Seyfarth Synopsis: The number of federal ADA Title III lawsuits continue to surge, fueled by new plaintiffs, new plaintiffs’ lawyers, and website accessibility claims.
Our 2016 lawsuit count is complete, and the results...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: Many years in the making, today the Access Board issued design criteria and other standards for medical diagnostic equipment.
Today, the U.S. Access Board issued new accessibility standards for medical...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: Fighting a web accessibility lawsuit could invite DOJ’s intervention, as did a Florida retailer’s recent Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings.
Fighting a website accessibility lawsuit is very tempting...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: Here’s our take on Sunday’s 60 Minutes episode on “drive-by” abusive ADA Title III lawsuits and the legislative efforts to address them.
60 Minutes aired a segment about ADA Title III “drive-by”...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: Governor Jerry Brown recently signed pay equity legislation to build on SB 358, a gender pay equity bill that he signed just four months ago.
Recent state pay equity initiatives (in Massachusetts, New...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: Employers in California: be aware and prepare for new laws increasing minimum wages and mandating overtime pay for agricultural employees; expanding the California Fair Pay Act to race and ethnicity and to...more
10/4/2016
/ Age Discrimination ,
Agricultural Workers ,
Background Checks ,
California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) ,
Choice-of-Law ,
Criminal Background Checks ,
Domestic Violence ,
DUI ,
Employment Contract ,
Employment Discrimination ,
Entertainment Industry ,
Equal Pay ,
Fair Pay Act ,
FEHA ,
Forum Selection ,
Gender-Based Pay Discrimination ,
Governor Vetoes ,
Hiring & Firing ,
Immigrants ,
Janitorial Services ,
Juror ,
Leave of Absence ,
Lyft ,
Minimum Wage ,
New Legislation ,
OSHA ,
Over-Time ,
Paid Family Leave Law ,
Parental Leave ,
Pay Equity Laws ,
Pay Gap ,
Popular ,
Property Service Workers ,
Restroom Legislation ,
Sexual Harassment ,
Sharing Economy ,
State and Local Government ,
Talent Services Act ,
Transportation Industry ,
Uber ,
Wage and Hour ,
Wage Statements ,
Wage Theft ,
Workplace Safety
The California Legislature adjourned in the wee hours yesterday, Wednesday, August 31st, having reviewed over 100 bills in the single day, bringing the second half of the 2015-2016 Legislative Session to a close. Several...more
9/2/2016
/ Agricultural Workers ,
Background Checks ,
Choice-of-Law ,
Criminal Background Checks ,
Disparate Treatment ,
DLSE ,
Domestic Violence ,
Employment Contract ,
Fair Pay Act ,
Forum Selection ,
Gender-Based Pay Discrimination ,
Governor Brown ,
Minimum Wage ,
New Legislation ,
Paid Family Leave Law ,
Parental Leave ,
Pay Equity Laws ,
Pending Legislation ,
Property Service Workers ,
Race Discrimination ,
State Legislatures ,
Talent Services Act ,
Unfair Immigration-Related Practices ,
Wage Statements
Seyfarth Synopsis: DOJ announced today an extension to October 7, 2016 for the public to submit comments on the SANPRM for state and local government websites.
In May of this year the Department of Justice surprised us...more
In honor of the 26th anniversary of the ADA, we are sharing our mid-year count of ADA Title III lawsuits for 2016 and it’s newsworthy: The number of lawsuits filed in federal court is already at 3,435, up 63% from last...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: New Affordable Care Act and Medicaid Regulations will require covered entities providing health care programs and services have accessible electronic information technology, including accessible...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: Pending new bills that have now passed their house of origin would (i) expand DLSE enforcement authority, (ii) impose advance scheduling requirements on restaurant, grocery, and retail employers, (iii)...more
6/10/2016
/ Criminal Background Checks ,
DLSE ,
Employment Discrimination ,
Holiday Pay ,
Human Trafficking ,
Immigration Records ,
Mandatory Arbitration Clauses ,
Military Service Members ,
Over-Time ,
Parental Leave ,
Pay Equity Laws ,
Pending Legislation ,
Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) ,
Statutory Authority ,
Unfair Labor Practices ,
Wage and Hour ,
Work Schedules
Seyfarth Synopsis: If you would rather not read the 30-page small print Federal Register notice, this summary will provide you with what you need to know about the Justice Department’s most recent official pronouncement on...more
5/23/2016
/ Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) ,
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Disability Discrimination ,
Mobile Apps ,
Public Accommodation ,
Social Media ,
Title II ,
Title III ,
Undue Burden ,
Website Accessibility
This morning, on Global Accessibility Awareness Day, DOJ participated by issuing its Spring 2016 unified agenda, including upcoming regulatory actions on web accessibility and movie captioning.
AA65: State and Local...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: Public entities and private businesses have been waiting for years – since 2010 – for the Department of Justice to issue regulations setting a standard for website accessibility. The DOJ has announced that...more
Responding to inquiries regarding your company’s stance on pay equity can be dicey. Having a strategy on how you address questions is important.
Every time a client asks “what do I say” in response to employee...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: Starting Jan 1, 2017, the amount of benefits paid to employees on paid family leave and state disability will increase substantially, depending on an employee’s income level.
The Legislature and...more
Today five members of the reigning World Cup and Olympic champion U.S. Women’s national soccer team filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) alleging wage discrimination. In the EEOC charge,...more
Last week, a California State Court became the first in the nation to rule that a retailer violated the Americans with Disabilities Act due to a website that is not accessible to individuals with vision-related disabilities. ...more
Website accessibility is an evolving and complicated topic, about which we’ve written many times. Thanks to delayed regulations and the Department of Justice’s changing positions on the issue, businesses have been caught off...more
From high profile cases in Hollywood to the Silicon Valley, to high-profile legislation, gender pay equity has been top of the news in the past year. On January 1, 2016, the California Fair Pay Act – widely publicized as the...more
Our research department has crunched the numbers from the federal court docket and the verdict is that the ADA Title III plaintiff’s bar and their clients are still busy filing lawsuits. Here are the findings...more
In an astonishing move, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it will not issue any regulations for public accommodations websites until fiscal year 2018—eight years after it started the rulemaking process with an...more
Seyfarth’s ADA Title III Specialty Team has reported extensively on the legal uncertainty surrounding the accessibility of businesses’ websites to individuals with disabilities. Today it reports that businesses’ long wait...more
Oh, the irony. Our federal government is filing lawsuits against private businesses and universities for having allegedly inaccessible websites and mobile apps when its own agencies have inaccessible websites. In April...more
We’ve done the review and crunched the numbers: It appears that the surge of ADA Title III lawsuits we saw from 2013 to 2014 is holding strong, though possibly leveling off.
You may recall that there was a 60% increase...more