The Form I-9 Employment Eligibility Verification process remains a primary component of onboarding new employees. As many states continue to move toward issuing digital or mobile equivalents to hard copy driver’s licenses and identification cards (mDLs), employers across the country are navigating the issue of whether they may accept mDLs as a List B document for Form I-9 purposes.

The misclassification of workers as independent contractors rather than employees has been at the top of the list for legislators, regulators, and plaintiffs’ attorneys in recent years. Relatedly, attention has focused on the protection of temporary workers. New Jersey has now taken a major step designed to provide pay equity by protecting certain temporary workers who may often not receive comparable pay and other benefits.

On Tuesday, May 2, 2023, the Grieving Families Act was re-introduced into the New York State legislature. A press release regarding the re-introduction of the bill claims that this new version responds to New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s concerns by “clarifying the bill’s retroactive effect, limiting the types of damages that can be recovered, reducing the extension of the statute of limitations, and clearly defining who is a close family member eligible to recover.”

On Monday, May 1, 2023, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) handed down a controversial decision in the collective cases of Lion Elastomers and United Steelworkers, effectively hamstringing employers from terminating employees who have outbursts of temper at the workplace.

A little more than a month after the high-profile closure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), California bank regulators closed First Republic Bank on Monday, May 1, 2023, marking the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history and launching a hurried bidding process from several banks over the weekend. In the early morning hours of May 1, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was appointed receiver, and it then transferred all of First Republic’s deposits and most of its assets to JPMorgan Chase Bank (Chase).

The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) administers and enforces sanctions. OFAC issued a new advisory on April 17, 2023 warning U.S. citizens and entities (U.S. Parties) of practices that could result in evasion of the price cap on crude oil originating from Russia. OFAC issued the advisory because of several incidents involving oil exported through the Eastern Siberia Pacific Ocean (ESPO) pipeline and ports on Russia’s eastern coast. 

The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and the State Department continue to take concrete actions to crack down on third-party intermediaries used to evade both U.S. Russia-related sanctions and export controls. (See Lewis Brisbois’ alert from March 7, 2023.)

On March 24, 2023, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a sweeping tort reform bill, CS/CS/HB 837 (HB 837), into law. Among its numerous implications, HB 837 amends Florida Statute §624.155 (the Civil Remedy Statute), heightening the insured’s burden for recovery of extracontractual, i.e. “bad faith,” damages under Florida law.

On Monday, April 24, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear appeals by several major energy companies that sought to remove lawsuits filed by state and local governments from state court into federal court. The Court’s certiorari denials reject companies’ appeals in five separate cases, which involved claims brought by municipalities in Colorado, Maryland, California, Hawaii, and Rhode Island.