Sharon Gold is a member of the Firm's Litigation & Dispute Resolution Service Team. She concentrates her practice in the area of labor and employment and commercial litigation.
Ms. Gold has experience defending employers in a ...
On March 19, 2026, the DOL launched a new website for its “Center for Faith.” Center for Faith | U.S. Department of Labor The DOL’s Center for Faith was created in response to a February 2025 Executive Order from President Trump that created a White House Faith Office and federal agency Centers for Faith. Establishment of The White House ...
On the heels of an earlier Executive Order instructing federal agencies to deprioritize enforcement of disparate impact cases, the EEOC instructed all area offices to dismiss currently pending disparate impact charges by the end of September. A former driver for Amazon, Leah Cross, subsequently sued the EEOC for dismissing her charge that ...
Written By Sharon Gold with assistance from Jon E. B. McGee, Wyatt Summer Associate
On June 27, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Trump v. CASA, Inc. that nationwide or “universal” injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority granted to federal courts by Congress. Nationwide injunctions have been utilized to challenge numerous ...
Written by Sharon Gold with the assistance of Basil McCoy
EEO-1 data collection opened on May 20, 2025. This is a mandatory reporting process for employers to submit workforce demographic data. The data collection period ends on June 24, 2025, requiring employers to submit their data electronically through the Equal Employment Opportunity ...
By: Sharon Gold
The vast majority of employment discrimination claims against employers are based on a disparate treatment theory, where the employee alleges that he or she suffered an adverse employment action (such as termination, denied promotion, etc.) because of his or her race, sex, national origin, religion, age or disability. ...
By: Sharon Gold
Last week, we reported that a Texas judge, Judge Ada Brown, in Ryan LLC v. Federal Trade Commission, issued a limited preliminary injunction that preliminarily enjoined enforcement of the FTC’s Non-Compete Rule against the plaintiffs in that case. The Texas court did not issue a nationwide ban on enforcement of the Rule. The ...
In a decision last month, the U.S. Supreme Court held that transferees asserting Title VII claims did not have to show “significant harm” in order to prove that they suffered an adverse employment action, which is one component of the employee’s proof in a Title VII case. In order to establish a prima facie case, an employee claiming Title ...
Written by: Sharon Gold
Late Friday, U.S. District Court Judge J. Campbell Barker of the Eastern District of Texas vacated the National Labor Relations Board’s (“NLRB”) controversial 2023 Joint Employer Final Rule. The 2023 Final Rule revised the standard under the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”) to determine whether two ...
By: Sharon Gold
In October 2023, the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) published a controversial Final Rule addressing the Standard for Determining Joint-Employer Status under the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”). The Final Rule revises the standard under the NLRA to determine whether two entities are joint employers ...
By: Sharon L. Gold
Two landmark laws were passed late last year that provide protections for pregnant and nursing workers. The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) requires employers provide reasonable accommodations to employees for pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions, unless the accommodations would cause an undue ...
By: Sharon L. Gold
This month, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to hear Gerald E. Groff v. Louis DeJoy, Postmaster General, Case No. 21-1900, that asks the Court to reconsider the standard for Title VII religious accommodations cases. Title VII prohibits religious discrimination and also requires that employers grant religious accommodations in ...
With COVID-19 vaccination more available with each passing day and President Biden’s statement that all adults in the U.S. will be eligible for vaccination by May 1, 2021, employers are facing difficult questions in regard to their workforce. Here are answers to some frequently asked questions about employees and vaccination:
Can an employer ...
Today the Department of Labor (“DOL”) published its Final Rule regarding Independent Contractor Status under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”). See the press release here. The Independent Contractor test for the FLSA remained largely unchanged until five or six years ago, when the DOL revised the test making it “virtually ...
By Sharon Gold
Yesterday, the Department of Labor (“DOL”) released temporary regulations that, among other things, clarifies what documentation an employer should gather when employees seek leave under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (“FFCRA”). The unpublished rule is available here and may go through changes before ...
By Sharon Gold
Last month, the Department of Labor (“DOL”) published a Final Rule that revised certain regulations concerning the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) regular rate requirements. The Final Rule is effective January 15, 2020.
Under the FLSA, non-exempt employees must be paid one and a half times their regular rate for ...
By Sharon Gold
On September 27, 2019, the Department of Labor (“DOL”) published the much anticipated Final Rule that significantly raises the minimum salary for exempt workers from $23,660 to $35,568. It is estimated that more than one million workers will either become eligible for overtime pay or have their salaries raised to meet the ...
By Sharon Gold
The Kentucky Pregnant Workers Act (“the Act”), adopted in April, amends the Kentucky Civil Rights Act (“KCRA”), and expands protections for pregnant workers in Kentucky. The Act applies to employers who have 15 or more employees within the state in each of twenty or more calendar weeks in the current or preceding calendar ...
By Sharon Gold
The Office of the Federal Register officially published the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“NPRM”) raising the salary minimum for exempt workers that we discussed last week. The NPRM proposes to raise the minimum salary for exempt workers to $35,308 per year ($679 per week), from the current minimum of $23,660 per year ($455 ...
By Sharon Gold
On Thursday, March 7, 2019, the Department of Labor (“DOL”) released the much anticipated Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“NPRM”) that significantly raises the minimum salary for exempt workers from $23,660 to $35,308. It is estimated that if this rule is finalized, more than a million workers will either become eligible ...
