December 2024 Newsletter

Each month, Optimum Employer Solutions gathers the latest updates and changes to federal and state employment law. Read on to learn how these changes may affect you, and how Optimum can help you ensure compliance.

Federal/State Updates
Judge Throws Out DOL Rule Raising Salary Threshold
A federal court recently struck down the U.S. Department of Labor’s rule that would have increased the salary threshold for white-collar exemptions to $58,656 and for highly compensated employees to $151,164 on January 1, 2025.

This means the new thresholds won’t go into effect on January 1, and the thresholds that existed before the new rule ($35,568 for white-collar employees and $107,432 for highly compensated employees) are in effect.

Financial Reporting
The US Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued a new regulation in 2022 requiring companies to file a report on information about their beneficial ownership. Beneficial Owner Information (BOI) reporting is due on January 1, 2025, for companies created prior to January 1, 2024.

California
Captive Audience
Employers will be prohibited from threatening or penalizing an employee who doesn’t attend a meeting or listen to communication from the employer about their views on political or religious matters.

Child Labor
Beginning January 1, 2025, employers that have voluntarily submitted to a social compliance audit to determine if child labor is involved in their operations must post a link on their website to a report about their compliance with child labor laws.

Crime Victim Leave
A new California law will expand the state’s paid sick leave law by (a) allowing leave if an employee’s family member is a crime victim, (b) extending the types of crimes covered, and (c) adding additional reasons for which employees can take leave if the employee or their family member is a crime victim.

Employers who must provide crime victim leave (those with 25 or more employees) can now place limits on the amount of unpaid leave for crime victims and their families. The law also requires employers to notify employees of these rights at the time of hire, annually, and upon request. The state’s Civil Rights Department has not yet released this notice, which they will do by July 1, 2025.

Exempt/Non-Exempt
California’s salary threshold for exempt employees under state law will increase to $68,640 per year, $5,720 per month, or $1,320 per week.

Job Postings – Driver’s License
Employers will no longer be allowed to say in a job posting or application that a driver’s license is required for employment unless (a) the employer reasonably expects driving to be a job function and (b) the employer reasonably believes an alternative form of transportation wouldn’t be comparable in travel time or cost to the employer.

Paid Family and Medical Leave Benefits
Starting next year, employers can no longer require employees to use up to two weeks of vacation time before they start receiving paid family and medical leave insurance benefits through the state- run program.

Employees’ wage replacement benefits will increase from between 60% and 70% to between 70% and 90%, with employee contribution rates to increase from 1.1% to 1.2%.

Whistleblower Protection
Employers who post a newly-developed whistleblower poster will be deemed in compliance with the whistleblower statute’s notice requirements. The law doesn’t require employers to use the new poster as long as they still post a notice of employee rights, but the new poster is guaranteed to be compliant. The Labor Commissioner has not published the new poster.

Colorado
Wage & House Poster
Colorado recently released the 2025 Colorado Overtime and Minimum Pay Standards (COMPS) Order, effective January 1.

Connecticut
Pay Stubs

With each wage payment, employers will be required to include: (a) the number of paid sick leave hours that the employee has accrued or that the employer provided the employee, and (b) the number of paid sick leave hours the employee has used during the calendar year. Employers will need to keep these records for three years.

Sick Leave
Connecticut’s paid sick leave law is expanding. Currently, employers are subject to the law if they have 50 or more employees in the state. On January 1, 2025, that number will drop to 25 employees. It will reduce again to 11 employees in 2026, and once more to one employee in 2027. Employers must put up a new paid sick leave poster reflecting the requirements of the state’s updated sick leave law when it becomes effective.

Delaware
Paid Family & Medical Leave Benefits
Delaware’s Healthy Delaware Families Act creates a statewide paid family and medical leave insurance program. Employers will need to begin withholding contributions beginning January 1, 2025. Leave and benefits will be available to employees beginning January 1, 2026.

The state has also published the notice (which includes a workplace poster) that employees can use to comply with the law.

Illinois
Captive Audience
Starting January 1, employers may no longer require employees to attend employer-sponsored meetings whose primary purpose is to communicate the employer’s opinion on religious or political matters. Employers also may not punish employees for refusing to attend those meetings.

Child Labor
Illinois’ Child Labor Law of 2024 changes the hours minors can work, sets out new occupations in which minors are prohibited from working, imposes new notice and posting requirements, and sets new discrimination and retaliation prohibitions.

Employee Verification
A new Illinois law discourages Illinois employers from using E-Verify unless federal law requires the employer to use it. Employers also can’t use work authorization verification or reverification requirements greater than those that federal law requires.

Paid Leave (Chicago)
Chicago’s paid leave law provides employees with paid sick leave and paid leave for any reason. Employers currently aren’t required to pay out accrued and unused paid sick leave at the time of separation, and this won’t change on January 1.

Whether the employer has to pay out an employee’s available paid leave for any reason depends on the employer’s size. Employers with 50 or fewer employees eligible for this leave don’t have to pay out paid leave upon separation.

Pay Stubs
Each pay period, employers have to give employees a pay stub showing their hours worked, pay rate, overtime pay and overtime hours worked, gross wages earned, deductions, and total year-to-date wages and deductions. Employers can provide pay stubs electronically and must keep pay stub records for at least 3 years.

Pay Transparency
Employers with at least 15 employees need to begin including in their job postings the pay scale and benefits information for the position, starting January 1. The law applies to jobs performed at least partly in the state as well as jobs where the employee will report to a supervisor or work site in Illinois.

