Labor & Employment Law Update

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Renewals Resume
As of January 13, 2018, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced that, due to pending litigation and a federal court order, it is going to resume accepting and processing renewals for DACA recipients including Employment Authorization Documents granting work status.  This only applies to DACA recipients who had previously been granted deferred action status and USCIS is NOT accepting first time DACA applications.

USCIS has indicated the following:

1. If the person previously ...

Over the past few years, cities, counties and local municipalities have been enacting laws and ordinances increasing the minimum wage and requiring paid sick leave for employees. While there have been growing pains with how these apply to normal hourly non-exempt employees and tipped servers, do these apply to motor carriers and employees who are truck drivers?  This can be the most frustrating legal response of all, “it depends.”

In most cases, minimum wage laws enacted by states follow the Fair Labor Standard Act (“FLSA”) and provide exemptions for motor carriers.  Indeed ...

On December 22, 2017, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was signed into law as P.L. 115-97.  Hidden about halfway into the law, in Section 13307, is an amendment to the tax code on itemized deductions for individuals and corporations. Generally, current law permits employers to treat the costs of settlement payments and related attorney’s fees as a tax deductible business expense. However, the recent amendment eliminates the deduction in certain situations, stating:

No deduction shall be allowed under this chapter for — (1) any settlement or payment related to sexual harassment or ...