Workforce Bulletin

Eligible Illinois employees are now entitled to up to 40 hours of paid leave annually to serve on military funeral honors detail thanks to an amendment (the “Amendment”) to Illinois’s Military Leave Act that Governor Pritzker signed on August 1, 2025. The new law benefits qualified employees of Illinois employers with more than 50 employees and took immediate effect to allow paid leave for those qualified to participate in a military funeral honor guard.

The Amendment limits the benefit to those who are qualified to participate in a “Funeral Honors Detail,” an honor guard detail provided for the funeral of any veteran in compliance with federal regulations. A Funeral Honors Detail performs specified services at a veteran’s funeral ceremony, such as folding the United States flag and presenting it to the veteran’s family, or playing “Taps” at a veteran’s funeral.

The Amendment applies to Illinois employers with at least 51 employees, but it is silent as to whether this count includes employees beyond the state’s borders. Covered employers must provide at least eight hours of paid military funeral honors detail leave (“Funeral Honors Detail Leave”) per month, up to 40 hours per calendar year, to qualified employees.

What You Need to Know

• The Trump Administration has shifted away from Biden-era rules related to certain investments, like alternative asset investments, ESG, and cryptocurrency in 401(k) plans.
• Plan fiduciaries still need to proceed with caution.

As featured in #WorkforceWednesday®: This week, we’re focusing on the employer implications of new guidance from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on unlawful diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices.

New guidance from Attorney General Bondi urges federal funding recipients to reassess DEI programs to ensure compliance with anti-discrimination laws. This memo highlights actions deemed “unlawful DEI,” including race-based scholarships, preferential hiring, and misapplied “neutral” criteria.

Epstein Becker Green’s Lauri Rasnick unpacks these developments.

The discussion of Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) in the workplace typically focuses on whether the AI tool and model has a discriminatory impact. This means examining whether the AI output creates an unlawful disparate impact against individuals belonging to a protected category.

However, that discussion rarely centers on the types of training data used, and whether the training data itself could have a harmful effect on the workers tasked with training the AI model.

As featured in #WorkforceWednesday®: This week, we examine a recent pivotal ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that could significantly influence how employers handle Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) collective actions.

In Harrington v. Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc., the Ninth Circuit ruled that, in FLSA collective actions, federal courts must evaluate personal jurisdiction before allowing notices to out-of-state employees in nationwide claims—a move that strengthens employers’ ability to challenge these cases.

Epstein Becker Green attorney Courtney McFate describes the Harrington ruling and shares insights to help employers adapt and minimize costly lawsuits.

As featured in #WorkforceWednesday®: This week, we look at the potential restoration of a quorum at the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB” or “Board”), the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL’s) deregulatory initiatives, and lessons from a high-profile workplace incident at a Coldplay concert.

Meet Haley Morrison, a Portland-based litigator at Epstein Becker Green with a thriving California practice.

In this one-on-one interview, Haley sits down with fellow Epstein Becker Green attorney George Whipple and shares how her client-first approach—prioritizing resolution over courtroom battles—has saved businesses time, money, and relationships.

Ever since Colorado enacted the nation’s first law requiring employers to disclose salary compensation and employee benefits in job postings, a wave of states and multiple municipalities have followed suit.

While each jurisdiction generally requires employers to provide an estimated pay range on job postings or advertisements, the laws often vary with respect to their coverage and the scope of the information employers must disclose. This blog summarizes the latest pay transparency requirements that have already taken effect in 2025 or will take effect later this year.

On July 23, 2025, the president signed three AI-related Executive Orders (“E.O.s”) to accompany the recently released White House’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Plan (“AI Action Plan”). These E.O.s seek to add clarity to, and drive forward, federal policy in the AI space.

While they all relate to AI, the E.O.s otherwise vary considerably in subject matter: “Accelerating Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure”; “Promoting the Export of the American AI Technology Stack”; and “Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government.”

As we noted in our July 24 blog, the White House is clearly determined to outpace other countries so that the U.S. benefits from any gains provided by AI through building AI infrastructure and bolstering AI-related exports. The Center for Data Innovation, from its perspective, stated in a press release that the actions pursued by the executive orders will advance U.S. goals of global AI dominance and enable the U.S. to better compete with China.

New York State enacted the first state law requiring all employers to provide leave for reasons related to COVID-19 in March 2020.

The extra paid sick days and “COVID-19  quarantine benefits,” however, are scheduled to end on July 31, 2025, when New York becomes the last U.S. jurisdiction to roll back COVID-era leave entitlements.

As one of the first states heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, New York pioneered a paid benefit to employees impacted by the virus. The budget bill (which was also responsible for enacting the statewide Paid Sick Leave law) passed in the early weeks of the 2020 lockdown, requiring New York employers to provide protected, paid sick leave to employees who are under a mandatory quarantine or isolation order due to COVID-19 and cannot work remotely, separate and in addition to other paid sick and safe leave benefits required under New York Law. The amount of mandated paid leave varied based on the size of the employer, requiring up to 14 days of paid leave from the largest employers.