Protected Characteristics
Illinois added two new categories of protected characteristics to its anti-discrimination law. First, employers can’t discriminate against employees for actual or perceived decisions about reproductive health. Second, employers can’t discriminate against employees for their “family responsibilities,” which means an employee’s actual or perceived care of a family member in the past, present, or future.

Whistleblower Protections
Illinois updated its whistleblower protections this year. Effective January 1, 2025, employers may not retaliate against employees for disclosing or threatening to disclose information about a policy or practice that they believe, in good faith, violates the law or poses a real danger to employees or others.

Kentucky
Drug Testing
Medical marijuana will be legal in Kentucky starting next year, although the law doesn’t require employers to accommodate the use or presence of medical marijuana in the workplace. Employers will be free to have a drug testing policy, maintain a drug-free workplace, or have a zero-tolerance drug policy.

Maine
Exempt/Non-Exempt
Maine’s salary threshold for exempt employees under state law will increase to $43,950 per year or $845.20 per week.

Paid Family & Medical Leave
Contributions to Maine’s paid family and medical leave insurance program begin on January 1, 2025, although employees won’t be able to access paid benefits until May 1, 2026.

Massachusetts
Paid Family & Medical Leave Benefits
Employees’ maximum weekly benefit through the state’s paid family and medical leave insurance program will increase to $1,760.64.

Poster/Notices
The state has published its 2025 required paid family and medical leave poster, as well as the 2025 updated individual notice for employers with 25 or more Massachusetts employees and for employers with less than 25 Massachusetts employees.

Drug Testing
The state’s Drug and Alcohol Testing in the Workplace Act now allows “oral fluid testing” for drug, alcohol, and cannabis testing.

Minnesota
Drug Testing
The state’s Drug and Alcohol Testing in the Workplace Act now allows “oral fluid testing” for drug, alcohol, and cannabis testing.

Employee Notice (St. Paul)
Employers with 1 or more employees in St. Paul must provide new St. Paul employees with a notice of their rights under the city’s wage theft law upon hire and annually thereafter, starting January 1, 2025. This notice must contain all the information required by Minn. Stat. § 181.032(d), the employee’s start date, notice of the city’s minimum wage, a statement that sharing tips is voluntary, and any overtime policy applicable to the employee’s position.

Pay Transparency
Employers with 30 or more employees in Minnesota must include the starting salary range and a general description of all of the benefits and other compensation an employee can expect in all job postings.

Pay Stubs (St. Paul)
Employers must provide their St. Paul employees with pay stubs each pay period. The pay stubs may be provided electronically but must be provided physically if requested by the employee at least 24 hours in advance.

Wage Theft Notice (St. Paul)
Effective January 1, St. Paul employers will need to begin posting the city’s wage theft flyer in a place where employees will see it.

Missouri
Criminal History
Starting in January, a person with an expunged arrest can answer “no” if the employer asks whether the person has ever been arrested or charged with a crime, as long as there’s no public record of a crime after the expungement.

New Hampshire
Weapons in the Workplace
Beginning January 1, certain employers can’t ask employees whether they have firearms or ammunition in their vehicles, nor may they search vehicles for them. Employers that receive public funds of any kind can’t prohibit employees from keeping lawfully owned firearms or ammunition out of view in locked vehicles in an employer parking lot.

Sick Leave
Employers must begin providing employees with an additional 20 hours of paid sick leave for prenatal care.

New York
Paid Prenatal Leave Law
This is an amendment to Labor Law Section 196-b that provides employees with 20 hours of paid leave time per year to be used for prenatal healthcare service appointments during their pregnancy or related to their pregnancy. This new law takes effect on January 1, 2025.

Oregon
Employee Notice
Warehouse distribution center employers with 100 or more employees at a single warehouse distribution center or 1,000 or more employees at 1 or more warehouse distribution centers in Oregon must provide written notice to employees of any quota they have.

Paid Family & Medical Leave
Leave for going through the legal process to foster or adopt a child will now be covered under Oregon’s paid family and medical leave insurance program (“Paid Leave Oregon”) and is no longer an allowable reason for leave under Oregon’s unpaid family and medical leave law (“Oregon Family Leave Act”).

Pennsylvania
Non-Compete
Non-compete agreements will be unenforceable against medical doctors, doctors of osteopathy, certified registered nurse anesthetists, certified registered nurse practitioners, and physician assistants unless the agreement lasts no longer than 1 year and the worker was not terminated (meaning they’re only enforceable if the employee left voluntarily). The definition of a non-compete will also be updated.

Rhode Island
Employee Notice
In the new year, employers with over 50 full-time employees will need to display a veterans’ benefits poster. The poster is not yet available.

Temporary Caregiver Leave
Employees will be allowed to take 7 weeks (up from 6) of leave under the state’s temporary caregiver insurance program.

Washington
Exempt/Non-Exempt
Washington’s salary threshold for exempt employees under state law will increase to $69,305.60 per year for employers with 1-50 employees and to $77,968.80 per year for all other employers.

Overtime
Washington law already prohibits healthcare facilities from requiring certain employees to work overtime. Beginning January 1, 2025, the state is changing the definition of what employees are covered by that law. Employees covered by the new law are healthcare facility workers who are involved in direct patient care or clinical services and receive an hourly wage or are covered by a collective bargaining agreement.

Sick Leave
Starting next year, employees can take leave after a declared emergency under the state’s paid sick leave law. The law’s definition of “family member” will also be updated to: (a) include a child’s spouse, (b) clarify that “spouse” includes a husband, wife, or state-registered domestic partner, and (c) include someone who regularly lives in the employee’s home or whose relationship creates an expectation that the employee will care for that person.

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