Compliance Round Up – EEO-1 Rescission Proposed, Louisiana Frontline Protections, and the NLRB Successor Bar Rejected (August 2026)

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Written By
Jennifer Kiesewetter
Published On: August 3, 2026

Jenny Kiesewetter is a practicing ERISA and employee benefits attorney who partners with HR teams on a wide range of workplace compliance matters — from benefit-plan obligations to day-to-day HR policies and regulatory requirements. Her guidance helps employers spot risks early, navigate regulatory change, and make informed decisions that support both employees and the organization.

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Federal agencies spent July redrawing the lines on pay and workplace rules, while the states and the courts kept adding obligations of their own. This issue covers four developments across wage-and-hour, restrictive covenants, and harassment, and each one lands on HR.

Federal News

Key Dates: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) voted July 21, 2026, and published the proposed rule in the Federal Register on July 23. Comments close August 24, 2026. A public hearing is set for August 11 at 10 a.m. Eastern.

What’s Changing

The Commission voted 2-1 to propose rescinding the EEO-1 report, which private employers with 100 or more employees and federal contractors with 50 or more employees have filed since 1966, along with the EEO-2 through EEO-6 reports and the related recordkeeping and record-preservation requirements.

Section 709(c) of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 lets the Commission require reports that are reasonable, necessary, or appropriate to enforce the statute. Chair Andrea Lucas offered three reasons the EEO reports fail that test: collecting race and sex data may push employers toward unlawful decisions based on perceived imbalances, or toward false confidence where the numbers look clean; the collection raises constitutional concerns; and the burden on employers and the agency outweighs the benefit. Commissioner Kalpana Kotagal dissented, calling the data foundational to systemic enforcement after roughly sixty years of collection.

Nothing changes yet. The proposal must clear the full rulemaking process. The near-term picture is murkier than usual because the filing portal never opened in May as expected, so it is unclear whether a final rule would cancel the 2025 cycle or leave that one intact and take effect with the 2026 cycle filed in 2027.

What This Means for HR:

  • Continue preparing EEO-1 data. The requirement stands until a final rule takes effect, and the fate of the 2025 cycle is unresolved.
  • Keep collecting workforce demographic data. California, Illinois, and Massachusetts still require it, and Colorado’s HB 26-1207 requires employers with 100 or more workers in the state to file EEO-1 data with the Secretary of State starting July 1, 2027, expressly whether or not the federal requirement survives.
  • Expect a short filing window if a cycle opens. The last one ran five weeks, from May 20 to June 24, 2025, and closed without extensions.

Key dates: The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) released its 2026 agency rule list in early July 2026.

What’s changing

The DOL listed eight Wage and Hour Division rules. Four sit at the proposed rule stage and cover tips, young workers, independent contractor classification, and joint employer status. The other four are at final rule stage and are housekeeping by comparison: rescinding the federal contractor minimum wage regulations and the coordinated enforcement regulations, revisiting the FLSA’s application to domestic service, and addressing policy statements not directly tied to regulations.

Two of the four proposals are new. One would amend the tip regulations, possibly to align them with the Internal Revenue Service’s No Tax on Tips rules finalized earlier this year; DOL expects to issue it in August. The other would revisit permissible hours for fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds and is expected in September.

The remaining two run further along than the agenda label suggests. The Department published its independent contractor proposal on February 27 and closed comments April 28. It would rescind the 2024 rule and replace it with a modified version of the 2021 rule. Its joint employer proposal followed on April 23, with comments closing June 22, and would restore 2021-style guidance. Both would also extend the relevant analysis to the FMLA and the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act.

What this means for HR

  • Watch for the tip proposal in August and the young-worker proposal in September, and comment if either reaches your workforce.
  • Reassess contractor classifications now, ahead of a final rule.
  • Apply the stricter state standard. More protective state wage-and-hour laws survive whatever the DOL finalizes.

Trending State News

Key dates: Act No. 342 (House Bill 1238) took effect August 1, 2026.

What’s changing

The Louisiana Behind the Counter Protection Act raises criminal penalties for violence against employees who work at a checkout station, service counter, drive-through window, customer service desk, or similar point of transaction. The Act defines workplace violence as any act or credible threat of violence, including assault, battery, robbery, intimidation, verbal abuse, threats with a weapon, and any conduct placing a covered employee in reasonable fear of physical harm or directed at a covered employee on the job.

