Labor and Employment Insights
Analysis and practical guides on labor and employment.
56 articles, checklists, and guides on labor and employment law, written by the attorneys at MC Law. Every piece is general information, not legal advice—for a specific matter, contact the firm.
Age Discrimination Basics
This guide explains how age discrimination law works in the American workplace, centered on the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) and its companion, the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act (OWBPA). It walks through who is protected (workers 40 and older), which employers are covered (generally those with 20 or more employees), and the two main ways a claim can be proved—intentional disparate treatment and facially neutral disparate impact. It unpacks the demanding "but-for" causation standard the Supreme Court imposed in Gross v. FBL Financial, the special rules for layoffs and severance waivers, the harassment and retaliation protections that ride alongside the core ban, and the unusual ADEA collective-action mechanism borrowed from the Fair Labor Standards Act. It maps the EEOC charge process and its short deadlines, the remedies a worker can win (and the ones the ADEA pointedly withholds), and the many ways state law goes further than the federal floor. Worked examples and a plain-English FAQ make the doctrine usable for workers, managers, and counsel alike.
Administering a 401(k) Plan: Fiduciary Process, Compliance, and Common Failures
Running a retirement plan is an operational discipline, and most plan failures are not investment failures but administrative ones: the wrong definition of compensation used for a match, an employee who should have been enrolled and was not, deferrals deposited late, or a plan document that no longer matches how the plan is actually run. This guide covers the year in the life of a plan. It starts with the documents that govern and the restatement cycle that keeps them current, then eligibility and entry, the compensation definition that causes more corrections than any other single item, and the contribution types and limits. It covers deposit timing and the fiduciary exposure it creates, nondiscrimination testing and the safe harbor designs that avoid it, and the annual reporting and disclosure calendar. Later sections address loans, distributions, and the correction programs that fix errors before they become disqualification events.
Workplace Harassment and Hostile Work Environment Claims
Harassment law is misunderstood in both directions. Employees often believe any unpleasant boss violates the law, and employers often believe a written policy is a defense by itself. Neither is right. This article explains what a hostile work environment claim actually requires, why the severe or pervasive standard is objective and subjective at once, and how the Supreme Court's decisions from Meritor through Oncale built the modern framework. It covers the Faragher-Ellerth affirmative defense in detail, including why it is unavailable when a tangible employment action occurred and why Vance v. Ball State made the definition of supervisor decisive. It then addresses retaliation, which is now the most frequently alleged claim in EEOC charges and which reaches conduct the harassment standard would not, and the expansion of protected characteristics after Bostock and of the adverse action standard after Muldrow. The second half is operational: the anti-harassment policy and complaint procedure that actually earn the defense, how to run an investigation, what to document, the recent federal statutes limiting arbitration and nondisclosure of harassment claims, and the administrative process from charge through right-to-sue letter. It closes with a worked example, checklists, an FAQ, and related reading.
Reasonable Accommodation Under the ADA: The Interactive Process in Practice
The Americans with Disabilities Act asks employers to do something most management training never covers: hold a structured conversation, document it, and make an individualized decision. This article explains how. It starts with who is protected after the 2008 amendments broadened the disability definition to the point that coverage is rarely the real fight, then covers what makes someone qualified and how essential functions are determined, which is where most cases are actually won or lost. It walks the interactive process step by step, including what medical information an employer may request and from whom, and surveys the accommodations that arise most often: schedule changes, telework, leave, equipment, job restructuring, and reassignment. Later sections address undue hardship and direct threat, the special rules for pregnancy and religion, confidentiality obligations, and the documentation that decides litigation, with a worked example, a decision framework, and an FAQ.
Damage Statistics: Labor and Employment Litigation
This guide explains how money is actually awarded in labor and employment lawsuits, from the bread-and-butter of back pay and front pay to the headline-grabbing world of compensatory and punitive damages. It walks through the statutory architecture that controls each category, including the Title VII compensatory and punitive damage caps in 42 U.S.C. 1981a, the Supreme Court's Kolstad standard for punitive damages, and the doubling of liquidated damages under the ADEA and the FLSA. It covers emotional distress proof, attorney's-fee shifting, wage-and-hour collective recoveries, and the steep premium that retaliation claims carry. It also frames damage "statistics" honestly, explaining why publicly available numbers skew low and why the median tells you almost nothing about your own case. The aim is a clear, accurate map of what employment cases are worth and why.
Setting Up Payroll and Employment Compliance for a First Hire
Hiring the first employee converts a business into an employer, and the obligations attach immediately, in full, and in every state where the person works. Most of them are administrative and inexpensive; the expensive ones are the classification decision, the overtime exemption decision, and the failure to register in a state before the first paycheck. This guide walks the sequence a founder or small business owner actually needs: deciding whether the person is an employee at all, the federal and state registrations to complete before the first payday, the forms to collect on day one, the insurance to buy, the pay practices to get right, the documents to issue, the benefits questions that arrive sooner than expected, and the records to keep. It closes with the compliance calendar and what changes at each headcount threshold.
