Stay Up To Date

Thirty-one years ago this week, then-president George H.W. Bush passed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) into law. It was a milestone in Federal law with wide ranging implications throughout US society, and, because of its extension of civil rights workplace protections to those with disabilities, special impact on our own practice in employment law.

The revamped Child Tax Credit went into effect this month, with much-needed money being distributed to parents across the country. While this will be a boon for many parents, it also has the potential to create headaches for parents come tax season. Thankfully, the New York Times published helpful suggestions on who should take the credit and who should opt out.

A new investigation on the Huffington Post has spotlighted a troubling trend in medicine. Many doctors with disabilities experience persistent discrimination at the hands of other physicians and medical professionals. In a profession that regularly requires workers, especially early career workers, to put in grueling shifts of 80+ hours a week, doctors with disabilities are perceived as unable to live up to the grind.

Now that New York State has legalized the recreational use of marijuana, there are some changes to the law as it relates to employment, for example, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of legal marijuana use outside of the workplace.

According to a recent story on The Lily, women in medicine, particularly Latinx and Black women, are being unfairly judged as unprofessional because of their choice to wear hoop earrings during work or school hours.

Berke-Weiss Law has some new employees and promotions to share.

Updated guidance from the CDC and Gov. Cuomo on masking employees in offices.

In a new report undertaken by the American Bar Association, several key aspects of the legal profession are causing women attorneys to consider leaving the field. Among the most significant factors are the persistent pay gap based on gender and the hyper-individualistic, competitive nature of the industry, which often pits lawyers against one another, degrading any sense of community workplace culture.

In a speech to a joint session of Congress, President Biden unveiled the “The American Families Plan,” the third part of the president’s push to power a post-pandemic recovery. Along with the $1.9 trillion fiscal stimulus and a proposal for an infrastructure plan that would earmark $2.3 trillion to upgrade roads, bridges, railroads, and the country’s aging power grid, the American Families Plan seeks to fund a wide range of initiatives to address deep-lying problems on the job market that the pandemic exposed, and hopefully help the more than 2 million women who left the workforce in 2020 to return.

The results of a three-year study conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research indicated that paid family leave policies do not have a negative effect for employers.

A recent Association of Corporate Counsel CLE webinar provided an important look at what employers should be thinking about as vaccination efforts here in the US speed up.

In a small step to help parents feel more comfortable about their employment histories, employment-focused social network LinkedIn has added the option for users to describe their employment status as “stay-at-home,” whether it’s mother, father, or parent.