Regulatory Roundup April 2022

Federal and state governments showered the month of April with new and updated legislation. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) opened a submission portal for all 2021 EEO-1 reports, Massachusetts and Virginia saw new court rulings and legislative changes to their respective wage acts, and Florida passed the Individual Freedom act regarding workplace trainings. Check out each of these developments below in this month’s Regulatory Roundup.

EEOC Opens 2021 Reporting Window

As of April 12, 2022, the EEOC began collecting EEO-1 Component 1 data reports for the 2021 calendar year and announced it will not collect Component 2 data reports. Private sector employers with 100 or more employees and federal contractors with 50 or more employees or $50,000 or more in federal contracts are required to file these reports annually. The reports cover multiple demographic points on the employer’s workforce, including race, ethnicity, sex, and job category. Employers have until May 17, 2022 to submit the required data and can visit the EEOC’s data homepage for more information and resources.

Massachusetts Court Decides Wage Case

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) recently ruled on the case of Reuter v. City of Methuen, siding with the plaintiff’s claim that final wages were not paid in the timely manner required by the state’s wage act. According to the act, employees discharged from their job shall be paid their full due wages on the day of the discharge, which includes any holiday or vacation payments due to the employee under a written or oral contract. The court further recommended that any employers who don’t have time to process a final paycheck before discharging an employee can instead place the employee on suspension while calculating the employee’s wages.

Virginia Updates Overtime Wage Legislation

The state of Virginia also saw updates to wage legislation as the Governor signed Senate Bill 631 into law, thereby repealing sections of the Virginia Overtime Wage Act (VOWA) that were enacted in 2021. Effective July 1, 2022, overtime calculations will instead use provisions under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). S.B. 631 also defined “overtime” for air carrier employees as one and a half times the regular rate of pay for any hours worked in excess of 40 hours. An employee’s regular rate was also defined as said employee’s hourly rate of pay plus any non-overtime wages for the workweek divided by the number of hours the employee worked that week. Failure to pay employees these amounts will result in owed wages, liquidated damages, and reasonable attorney fees and costs.

Florida Passes Individual Freedom Act

The Governor of Florida expanded state statute 760.10 by signing House Bill 7, also known as the Individual Freedom act, into law as a means of limiting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) training in the workplace. Effective July 1, 2022, any employers with 15 or more employees may not subject any employees to a diversity training that causes the employee to believe certain identified concepts or make the employee uncomfortable as a result of discussing such concepts. However, discussion of such concepts is not prohibited as part of an employee’s training if the training is given in an objective manner and without endorsement.

Resource Library Links

Get more details on the compliance updates from April here:

• 2021 EEO-1 Filing Dates Announced
• Massachusetts Wage Act Court Ruling
• Virginia Overtime Wage Act Changes
• Florida’s Individual Freedom Act

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