Filing and Litigating a Workers Compensation Claim: A Practical Guide
This guide walks a workers compensation claim from the moment of injury through hearing, appeal, and settlement, from both sides of the table. It explains what to say and to whom in the first forty-eight hours, how the average weekly wage is calculated and why it is worth auditing, how medical control and utilization review actually determine the course of treatment, what happens at a compensation hearing and how it differs from civil court, and how to evaluate a settlement offer against the future medical exposure it extinguishes. It covers the parallel obligations under the FMLA and the ADA that employers routinely miss, the retaliation exposure that dwarfs the claim itself, and the coordination of a third-party case with the compensation lien.
Drafting a Maternity Leave Policy: Five Things You Should Know
A maternity leave policy is one of the most legally layered documents a small employer will ever write, sitting at the crossroads of at least five federal statutes and a thicket of state programs. This guide walks through the five things every employer should understand before drafting one: the legal floor set by the FMLA, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, the 2023 Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, the PUMP Act, and the ADA; why offering more than the minimum is often the smartest business move you can make; how to plan operationally for predictable absences; why the policy is only the beginning of being truly family-friendly; and the legal danger of writing a "mothers only" policy in a world that increasingly expects parental-leave equality. It reflects the law as it stands in mid-2026, including the permanent, enhanced Section 45S paid-leave tax credit and the 2025 court decisions shaping the PWFA. Written for owners, HR professionals, and the lawyers who advise them, it explains every term of art in plain language and flags where the law is unsettled or varies by state. Worked hypotheticals show how the statutes interact in real life, and a closing FAQ tackles the questions employers ask most. This is general legal information, not legal advice.
Drafting a Severance and Release Agreement That Holds Up
A severance agreement has one job, which is to make claims go away, and a surprising number of them fail at it. This guide covers what makes a release enforceable and what makes it worthless. It starts with consideration, which must be something the employee is not already owed, and the knowing and voluntary standard courts apply, then works through the OWBPA requirements for waiving age claims including the group disclosure that most employers get wrong. It covers the claims that cannot be released at all and the ones that require special handling, then the restrictive provisions that have become the most heavily regulated part of the document, including confidentiality and non-disparagement clauses that federal labor law, the Speak Out Act, and several state statutes now constrain. Later sections address the operational provisions, tax treatment including Section 409A, and a clause-by-clause drafting walkthrough.
Workplace Injury Response and Workers Compensation Checklist: A Practical Checklist
A workplace injury sets four clocks running at once: the compensation notice deadline, the OSHA reporting window, the FMLA designation obligation, and the third-party statute of limitations. This checklist runs all four in parallel, with separate tracks for the injured worker and the employer, because their tasks differ at every stage. It covers the first shift, the first week, the benefit calculation audit that is worth thousands of dollars and takes an hour, the medical control and utilization review appeal mechanics that decide whether treatment happens, the return-to-work steps that avoid a retaliation claim, and the settlement evaluation that should never be made without pricing future medical care.
Multistate Employment Compliance Checklist: A Practical Checklist
One employee working in a new state makes a company a multistate employer subject to that state's entire employment regime, its payroll tax registrations, and usually its business income and sales tax nexus. The obligations attach from the first day of work and most of them are invisible until a claim, an audit, or a notice arrives. This checklist runs the state-by-state review: the registrations that must be completed before the first paycheck, the wage and hour differences that catch employers paying only weekly overtime, the leave and notice mandates, the pay transparency and salary history rules that reach remote job postings, the restrictive covenant limits that can void an existing agreement when an employee relocates, and the handbook and posting architecture that keeps all of it maintainable. The organizing point is that the employee's physical work location governs, so the first task is always to establish where people actually are.
Non-Compete Agreements Under Siege: FTC Rulemaking and State Law Developments
The Federal Trade Commission's attempt to ban non-compete agreements nationwide is dead—set aside in Ryan, LLC v. FTC in August 2024 and formally abandoned by the Commission in September 2025—but the regulatory and judicial assault on restrictive covenants has only intensified. This article tells the full story of the FTC rule's rise and fall, including the Section 5/Section 6(g) authority debate and the major-questions problem that doomed it, then maps the fifty-state patchwork of bans, income thresholds, notice requirements, and physician-specific prohibitions that now governs employer practice. It explains the common-law reasonableness test, the blue-pencil problem, and the consideration traps that void agreements employers think are airtight, and it details the post-ban toolkit: garden leave, forfeiture-for-competition clauses, enhanced non-solicitation and confidentiality agreements, and the Defend Trade Secrets Act. Following a fictional sensor manufacturer through a complete redesign of its protection program, the piece shows how sophisticated employers protect trade secrets and customer goodwill without relying on a single fragile restraint. The throughline: the non-compete is under siege, but the interests it protected are not, and the tools for defending them have never been more sophisticated.