50 Employment Laws in 50 States

The only at-a-glance reference volume that explains employer obligations under 50+ employment laws, for each of the 50 United States.

50 Employment Laws in 50 States is a compilation of brief summaries of state laws along with their Canadian counterparts on the most important areas of employment law. Each section begins with a question about a specific aspect of employment law — for example, state requirements that exceed federal law, wage and hour requirements, or areas where states typically differ widely from each other. The "answers" are presented state by state. The "answers" are provided by members of the Employers Counsel Network (ECN), a BLR®-sponsored organization linking top employment law practitioners at leading firms in each of the 50 states and Canada.

Buyers' Benefit: You are enrolling in an automatic update program and will receive annual updates sent on a 90-day approval basis and billed separately. You may cancel this automatic update program at any time.

Published February 2023
ISBN: 978-1-64535-264-8

50 Employment Laws in 50 States

Now you can INSTANTLY discover your legal obligations under the 50 most important employment laws in each of the 50 states.

50 Employment Laws in 50 States, 2023 Edition is the revolutionary guidebook that puts ALL the most need-to-know employment law information — for each of the 50 states — right at your fingertips.

Imagine the time and frustration you'll save with this authoritative, instant-information reference. In just seconds, you'll zero in on the precise information you need whenever you must:

• Create a new policy
• Verify the compliance of an existing policy
• Expand your operations
• Audit your procedures
• Support recommendations to senior management
• Advise colleagues at field offices, branches, and stores.
• Stay comfortably up-to-date with increasingly complicated state employment laws
• Online password privacy

This quick-reference guide puts the expertise of the nationwide Employers Counsel Network right at your fingertips. The top-flight attorneys in the Network focus almost exclusively on defending employers and write the Employment Law Letter for their state. They have applied their valuable time and resources to making this side-by-side comparison of employer obligations the definitive reference.

With 50 Employment Laws in 50 States, 2023 Edition, you get the exact guidance you need whenever you need to understand ANY state law concerning:

Automatic Updates Keep Your Guide Current
Buyers' Benefit: You are enrolling in an automatic update program and will receive annual updates sent on a 90-day approval basis and billed separately. You may cancel this automatic update program at any time.

Major Changes for 2023

• Equal Pay: States continue to add or expand existing equal pay laws, with elements like salary history and pay transparency leading the recent trends. California was the first to have a salary history law; now, 21 states have laws with provisions including prohibiting asking applicants for salary history, relying on salary history to set compensation, and disciplining employees who discuss pay with coworkers. More recently, states have been adopting salary transparency laws. Again, California leads the way by requiring employers to disclose the pay range of a position upon applicant request. As more states pass salary transparency laws, they are expanding on that by requiring employers to disclose pay ranges to applicants without a request, to internal employees, and in job postings. To be sure you are compliant, consult chapter 16 on Equal Pay and chapter 38 on Preemployment Inquiries.
  
  
• Marijuana: Most states have some form of legalization for medical and/or recreational purposes. The only holdouts are Idaho, Wyoming, Kansas, and South Carolina. Find the latest updates on which states allow the use of Marijuana in Chapter 24. Additionally, 23 states have laws prohibiting discrimination against workers for using medical marijuana; 7 states have laws protecting recreational marijuana users; and several states protect employees and applicants with positive drug tests.  In the laws legalizing marijuana, some states add it to the list of “lawful consumable products,” making its consumption protected. Other states expressly allow employers to require THC-free workplaces. Even if marijuana is illegal in your state, your employees could legally use it while on vacation in another state. That leaves you with many complicated issues to sort out when it comes to drug testing applicants and employees. Before you make any decisions or update your policies, check out chapter 12, which covers regulations on Drug and Alcohol Testing, as well as chapter 32, which addresses whether you can take an employee’s legal Off-Duty Conduct into consideration when making employment decisions.
  
  
• Hair Discrimination: The CROWN Act was created in 2019 by Dove and the CROWN Coalition. Since California became the first state to pass the Act in 2019, more than a third of states have passed laws prohibiting discrimination based on certain hair types commonly associated with race, including braids, twists, locs, afros, and textured hair. Some pass the CROWN Act as a standalone act, and some expand the definition of “race” under their human rights laws. Find out how your state regulates hair discrimination in chapter 10 on Discrimination and chapter 45 on Title VII Equivalents.

Your Editor and Contributors

50 Employment Laws in 50 States is prepared by leading attorneys, many of them members of the Employers Counsel Network, a nationwide affiliation of prestigious law firms representing management in employment law matters. Their contributions are edited by Celeste Duke.

Celeste Duke, SPHR, is the Editor of a number of BLR publications. She has written about human resources for a variety of publications, including Basic Training for Supervisors and Frontline Supervision.

She has written and edited a series of white papers covering employment trends and developments and manages the editorial content for BLR’s online training.

Before coming to BLR, she was the business editor for The Daily Herald in Columbia, Tennessee. Celeste earned her bachelor’s degree from David Lipscomb University and a master’s from Middle Tennessee State University, where she also taught writing.

Following is a list of those who were most instrumental in the completion of this book. We thank them for their continued perseverance in this project.

• Alabama: Lehr Middlebrooks & Vreeland, P.C.
• Alaska: Davis Wright Tremaine LLP
• Arizona: Tiffany & Bosco, P.A. and Weiss Brown
• Arkansas: Jack Nelson Jones, P.A.
• California: Freeland Cooper & Foreman LLP
• Colorado: Holland & Hart LLP
• Connecticut: Carlton Fields
• Florida: Sniffen and Spellman
• Georgia: Thompson Hine LLP and Taylor English Duma LLP and Christopher Butler LLC
• Hawaii: Cades Schutte LLP
• Idaho: Parsons Behle & Latimer and Elam & Burke
• Iowa: Denton Davis Brown
• Kansas: Foulston Siefkin LLP
• Kentucky: Frost Brown Todd LLC
• Louisiana: Jones Walker
• Maine: Brann & Isaacson
• Maryland: Whiteford, Taylor & Preston L.L.P.
• Massachusetts: Skoler, Abbott & Presser, P.C.
• Michigan: Bodman PLC
• Minnesota: Felhaber Larson
• Mississippi: The Kullman Firm
• Missouri: Armstrong Teasdale LLP
• Montana: Ritchie Manning Kautz PLLP
• Nebraska: Erickson | Sederstrom, P.C.
• New Hampshire: Sheehan Phinney Bass & Green PA.
• New Jersey: Genova Burns LLC
• New Mexico: Jackson Loman Stanford Downey & Stevens-Block, P.C.
• North Carolina: Womble Bond Dickinson (US) LLP
• North Dakota: Vogel Law Firm
• Ohio: Porter Wright Morris & Arthur LLP
• Oklahoma: McAfee & Taft
• Oregon: Perkins Coie LLP
• Pennsylvania: Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr LLP
• South Carolina: Burr & Forman LLP
• Texas: Monty & Ramirez LLP
• Vermont: Dinse, Knapp & McAndrew, P.C.
• Virginia: DiMuroGinsberg, P.C.
• West Virginia: Steptoe & Johnson PLLC
• Wisconsin: Axley Brynelson, LLP
• Wyoming: Holland & Hart LLP
  
  
• Canada: Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP