All immigration, all the time! Will Krasnow of our Boston Office has been working overtime in 

following the latest developments, and explaining what they mean for employers. Last Friday, he had this Immigration Dispatch on the end of the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals under President Trump. (But is the President now close to a DACA deal with the Dems? Could be.) And yesterday, Will had another on the Supreme Court’s temporary stay of an injunction against the Administration’s refugee ban. (A “stay of an injunction of a ban” — triple negative, yay! — means that the Administration can continue, for the time being, to block certain refugees from coming into the United States.) Oral argument on the legal challenge to the President’s March 6 revised travel ban is scheduled for October 10, with a final decision to follow.

Will, thank you for keeping us all up to speed!

Image Credit: From flickr, Creative Commons license, by Jelene Morris.

Based on a recent Senate appropriations bill, it appears that the Trump Administration’s plan to merge the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission with the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs has stalled. The

 Senate bill would fund the OFCCP for Fiscal Year 2018 at approximately $103.5 million, which is more than the House’s proposed funding of $94.5 million. Congress would not be proposing funds for the agency if it planned to eliminate it.

This legislative action follows a letter from Acting OFCCP Director Thomas Dowd to the Institute for Workplace Equality on August 24, “acknowledg[ing] that the consolidation proposal includes several challenging transition issues.” Although Mr. Dowd did not expressly state that merger plans were on ice, he noted that any consolidation was unlikely to occur until Fiscal Year 2019 and that the agency would focus on “contemporaneous opportunities to improve effectiveness and efficiency.”

Perhaps Congress is listening to its constituents. The proposed merger was opposed by both civil rights advocacy groups and employer organizations, and my colleague Angelique Lyons cogently summarized the pros and cons here.

We will continue to monitor this issue for further developments.

Image Credit: From flickr, Creative Commons license, by frankie leon.

If you're a private sector employer, you can generally fire an at-will employee for his or her political beliefs or expression. The First Amendment, as we discussed last week, does not limit you. Depending on where you are, there may be state or local laws protecting employees from discrimination based on their political beliefs or activities, but those jurisdictions are the ...

The U.S. Senate yesterday confirmed Marvin Kaplan's appointment to the National Labor Relations Board, which means that there is now an equal number of Republicans and Democrats on the Board.

William Emanuel, a management-side attorney from Littler Mendelsohn, is the last Trump nominee to the Board. His confirmation vote will not take place until after the Senate's August ...

President Trump has nominated Daniel M. Gade to the last vacant slot on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Dr. Gade, who has a Master's and Ph.D. in Public Administration and Public Policy, is a veteran of the second Iraq War, and lost his right leg in 2005 after an explosion that occurred while he was carrying out a routine patrol.

After spending about a year in recovery, Dr ...

As anyone who's been following the news is aware, President Trump has been publicly and repeatedly indicating his displeasure with Attorney General Jeff Sessions. We are a non-partisan blog, so I'm not going to get into who's right and who's wrong about the underlying dispute. But it does seem to me that the President is trying to ...

Marvin Kaplan and William Emanuel, President Trump's nominees to fill the two vacant seats on the National Labor Relations Board, cleared another hurdle Wednesday by making it out of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. The HELP Committee vote was split along party lines. No date has been set for the full Senate vote, but both Mr. Kaplan and Mr. Emanuel are ...

Not every obnoxious workplace behavior is unlawful harassment. To violate federal law, the harassment has to be unwelcome, based on a "protected category" (for example, sex or race), and "severe or pervasive."

But most employers aren't satisfied with banning only "illegal" behavior, and rightfully not. The law does a fairly good job of keeping us from each ...

Janet Dhillon, general counsel and corporate secretary for Burlington Stores, Inc., has been nominated by President Trump to fill a vacant seat on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and to become its Chair. If confirmed, Ms. Dhillon will serve a five-year term that will expire July 1, 2022.

I was expecting him to nominate Victoria Lipnic, the current acting chair. Ms ...

NLRB candidates being vetted. Bloomberg BNA reported last night that President Trump has settled on two candidates to fill the two vacant seats on the National Labor Relations Board. One is William Emanuel, a shareholder in the Los Angeles Office of the management-side law firm Littler Mendelsohn. Here is a link to his firm bio. The other is Marvin Kaplan, counsel to a Commissioner ...