Jennifer Kiesewetter

The labor board's Advice Division cleared Microsoft to fire employees who organized a Gaza protest on campus, California sent the first ban on workplace emotion-tracking to the governor's desk, and the Second Circuit told the Board its dress code test is wrong.

Washington proposed a per-hire immigration fee larger than most salaries, the labor board's top lawyer published her hit list, and Connecticut's omnibus workforce act starts running October 1. Two federal appeals courts landed on the same theme: what an employer writes after a complaint can matter more than the decision itself.

DHS extended a $4,000 fee to routine H-1B extensions, and $4,500 to L-1s. Massachusetts and Illinois each added new employer reporting duties. A Fourth Circuit decision sharpened what the Americans with Disabilities Act demands when an employee asks for reassignment. Here are four developments for your fall planning.

State agencies are locking in 2027 pay floors. At the same time, Congress and the federal courts are redrawing where federal labor law reaches and what employers owe employees who never asked for help.

The Senate gave the National Labor Relations Board a 3-1 Republican majority, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services changed what happens when a filing arrives incomplete, and Minnesota adopted rules governing how employers administer its sick leave law.

Federal agencies spent July shedding employer obligations, a Louisiana law took effect August 1, and two appeals courts issued rulings that reach into unrelated corners of HR. Five developments.

Federal agencies redrew 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.

This week brought new limits on noncompetes, expanded family leave requirements, fixed time limits for foreign students, and appellate decisions addressing discrimination and arbitration claims.

A federal agency proposed sweeping regulatory changes, three states enacted new employer obligations, one appeals court upheld a pregnancy-bias verdict, and the EEOC filed a new disability-accommodation lawsuit.