Workforce Bulletin

On October 7, 2023, California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed Senate Bill 403 (“SB-403”), legislation that would have been the first state-wide ban on caste discrimination in the United States.  We previously reported on SB-403 here.

Governor Newsom released a veto message calling SB-403 “unnecessary.”  The message further explained his rationale that “discrimination based on caste is already prohibited” under California law, which “already prohibits discrimination based on sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, gender identity ...

On September 5, 2023, the California legislature passed Senate Bill 403 (“SB-403”), paving the way for a state-wide ban on caste discrimination to be signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom. 

SB-403 would amend the definition of “ancestry” under the California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act, Fair Employment and Housing Act, and certain provisions of the Education Code to include and define “caste.” According to the introductory language to the bill, rather than adding a new category of protected characteristics, the amendments “are declarative of and clarify ...

On February 21, 2023, the Seattle City Council passed a first of its kind ordinance that amends Seattle’s existing anti-discrimination laws to prohibit caste discrimination. The ordinance, CB 120511, prohibits employers from discriminating against individuals based on caste with respect to “hiring, tenure, promotion, terms, conditions, wages or privileges of employment, or with respect to any matter related to employment.” The amendment also bans discrimination based on caste with respect to public accommodations. Seattle employers should take note of the new amendment and update their policies to include caste as a protected category.

Recent New York legislation will afford a class of sexual abuse victims the opportunity to sue their abusers, where they previously would have been time-barred. On May 24, 2022, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed into law the Adult Survivors Act (“ASA”) (S.66A/A.648A), which creates a one-year lookback window for alleged survivors of sexual assault that occurred when they were over the age of 18 to sue their alleged abusers regardless of when the abuse occurred. The one-year window will begin six months from signing – on November 24, 2022 and will close on November 23, 2023. In 2019, New York extended the statute of limitations to 20 years for adults filing civil lawsuits for  certain enumerated sex offenses. However, that legislation only affected new cases and was not retroactive. In contrast, the ASA permits individuals who were over the age of 18 when any alleged abuse occurred to sue for civil damages regardless of the statute of limitations.

Recent discrimination lawsuits filed by former employees against Facebook and Twitter, serve as a reminder of the importance of having robust sexual harassment and equal employment opportunity policies in place. In Chia Hong v. Facebook, Inc., et al., which was filed on March 16, 2015 in the Superior Court of California in and for San Mateo County, former Facebook employee Chia Hong, who is Taiwanese, alleges that during her employment at Facebook she was discriminated against and harassed on the basis of her gender, race and nationality in violation of the California Fair ...

Corporations incorporated in Delaware, regardless of whether they are domiciled in Delaware, should take note of a new Delaware law that went into effect on January 1, 2015 regarding the destruction of unencrypted personal identifying information concerning employees.  Under the new Safe Destruction of Records Containing Personal Identifying Information law (19 Del. C. § 736), employers are required to take “reasonable steps to destroy or arrange for the destruction” of unencrypted records containing employees’ “personal identifying information.”  Upon passing ...

Companies who utilize cloud vendors to store their data on cloud-based applications should be advised: failing to understand the application’s storage and retrieval capabilities, and failing to preserve such data during litigation could lead to sanctions for both the company and its counsel.  That’s the lesson to be learned from a recent case in the Southern District of Ohio, one of the first of its kind to directly address the intersection between the cloud and its impact on litigation strategy.

In Brown v. Tellermate Holdings, Ltd., Case No. 2:11-cv-1122, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS ...