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Virginia Supreme Court Voids Fairfax County’s New Zoning Ordinance
March 24, 2023 By Mark M. Viani, David S. Houston, Andrew W. Gregg | Real Estate, Land Use & Construction Law
On March 23, 2021, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors (the “Board”) approved a comprehensive update and modernization – the “Zoning Ordinance Modernization Project (“ZMod”) – of the County’s Zoning Ordinance. At that time, the Board was utilizing special electronic meeting rules so that it could conduct public business necessary to continuation of government during the COVID-19 Emergency (these meeting rules were subsequently amended). ZMOD became effective on July 1, 2021 and applied to all zoning approvals or amendments (i.e., rezonings (including subsidiary plans), special exceptions, special permits, variances, modifications and waivers) approved by the Board, the Planning Commission or the Board of Zoning Appeals after that time.
Read More...FTC Votes to Extend Public Comment Period for Proposed Ban on Non-Competes
The Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) recently voted to extend the public comment period for its proposed new rule to ban employers from imposing non-competes on their workers. The public comment period was extended by the FTC for 30 days, until April 19, 2023. Originally the public comment deadline had been March 20, 2023. The proposed rule has prompted more than 10,000 public comments. The FTC’s rule banning employer non-competes, which was announced on January 5, 2023, “is based on a preliminary finding that non-competes constitute an unfair method of competition,” according to the agency, and “therefore violate Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act.” Read more about the FTC’s proposed ban on worker non-competes here.
Read More...Elon Musk’s “What Not to Do” Moments, Part 2: Don’t Forget to Tell Your Employees That They Have Been Terminated!
In Part 1 of Elon Musk’s “what not to do” employment law moments, I wrote about the possible legal risks of a disparate treatment or hostile work environment employment discrimination claim that can arise under the ADA or Title VII when an employer makes disparaging and insensitive comments about an employee’s protected characteristics. In Musk’s case, he recently engaged in some twitter exchanges that ended with him making ugly comments about a disabled Twitter employee.
Read More...Elon Musk’s “What Not to Do” Moment: Don’t Insult Your Disabled Employees on Twitter!
As a management-side employment law attorney, I spend much of my time advising employers on how to comply with the ADA’s disability accommodations requirements, no easy task, often using examples of what they should avoid. Thank you, Elon Musk, for providing a stark example this week with tweets that were publicly dismissive of Haraldur Thorleifsson, a disabled Twitter worker. Musk’s twitter exchange with Thorleifsson was just the latest “Elonian” employment law kerfuffle since taking over at Twitter in 2022, and we’ll discuss the lessons to be learned from it here. Stay tuned for more Musk “what not to do” lessons to follow.
Read More...Equal Pay and Your Workplace: What Employers Need to Know
Equal Pay Day was originated in 1996 by the National Committee on Pay Equity to highlight the gap between men’s and women’s wages. The next Equal Pay Day is March 14, 2023. It symbolizes how far into 2023 women must work to earn what men earned in the previous year. Equal pay and pay equality have been exceptionally hot topics in recent years, particularly in light of the ongoing fight” for gender equality and the #MeToo movement. It is crucial for employers to understand their obligations when it comes to paying their employees fairly and equitably.
Read More...NLRB Changes Rules for Employee Severance Agreements
On February 21, 2023, the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) issued a significant decision in McLaren Macomb, ruling that an employer may not offer employee severance agreements containing broad confidentiality and non-disparagement restrictions because such restrictions amount to an impermissible waiver of the employees’ rights under the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”). McLaren Macomb reverses the Trump-era NLRB precedent set in the Baylor University Medical Center and IGT decisions that had generally allowed employers the use of confidentiality and non-disparagement provisions in severance agreements, provided that the employer had not independently violated employee rights under the NLRA in the decision-making process.
Read More...Best Practices to Reduce Employer Risks in Implementing a Reduction-in-Force
The ever-present question for businesses this year is whether the U.S. economy is already in a recession or is slowly heading toward one? Traditional economic metrics show that the U.S. is not in a recession, for now. The Federal Reserve’s aggressive interest rate hikes over the last 12 months have increased the cost of borrowing and slowed consumer demand. But the U.S. economy has shown signs of resilience, expanding at a solid 2.9% annual rate during the fourth quarter of 2022. Unemployment in the U.S. fell to 3.4% in January 2023, its lowest level in more than 50 years. Yet some economists still believe that the country may slip into a mild recession during the first half of this year.
Read More...Data Security in the Technological World
In today’s digital age, data security is a critical concern for individuals, businesses, and governments alike. With the increasing use of technology, the risk of data breaches, unauthorized data access, and theft of sensitive information has become a major concern for organizations of all sizes. At Bean, Kinney & Korman, we often advise clients on the legal protections and best practices for securing their data and minimizing the risks of data breaches.
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