On September 9, 2021, in response to growing case counts and lagging vaccination rates, the Biden Administration announced its COVID-19 Action Plan, laying out a “path out of the pandemic.” The centerpiece of the president’s announcement is a new employee vaccination mandate for all private sector employers with at least 100 employees.

Historically, Florida state courts have allowed plaintiffs to depose a defendant’s senior executives regardless of whether they have personal knowledge of the underlying claim, a tactic that has been used by some plaintiffs' counsel to exert pressure on the defendant. In federal court, however, this practice is prohibited by the “Apex Doctrine.” On August 26, 2021, the court amended the Florida Rules of Civil Procedure following a certified question of the First District Court of Appeal.

Perhaps surprising for Texas employers, the Texas legislature has significantly expanded sexual harassment protections for employees, rendering Texas’ state law protections more expansive than those provided by similar federal statutes. These changes, which took effect on September 1, 2021, have significant practical implications.

In November 2020, California voters passed Proposition 22, which exempted gig economy businesses (such as Uber Technologies Inc., Lyft Inc., DoorDash Inc. and Instacart Inc.) from California Assembly Bill 5 (AB 5). Previously, AB 5 had required these “app-based drivers” to be classified as employees instead of independent contractors. In what is unlikely to be the only judicial attack on Prop. 22, an Alameda County Superior Court Judge recently deemed Prop. 22 unconstitutional and unenforceable.

Although the New York City Fair Chance Act (FCA) has been in effect since October 27, 2015, it has now been amended and employers need to be aware of the changes in order to achieve compliance. The FCA is one of the “ban the box” laws passed in many jurisdictions in recent years. Unless an exemption applies, it generally prohibits employers from inquiring about an applicant’s criminal history prior to making a conditional offer of employment.

There are more than a billion reasons to take a very close look at what is happening in courtrooms across America right now. Nuclear verdicts are occurring with increased frequency and can no longer be ignored. On August 20, 2021, a Nassau County, Florida jury awarded damages in a wrongful death matter in excess of $1 billion, after just five days of testimony and four hours of deliberation. This award included a punitive damages award of $900 million.

New York federal courts have been hospitable to claims by disabled plaintiffs that websites do not comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) due to lack of accessibility based on, among other things, incompatibility with software used by visually impaired individuals and lack of closed captioning on videos that contain audio content as is needed by deaf or hard-of-hearing individuals. A notable new decision took a much different tack, and if it is affirmed on appeal or followed by other jurists, New York federal courts will no longer be a hotbed of these cases.

In Gonzalez v. Mathis (Aug. 19, 2021, S247677) __ Cal.5th___, the California Supreme Court reversed an appellate decision holding that a landowner may be liable to an independent contractor, or the contractor’s workers, for injuries resulting from “known hazards,” as running contrary to the Privette doctrine.