Does your organization provide substance use treatment services or receive information from a treatment program that identifies an individual as having a substance use disorder? If so, your organization may be subject to 42 C.F.R. Part 2 and may have obligations to amend contractual provisions to maintain compliance.
Maintaining Compliance with Substance Use Disorder Information /
| 03.18.2019 |
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| 03.18.2019 |
On March 14, 2019, the U.S. Department of Labor/Wage and Hour Division continued its practice under the Trump Administration of issuing Opinion letters by releasing three new ones – its first Opinion letters of 2019. One of the newly-released Opinion letters relates to the Family and Medical Leave Act (“FMLA”), and two of them involve the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”). |
| 03.12.2019 |
Lawyers, like others in business, must comply with the data security and data breach notification laws of the 50 states that are applicable to their practices. But, according to the American Bar Association, their obligations do not end there. On October 17, 2018, the ABA issued Ethics Opinion 483 titled Lawyers’ Ethical Obligations After an Electronic Data Breach or Cyberattack. |
| 03.08.2019 |
On March 7, 2019, the Department of Labor (“DOL”) published a long-awaited proposal for revising the regulations relating to the white-collar exemptions from overtime and minimum wage under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”). In the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“NPRM”), DOL has proposed increasing the threshold salary amount for certain white-collar exemptions from its current $455 per week (or $23,660 per year) to $679 per week, or ($35,308 per year). In 2015, DOL had proposed increasing this threshold to over $47,000 per year ($913 per week). As we reported here, that proposal was blocked by a federal court in Texas in late 2016.
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| 03.05.2019 |
Mitigation bank credits may become more readily available to builders, developers and other permittees following new guidance issued in late February. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued Regulatory Guidance Letter 19-01, developed in collaboration with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, on February 22, 2019. (Available here) |
| 03.04.2019 |
Consumer-facing privacy notices carry legal consequences and a carefully drafted privacy notice may function to save a company in data privacy litigation or regulatory actions. Accordingly, several reasons exist for companies to frequently revisit privacy notices. |
| 02.27.2019 |
On February 25, 2019, the United States Supreme Court vacated a decision previously decided by the full Ninth Circuit because it was filed after Judge Stephen Reinhardt, who authored the opinion, died. In the case, Rizo v. Yovino, the Ninth Circuit held that employers could not rely upon an employee’s prior salary as a “factor other than sex” in defending against a claim under the Equal Pay Act. We discussed the Ninth Circuit’s decision here. Notably, the Ninth Circuit was the only federal circuit court to decide that employers could never rely upon salary history as a factor other than sex. All eleven judges (including Judge Reinhart) in the Ninth Circuit had agreed that prior law should be overturned, and that the employer’s utilization of salary history alone to set salaries was impermissible. |
| 02.26.2019 |
The recent Yahoo! settlement marks a substantial step in data breach shareholder derivative litigation that increases the risk for officers and directors of companies that have a data breach. On January 9, 2019, Yahoo! Agreed to pay a total of $29 million to its shareholders to settle a lawsuit against several former directors and officers alleging that their poor management of the company led to the data breaches which substantially impacted the company’s value. |
| 02.20.2019 |
The Supreme Court of Illinois recently held that every Illinois citizen has a private right of action to enforce violations of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (“BIPA”) without alleging or showing actual harm. Businesses collecting, using and storing the biometric data of Illinois consumers take notice: there are over 12 million regulators with the power to enforce this law against you. But don’t worry too much, the state’s high court promises that “Compliance should not be difficult.” |
| 02.14.2019 |
Texas law requires businesses to implement and maintain reasonable cybersecurity, which they should do so with a written program for managing cyber risk and protecting sensitive customer information. This warning came from the state’s Attorney General following his office’s $1.5 Million settlement with Neiman Marcus over its 2013 data breach. |