it wasn’t pretty.

Commuting at 1964 Worlds Fair

The issue Dan highlights is this: The Connecticut Department of Labor’s (“DOL”) interpretation of its own regulation on travel time was first rejected because that interpretation had not been time-tested and was not the product of formal rule-making procedures.

But it was also rejected because the Court said the agency’s interpretation was also not reasonable. Dan questions this:

The DOL based its interpretation of its regulation on a 1995 opinion letter of the United States Department of Labor concerning travel time under the federal Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947. The DOL expressly referenced that letter in a written guide it published, “A Guide to Wage and Workplace Standards.” (The link is to the 2014 revision, which appears to contain the same relevant text (see p. 38) at issue in Sarrazin.) The Court noted that Congress had rejected that position (on policy grounds) in 1996, “yet the department’s handbook inexplicably fails to acknowledge the questionable history of the 1995 opinion letter. . . .” This, according to the Court, is what made the DOL’s interpretation of its own regulation unreasonable.

I fail to see why the DOL’s statement that it interpreted its own regulation in accord with the 1995 opinion letter means that its interpretation is “unreasonable.” It seems to me that the question of reasonableness turns on the “fit” between the 1995 opinion letter and the text of the regulation, not on whether Congress, as a policy matter, disagreed with the 1995 opinion letter. Congress’s intentions are certainly relevant to federal law, but not to the reasonableness of the DOL’s interpretation of its own regulation. Employment lawyers, what say you?

There’s more, of course, to this story. It actually starts with a 1994 US Department of Labor Opinion letter which ruled that the time spent by an employee traveling from home to the first work assignment, or returning home from the last assignment, in an employer provided vehicle was similar to that of traveling between jobs during the day and therefore represented a principal activity, which must be compensated. No compensation would be required in cases where employees used their own personal vehicles.Continue Reading CTDOL’s Interpretation of Travel Time Not “Reasonable”; What Happens Next?

Mileage Reimbursement

I’m often asked what some of my most popular posts are on the blog.  Surprisingly, one topic that always seems to generate interest is the mileage reimbursement rate.  I’m not quite sure why.

In any event, the new rate became effective January 1, 2012.  Remember, this is the …