Expert Compliance Insights & Tips for Businesses

May 28, 2018

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Starbucks Plans Racial Sensitivity Training

A preview of the May 29 curriculum for Starbucks partners | Starbucks Newsroom FROM OUR APRIL 17 POST: After the manager at a Starbucks in Philadelphia had two black men arrested for trespassing when they asked to use the restroom without purchasing anything, the company announced it will close all 8,000 of its corporate locations on May 29 for a racial bias training session. Starbucks emp...

May 24, 2018

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EU Data Protection Regulation Takes Effect

BREAKING NEWS: The GDPR has forced some U.S. companies to shut down their websites, or to convert them to plain text versions. Tronc, which owns the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and other publications, has blocked EU access to its sites, fearing fines for non-compliance with the new regulation. Other sites have redone their privacy policies and/or placed easy opt-out features on their hom...

May 24, 2018

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5th Circuit Court Denies Appeal of Its Decision on the DOL Fiduciary Rule

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which in March ruled the Department of Labor (DOL) had overstepped its authority in issuing its Fiduciary Rule, has now rebuffed a second appeal of that decision filed by the attorneys general of California, New York and Oregon. The three-judge panel hearing the appeal also refused to refer the matter to a hearing by the full court, a process known as en b...

May 23, 2018

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DOL Announces Theme for National Disability Employment Awareness Month

In keeping with the agency’s commitment to ensuring an American workforce for Americans of all abilities, the Department of Labor (DOL) today announced this year’s official National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM) theme: “America’s Workforce: Empowering All.” Labor Secretary Acosta[/caption] “President Trump’s adm...

May 23, 2018

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A Look at Trump's Deregulatory Success Rate

Early in his administration, President Trump issued an executive order mandating that, for every new regulation, two existing regulations had to be eliminated. How is that mandate succeeding? The Competitive Enterprise Institute recently ran some calculations and determined that the actual ratio of deregulation to regulation stands at 5-to-1, not 2-1; in other words, the effort is exceeding ...

May 22, 2018

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Federal Court Rules Banning Salary History Inquiries Unconstitutional

A Philadelphia statute that bans employers from inquiring about applicants' salary histories is unconstitutional, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania has ruled. At the same time, it let stand that portion of the law that forbids employers from basing new hires' salaries on their wage history. Independe...

May 21, 2018

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SCOTUS Sides with Employers in the Use of Forced Arbitration Agreements

Voting along ideological lines, the Supreme Court today ruled 5-4 that employers can enforce signed binding arbitration agreements with their work forces, thus legally barring class action lawsuits. The ruling allows employers to require employees to sign not only binding arbitration agreements that include class action waivers, but also non-disclosure agreements. "The policy may be debat...

May 20, 2018

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HHS Disapproves Ohio's Request to Eliminate ACA Individual Mandate in State

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has rejected a waiver request from the Ohio Department of Insurance (ODI) to eliminate the Affordable Care Act (ACA) individual shared responsibility mandate in the state. As originally written, that provision of the ACA requires all Americans to have health insurance or pay a fine, but as part of the GOP's Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, the ...

May 16, 2018

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IRS Resumes Sending Out ACA Penalty Notices for 2015

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has begun issuing new Affordable Care Act (ACA) penalty notices for calendar year 2015. The notices are officially called Employer Shared Responsibility Payment (ESRP) notices, or what the IRS refers to as Letter 226-J. Under the ACA, Applicable Large Employers (ALEs), generally those companies with 50 or more full-time employees (or their equivalence wi...

May 16, 2018

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CMS Opposes Medicaid Spending Caps

At a health care symposium this week, Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), reaffirmed her agency's commitment to keeping Medicaid available to its recipients without any lifetime limits or caps. Her statement follows her earlier rejection of a request by Kansas to cap Medicaid services in the state. “We’ve indicated we would not approve lifetime...

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