Resources

On April 22, 2026, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued a long-anticipated Notice of Proposed Rulemaking addressing joint employer status under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), and the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act (MSPA). The proposed rule seeks to impose a single analytical framework across all three statutes and to bring coherence to an area of law that has become increasingly fragmented.

Artificial intelligence is no longer an experimental feature in federal procurement. It is rapidly becoming essential digital infrastructure used to analyze data, support decision‑making, automate workflows, and power mission‑critical systems across civilian agencies (non-military federal agencies such as the DHS, HHS, and Treasury) to analyze data, support decision-making, and automate workflows.

Section 875 of the Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act creates a new payment-withholding risk for certain incumbent Department of Defense contractors that file GAO bid protests. The provision directs DoD to revise the DFARS to establish procedures allowing contracting officers to withhold up to five percent of payments owed to an incumbent contractor during a protest-related bridge contract or extension. The withheld amount is forfeited only if GAO finally dismisses the protest for lacking any reasonable legal or factual basis.

As part two of our series, it is perhaps a truism that the first answer would always be money. The need for consistent and appropriate resources to execute on mission is a constant drumbeat for nonprofits. What is new is the pace of change, rapid shifts in sources of funds, changes in demand for services, and the constancy of stress and disruption.

Virginia employers are standing at the edge of one of the most consequential shifts in workplace regulation the Commonwealth has seen in decades. During the 2026 General Assembly session, lawmakers enacted two sweeping paid leave measures — the Paid Family and Medical Leave (PFML) insurance program and a new statewide paid sick leave mandate — that together reshape how Virginia businesses must approach employee leave, payroll administration, and risk management moving forward.

Smart glasses, fitness trackers, smartwatches, body cams, and location-based wearables have moved quickly from novelty to mainstream tools—both in consumer life and in the workplace. For employers, these technologies promise productivity, safety, and efficiency gains. They also create a fast-expanding set of privacy, surveillance, and compliance risks that are still poorly understood.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court released its opinion in Hencely v. Fluor– reversing the Fourth Circuit, which relied on the “battlefield” preemption rule to dismiss the individual’s tort claims against Fluor. An independent contractor of Fluor’s subcontractor carried out a suicide attack at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. The plaintiff, Hencely, intervened and stopped the suicide bomber from detonating the bomb in a larger area.

With record spring heat impacting the eastern half of the United States, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has taken significant additional steps to elevate workplace heat hazards to the forefront of its enforcement agenda. On April 10, 2026, the U.S. Department of Labor announced a substantial update to OSHA’s National Emphasis Program (NEP) for Outdoor and Indoor Heat-Related Hazards, which was originally issued in April 2022.

March 2026 materials from the District of Columbia Office of Human Rights (OHR) provide employers with a useful snapshot of the agency’s continuing focus on harassment reporting, workplace investigations, and employee training obligations. Although OHR did not release a formal new harassment rule package in March, the agency did update its notices, fact sheets, and training-related guidance tied to the D.C. Human Rights Act and the Tipped Wage Workers Fairness Amendment Act.

On March 31, 2026, Anthropic, the company behind the Claude artificial intelligence system, accidentally published the entire source code of a product called Claude Code inside a routine software update. A missing line in a configuration file shipped 512,000 lines of proprietary code to the public. No hack. No breach. Human error.

On March 26, 2026, the White House fundamentally reframed how diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs are evaluated in the context of federal contracts. With the issuance of Executive Order 14398, “Addressing DEI Discrimination by Federal Contractors,” DEI is no longer treated primarily as a cultural or human-capital initiative. Instead, for covered contractors and subcontractors, DEI has become an express contractual risk factor, carrying the potential for termination, suspension, debarment, and False Claims Act liability.

In 2012, financier and Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick made a transformative donation to his alma mater, Haverford College, a small liberal arts school in Pennsylvania. Over time, Lutnick’s contributions — reportedly totaling roughly $65 million — helped fund major campus initiatives, including the college’s library, which now bears his name. More than a decade later, the institution finds itself confronting a difficult governance question. Following renewed scrutiny surrounding Lutnick’s past associations with Jeffrey Epstein, Haverford students and community members have begun asking whether the college should reconsider the recognition attached to that gift.

When you restructure into a C corporation for qualified small business stock (QSBS) treatment but miss even one of Section 1202’s technical requirements, the IRS can deny the exclusion entirely—even if the business itself is an ideal candidate. The central risk in S-corp / LLC-to-C-corp planning is that the restructuring steps are easy to do “almost right,” yet still fail the original-issuance, eligibility, or documentation rules that QSBS depends on.

Virginia’s steady march away from employer-friendly noncompete law continues. What began in 2020 as a targeted prohibition on noncompetes for “low-wage” workers has now expanded into a far broader restriction that reaches employees at every level of the organization. With the General Assembly’s passage of Senate Bill 170 (SB 170), Virginia employers must now confront a new reality: a noncompete is unenforceable if an employee is laid off without severance or other disclosed compensation.

Like other states, Virginia’s business landscape is supported by a network of organizations that often sound similar but may serve very different purposes. Chambers of commerce, business improvement districts (BIDs), and business alliances all work to strengthen the local and regional business environment, but they do so through distinct organizational structures, funding mechanisms, and missions. For business owners, developers, and civic leaders, understanding these differences is more than academic: it can shape where you spend your time, how you spend your money, where your dues go, who advocates on behalf of your business, and which organization best aligns with your business objectives. This overview explains how each model operates in Virginia, where it came from, and how to determine which one best fits your needs.

The U.S. Department of Labor recently released a report to Congress highlighting continued growth in employee ownership and outlining a new federal initiative aimed at expanding worker ownership opportunities. Business owners, private companies, and boards evaluating succession or liquidity strategies should take note. Federal agencies are not only tracking the expansion of employee ownership structures but are actively promoting policies intended to increase their adoption. As regulatory attention intensifies, companies considering ESOPs or other ownership models should evaluate both the opportunities and compliance expectations that may follow.

Few questions in U.S. employment law have proven as persistent or as disruptive for businesses—as determining whether a worker is an “employee” or an “independent contractor.” Since the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) was enacted in 1938, employers have struggled with a statute that imposes sweeping wage-and-hour obligations on employers for “employees” while offering little statutory guidance on who qualifies as an “independent contractor.”

Artificial intelligence is now embedded in modern hiring, applicant screening, employee promotion, and performance evaluation systems. From resume scanners to video interview analytics and automated promotion recommendations, algorithmic decision tools are becoming increasingly common. But one message from federal enforcement agencies is becoming unmistakably clear: you are responsible for your AI.

On January 27, 2026, the Virginia Court of Appeals issued a pivotal decision interpreting Virginia’s increasingly restrictive approach to employee noncompetition agreements. In Sentry Force Security, LLC v. Barrera, the court resolved a question that had been looming since Virginia first began limiting noncompetes for lower‑paid workers: how far those restrictions extend to customer and employee non-solicitation agreements.

Few workplace events generate as much consternation for employers as receiving notice that an employee or former employee has filed a charge of discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). While the arrival of a charge can set off alarm bells, it is important for employers to recognize that the charge is not a finding of wrongdoing. Instead, it is the beginning of an administrative process designed to investigate the charge allegations and determine whether federal anti-discrimination laws may have been violated.