A recap of 2024 employment law and a look at what is coming in 2025.

Dear Reader:

It’s the end of another era. We’re back to December, and we know this time of year all too well – we’re long past the cruel summer, about a fortnight away from yet another year – ‘tis the damn season and it’s time to speak now so you can enter 2025 fearless(ly) because employment laws can be a nightmare dressed like a daydream leaving you haunted, if you’re not properly prepared. Read the manuscript below to avoid employment law becoming your albatross next year.

At the Federal Level

Grab Your Passport and My Hand - Is your I-9 Documentation in Order?

With a new administration coming in January, which promised mass deportation and a general crackdown on immigration, employers should ensure that they are in compliance with I-9 documentation. During Donald Trump’s last administration, I-9 audits were higher than during either the Obama or the Biden presidencies, and that should be expected this term.

Employers should audit their own I-9 compliance to ensure each of their employees has filled out their I-9 Form (accurately and completely) and provided proper supporting documents for verification, such as a passport, green card or E-Verify confirmations, and that the employer section of each I-9 has been properly completed. 

I-9 Forms are required to be completed by employees no later than their first day of work for pay and employers are required to fill out the second section no later than the third business day from when the employee started work for pay.

Last week, on April 24, 2024, the federal DOL increased the minimum salary thresholds to qualify as an exempt employee under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), from its current $684 per week to $844 per week, effective July 1, 2024. For employees qualifying under the FLSA’s highly compensated employee exemption, they must make at least $132,964 per year.

The DOL’s rule also provides for an additional increase to $1,128 per week, effective January 1, 2025. Notably, the increase in 2025 will have exempt employees across the country required to make nearly as much as those exempt employees in New York State – excluding New York City, Westchester and Long Island. New York State exempt employee’s minimum salary will be $1,161.65 per week- a difference of only $33/week – a far cry from the current difference of $440.20 per week. The 2025 increase for highly compensated employees under the FLSA will increase to $151,164 per year. The rule also provides that these minimum thresholds will now be updated every three years.

In what seems to be a tradition now, the New York State Legislature included within its budget passage a key employment change for New York employers. This year, such change included requiring employers to grant 20 hours of paid leave during a 52 week period to use for prenatal healthcare appointments. Such grant, effective January 1, 2025, is as amendment to the New York State Paid Sick Leave Law and in addition to the New York Paid Family Leave Law. The prenatal healthcare appointments are defined as “health care services received by an employee during their pregnancy or related to such pregnancy, including physical examinations, medical procedures, monitoring and testing, and discussions with a health care provider related to the pregnancy.” Such leave may be taken in hourly increments, rather than any larger time blocks. Payment, at an employee’s regular rate of pay (or minimum wage, if greater), is also stipulated to be in hourly increments. Additionally, like other New York State leave laws, the provisions includes an anti-discrimination  and retaliation provision in response to employees who request or take such leave.