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Melanie M. Hamilton

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Melanie Hamilton is an associate in the Labor and Employment Practice Group in the firm's Orange County office.

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On September 29, 2023, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued long-awaited enforcement guidance on workplace harassment. The “Proposed Enforcement Guidance on Harassment in the Workplace,” published in the Federal Register on October 2, 2023, advises employers on handling new workplace realties, including LGBTQ rights, online misconduct, abortion, and a number of different types of harassment. Continue Reading EEOC Issues Long-Awaited Guidance on Harassment in the Modern Workplace

A divided Ninth Circuit panel dealt a blow to California employers recently in holding that a state law prohibiting mandatory arbitration agreements is largely not preempted by the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”).  California employers often have employees enter into such mandatory arbitration agreements as a condition of employment.
Continue Reading Ninth Circuit Upholds in Part California’s Ban on Mandatory Arbitration

In connection with last month’s ruling from a Washington, D.C. district court reinstating the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (“EEOC”) collection of employer pay data previously stayed by the Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”) (Component 2 of the revised EEO-1 form), as previously reported here, the EEOC announced on May 2, 2019 that it has opted to collect Component 2 data for 2017 in addition to 2018. On April 25, 2019, the district court ordered the EEOC to collect a second year of pay data from select employers, giving the EEOC until May 3, 2019 to advise whether it would collect 2017 or 2019 data.
Continue Reading EEOC Announces Decision to Collect 2017 Employee Pay Data, in Addition to 2018 Pay Data, by September 30, 2019

On April 25, 2019, a Washington, D.C. federal judge ruled that all employers with 100 or more employees and federal contractors with 50 or more employees have until September 30, 2019 to submit their 2018 pay data to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”), reflecting how much the employers paid workers of different sexes, races and ethnicities last year. This data is to be submitted as Component 2 of the EEO-1 form, and will supplement the EEOC’s long-running collection of employers’ demographic data.
Continue Reading Employers Must Provide Pay Data to EEOC by September 30

The White House Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”) has indefinitely stayed the deadline for compliance with the new Employer Information Report (EEO-1 Form) for collection of annual pay and hours worked information. As previously reported, the EEO-1 Form was revised in 2016 to require certain employers to submit additional aggregate data on W-2 earnings and hours worked by employees. Specifically, the proposed revision to the EEO-1 Form, published by the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) in February 2016, would require every employer with 100 employees or more to submit demographic information along with the W-2 wages and hours worked for all of its employees grouped in broad EEO-1 job categories, subdivided into twelve bands.
Continue Reading Deadline for Compliance with New EEO-1 Form Stayed Indefinitely

On August 22, 2016, the Ninth Circuit joined the Seventh Circuit in the split amongst U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal on the issue of enforceability of employment arbitration agreements precluding class actions.

The Ninth Circuit, similar to the Seventh Circuit in Lewis v. Epic Sys. Corp., held in 2-1 decision that an employer violates the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) when it requires employees to sign an agreement precluding them from pursuing, in any forum, wage-and-hour claims against the employer on a collective basis.  To the contrary, the Fifth Circuit has upheld such arbitration agreements in D.R. Horton, Inc. v. NLRB and Murphy Oil USA, Inc. v. NLRB, finding that class action waivers do not violate the NLRA.Continue Reading Ninth Circuit Invalidates Arbitration Agreement