Immediate Action Items for Employers: Recalculate “base rate” for any employee paid on anything other than a standard wage. If you presently scrutinize employees’ requests for ESST, consider approving it as a matter of course. Aling use of ESST to the increments in which you pay. Ensure your paystub includes the necessary information. Make a plan to keep pay and ESST information for 3 years. If you are offering paid leave above the ESST minimums, ensure that you are offering it on the same terms as ESST; or consider ceasing to offer excess.

Minnesota is taking a strong approach to combating the ongoing misclassification of workers as independent contractors, rather than true employees. New legislation took effect on July 1, 2024, in the form of amended Minn. Stat. § 181.722, which (1) prohibits misclassification of workers; (2) identifies clear tests for classifying workers; and (3) imposes strict and...

Last year, Minnesota legalized the recreational use of cannabis for adults over the age of twenty-one. In a prior eLaw article, I wrote about the tension between the Lawful Consumable Products Act’s (“LCPA”) prohibition on adverse employment action arising from an employee’s off-duty, off-premises use of cannabis and the sensitivity of available cannabis tests without...

I was recently asked to speak about employment law issues at a conference for human resource professionals. Registrants were polled in advance about what they’d like covered, and “DEI” was a top response. (DEI stands for “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion;” DEI means . . . well . . . the definition of DEI is part of...

When you think about potential sources of employment liability, your job posting and solicitation practices might not be front of mind. But with new legislation in Minnesota requiring disclosure of pay in postings beginning on January 1, 2025, and recent high profile discrimination cases related to job postings, it is an important time to review...

When ChatGPT launched in late 2022, a wave of generative artificial intelligence (“AI”) innovation followed—and it looks like it is here to stay.1 Other popular generative AI tools you may be familiar with include DALL-E, Google’s Gemini, and Microsoft’s Copilot.2 AI presents a number of concerns for businesses, including data privacy and security, accuracy and...

“Chevron deference” and the end of Chevron deference has been all over the news since the United States Supreme Court published its June 28, 2024 decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimaondo, Secretary of Commerce.  As with most media coverage of the law, most of the reporting I’ve seen has been overly simplistic at best,...