Simple battery against a covered employee now carries a fine of up to $2,000, imprisonment with or without hard labor for up to two years, or both, against a baseline of $1,000 and six months. Simple assault carries up to $1,000, up to six months, or both, against a baseline of $200 and ninety days.

The Act imposes no obligations on employers. Some early coverage reported mandatory safety plans, training, and signage; none of that is in the enrolled text. A covered establishment may post a warning sign, which Louisiana Works must prescribe and furnish, but is not required to.

One drafting wrinkle matters for scope. The Act’s penalties and signage provision all turn on the term “regulated establishment,” which the statute uses repeatedly but never defines. The bill title describes retail and food service establishments, but a title is not operative law, so the outer boundary of coverage is unsettled.

What this means for HR

  • Audit which employees work at points of transaction. Where coverage is arguable, assume it applies until the ambiguity resolves.
  • Request the warning sign from Louisiana Works and decide whether posting it fits your locations.
  • Fold the Act’s workplace violence definition into existing prevention policies and training.

Around the Courts

Decided: July 21, 2026. Hospital Menonita de Guayama, Inc. v. NLRB, Nos. 22-1163 and 22-1180 (D.C. Cir.).

What’s changing

A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) lacked statutory authority for its successor bar. Adopted in UGL-UNICCO in 2011, the doctrine gave an incumbent union an irrebuttable presumption of majority support for up to a year after a new employer acquired a unionized business and retained a majority of the existing workforce. The case returned to the court after the Supreme Court vacated the prior judgment and remanded in light of Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo.

Reviewing the question without deference, the court found the successor bar conflicts with Sections 7 and 9 of the National Labor Relations Act, which protect employee choice and condition exclusive representation on actual majority support. Congress provided one time bar, the twelve-month period following a valid election, and the panel read that as foreclosing others.

The decision does not disturb ordinary successorship obligations under NLRB v. Burns International Security Services, which the opinion does not address. It binds only the D.C. Circuit, and it creates a conflict with the First Circuit, which upheld the successor bar in NLRB v. Lily Transportation Corp. in 2017 and remains the only other circuit to have ruled. Employers may petition for review of a Board order in the D.C. Circuit under Section 10(f).

What this means for HR

  • Evaluate with counsel whether evidence of eroding union support could support an earlier challenge. Withdrawing recognition on a bad read is itself an unfair labor practice.
  • Continue honoring Burns successorship bargaining duties, which this decision leaves intact.
  • Treat the doctrine as unsettled. A circuit split, possible further review, and inconsistent application outside the D.C. Circuit are all live.

Decided: July 9, 2026. EEOC v. SkyWest Airlines, Inc., No. 25-10491 (5th Cir.).

What’s changing

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that a plaintiff seeking compensatory damages for emotional distress under Title VII has no duty to mitigate that harm, an issue of first impression in the circuit. Title VII requires mitigation of back pay but imposes no comparable requirement on compensatory damages, and no settled common-law rule required mitigating emotional distress when Congress adopted the compensatory damages provision in 1991. The court joined the majority of federal courts to reach the question.

A Dallas jury found that a parts clerk was harassed by coworkers because of her sex and that SkyWest failed to take prompt remedial action, and it awarded compensatory and punitive damages. The Fifth Circuit affirmed. SkyWest had an anti-discrimination policy and trained employees at hire, on promotion, and annually, but the investigator randomly selected witnesses instead of interviewing all of them and skipped obvious follow-up questions, and neither the maintenance supervisor who joined in the harassment nor the supervisor who was told about it and did nothing received any discipline. Four line employees got written warnings. Those lapses sank the good-faith defense and left the punitive award standing, even though the jury found no retaliation.

What this means for HR

  • Treat unresolved harassment complaints as a damages risk. Fifth Circuit employers can no longer argue a failure to mitigate emotional harm.
  • Interview every witness rather than a sample, and press for specifics when accounts stay vague.
  • Discipline managers who participate or sit on complaints. Written warnings to line employees did not save an employer that left both supervisors untouched.

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