By Sharon Gold
Over the past few decades, the US Supreme Court has become a very arbitration-friendly Court. Indeed, in the last decade, the Court has upheld arbitration in numerous decisions. This week, in a rare victory for arbitration opponents, the Supreme Court in New Prime Inc. v. Oliveira unanimously rejected arbitration for truck drivers ...
By Sharon Gold
The National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) recently proposed a rule establishing the standard for determining joint employer status under the National Labor Relations Act. Employers have until November 13, 2018 to comment about the proposed rule. The proposed rule, commentary and instructions on commenting are ...
In Rizo v. Yovino, the Ninth Circuit Court recently held that an employer cannot use an employee’s prior salary history as a ‘factor other than sex’ upon which a wage differential may be used under the Equal Pay Act. The EPA prohibits employers from paying women less for the same job unless the difference is based on merit ...
By Sharon Gold
The EEOC released its fiscal year charge data and for another year in a row, retaliation is the most filed charge. Behind retaliation are charges for race, disability and sexual discrimination. The full list of charge data is:
- Retaliation: 41,097 (48.8 percent of all charges filed)
- Race: 28,528 (33.9 percent)
- Disability: 26,838 ...
By Sharon Gold
The end of 2017 saw a barrage of sexual harassment allegations in the news and, subsequently, the termination of multiple high profile men in the entertainment and corporate industries. TIME magazine named the “Silence Breakers” as its “Person of the Year” for exposing the harassment that pervades the entertainment ...
On Tuesday, June 27, 2017, President Trump picked William Emanuel, 75, to fill one of the two vacancies on the National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB is currently controlled by Democrats, with a 2-1 majority. When there are no vacancies, the Board is filled with three members from the President’s party and two from the ...
By: Sharon Gold
In September, 21 states and numerous business groups sued the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) in a Texas Federal Court attacking the DOL’s Final Rule that raised the salary minimum for workers to be exempt from overtime requirements under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The states filed a motion for preliminary injunction ...
Today the Kentucky Supreme Court issued a much awaited opinion in the minimum wage battle between Louisville and business groups, siding with the business groups and invalidating the ordinance. In Kentucky Restaurant Association et. al v. Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Gov’t, 2015 –SC-000371-TG (October 20 ...
This week, Kentucky, alongside 20 other states, sued the Department of Labor in a Texas Federal Court. The states’ Complaint, 4:16-cv-00731, attacks the DOL’s Final Rule that raises the salary minimum for exempt workers. That same day, numerous businesses and the Chamber of Commerce filed a similar Complaint
Have your employees recently been trained on sexual harassment? Is your sexual harassment policy conspicuously posted? Does your policy have a reasonable complaint mechanism? If the answer is “no” to any of these questions, then you may be depriving your company of a defense to certain sexual harassment claims.
When an ...
Sharon Gold, a Partner with Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs and leader of the Firm's Employment Practices Liability Insurance (EPLI) team, will be speaking at the Bluegrass Compensation Association meeting at the Lexington Herald-Leader on June 22, 2016. Ms. Gold will be providing an FLSA update concerning the Department of Labor's Final Rule that ...
Speculation about when the DOL would release the final rule raising the minimum salary for exempt workers has ended. Today, the DOL released the final rule that will be effective December 1, 2016. The final rule is available here.
The proposed rule was quite controversial, eliciting over 270,000 comments, mostly from employers ...
This month, five members of the U.S. Women’s National Soccer team filed a wage disparity complaint with the EEOC against the U.S. Soccer Federation. The Women’s team alleges that despite the fact that they are doing equal work, they are not receiving equal pay as the Men’s National Soccer Team. The Women’s team alleges ...
On March 14, 2016, the Department of Labor forwarded its modifications to the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), which increases the salary requirements for exempt workers under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), to the Congressional Office of Management and Budget (OMB). This is the last step before the NPRM’s ...
Information gleaned from the EEOC, the DOL and the insurance industry can assist in analyzing what types of claims employers are likely to see in the coming years.
The most recent EEOC statistics reveal that in Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee and Mississippi, the top filed charges with the EEOC were (in varying order depending on ...
At last night’s packed council meeting, the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council voted 9-6 to increase the minimum wage in the city to $10.10 over the next three years. The ordinance provides that the minimum wage shall increase to $8.20 an hour on July 1, 2016, $9.15 an hour on July 1, 2017, and $10.10 an hour on July 1, 2018 ...
Today begins the sixty-day period when employers can submit comments about the DOL’s proposed rule increasing the salary requirements for exempt employees. The DOL proposes that the minimum salary requirements be raised from $455 per week or $23,660 a year to $970 a week or $50,440 a year. In order to qualify for the highly ...
The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued a final rule, effective March 27, 2015, changing the definition of spouse for purposes of same-sex spousal leave under the FMLA. The former rule, a “place of residence” rule, stated that an employer was required to provide same-sex spousal leave to qualified employees under the FMLA only if the ...
By Sharon L. Gold
In a 5-4 decision decided on May 18, 2009, the Supreme Court made it tougher for employees to survive motions to dismiss in federal court. In Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 129 S.Ct. 1937 (2009), the Court extended its Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544 (2007), decision to all civil cases and specifically to discrimination cases. In ...