• HR Specialist: Employment Law
  • The HR Weekly

HR Management

EEOC may stop collecting demographic information

05/25/2026
Since 1966, employers with 100+ workers have filed annual EEO-1 demographic reports. On May 14, the EEOC sent the White House a proposed rule to rescind EEO-1 reporting plus ADA, GINA and PWFA requirements. For now, 2025 EEO-1 reporting is still due—employers should gather data and watch for announcements.

Immigration enforcement: Is your workplace prepared?

05/25/2026
At LEAP 2026, immigration attorney Chris Thomas warned that enforcement activity will increase, not ease. Employers should prepare a response plan, train managers on the “Three C’s”—be courteous, close-mouthed and involve counsel—and understand the difference between administrative and judicial warrants before granting agents access.

Billable hours and pumping breaks: What can employers do?

05/25/2026
The PUMP Act grants new mothers unlimited milk-expression breaks during their infant’s first year—but frequent breaks may mean employees miss billable-hour minimums. The DOL says employers can’t hold pump time against productivity goals or force makeup hours. The safer approach: bill pumping time to overhead, not the employee.

3 cities pass nontraditional family workplace discrimination protections

05/25/2026
Oakland, Portland and Olympia have passed laws expanding antidiscrimination protections to nontraditional family structures—multigenerational households, multiple-family households and even polyamorous families. Employers operating in any of these West Coast cities should note the new coverage, which often spreads from cities to broader statewide protections within a few years.

Employment law risks HR can’t ignore this summer

05/25/2026
The summer of 2026 is shaping up to be challenging for HR. Speakers at LEAP 2026 outlined a landscape where the biggest risks no longer live in traditional compliance, but in everyday decisions—off-duty conduct, religious accommodation, layoffs, new state laws and workplace speech—where risk is increasingly situational and unpredictable.

How to prepare managers for depositions

05/18/2026
Most HR teams don’t think about depositions until a lawsuit is already underway. Hopefully, you won’t be the target of a lawsuit, but if you are, Charles High, retired partner at Kemp Smith, and Paul Prather, partner at Littler, offer tips on how to prepare your managers.

Medical marijuana reclassified as Schedule III drug by DOJ

05/18/2026
The order does not make the use of recreational marijuana legal but eases the way for further testing and allowing holders of state-sponsored medical marijuana cards to use marijuana products authorized for use by their states without fear of federal criminal prosecution.

What’s keeping HR up at night—and how to finally get some sleep

05/18/2026
From shifting federal policies and rising discrimination claims to religious accommodation challenges and the complexities of remote work, today’s HR professionals are being asked to do more, while the rules continue to change.

Congress may reauthorize expired workforce development law

05/11/2026
The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act is designed to help job seekers access employment, education, training and support services to succeed in the labor market and to match employers with the skilled workers they need to compete in the global economy.

From claims to calm: What HR gets wrong about lawsuits

05/11/2026
Lawsuits rarely start with something dramatic. They start small. And the outcome is rarely as surprising as it feels.