Boulette Golden & Marin L.L.P. partner Laura Merritt will address the Texas Bar CLE 13th Annual Advanced Workers’ Compensation Law Course August 12, 2016. The subject of Ms. Merritt’s presentation is “Technology, Confidentiality and Strategic Communications”, and is scheduled for 8:30am at the Radisson in Austin. Additional information>>>

Boulette Golden & Marin L.L.P. partner Jason Boulette will address UT Law CLE’s The Car Crash Seminar on Friday, July 29th. His session, eligible for CLE credit, is entitled “Getting From Internet to Evidence”, and covers how social media can be a goldmine in certain cases, if you can discover relevant data and get it into evidence. Learn ethical methods of eDiscovery related to social media, the nuts and bolts of admitting social media data into evidence, and strategies for using that evidence on both liability and damages claims.

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Boulette Golden & Marin L.L.P. partner Jason Boulette will deliver a talk entitled “The Future of Employment” to the Texas Association of Business’ 2016 Employment Relations Symposium on Thursday, July 21. The Symposium is scheduled for July 21/22 at the La Cantera Hill Country Resort in San Antonio.

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by Ann Price, Partner

The City of Austin passed the “Fair Chance Hiring” ordinance on March 24, 2016 prohibiting private employers from asking about or considering criminal history until after extending conditional job offers. In so doing, Austin became the first city in Texas to regulate private employers’ use of criminal background information. The ordinance became effective on April 4, 2016.

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by Steven Garrett, Associate

On May 11, 2016, President Obama signed into law the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 (“DTSA”). This law, for the first time, creates a federal cause of action for trade secret misappropriation. Employers should be aware of how this law affects current employees and future employees who might have had access to trade secrets of prior employers and whether they wish to update their employee confidentiality agreements or employment handbooks. In many ways the federal law tracks the state Uniform Trade Secret Act recently enacted in Texas, but there are a few significant differences.

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.by Ann Price, Partner

In a press release on May 17, the Department of Labor (“DOL”) announced that the final rule changing legal test for determining whether employees are exempt from overtime under the “white collar” regulation will be effective on December 1, 2016. The key provisions of the final rule are that it:

• Roughly doubles the salary threshold from $23,660 to $47,476 per year, or from $455 to $913 per week. This is a few thousand dollars less that the proposed rule indicated.
• Will automatically update the salary threshold every three years, beginning on January 1, 2020, based on the 40^th percentile of full-time salaried workers in the lowest income region of the country. The proposed rule would have updated the salary threshold annually.
• Raises the “highly compensated employee” threshold, which allows for the application of a relaxed “duties” test, from $100,000 to $134,004 per year. This is almost $12,000 more than the proposed rule indicated.
• Will allow employers to count nondiscretionary bonuses, incentives, and commissions for up to 10% of the salary threshold.
• Makes no changes to the “duties” test.

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Boulette Golden & Marin L.L.P. partner Jason Boulette will present “Key Labor and Employment Issues in the Healthcare Sector” to the University of Texas CLE’s 28th Annual Health Law Conference in Houston.

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Boulette Golden & Marin L.L.P. partner Mike Golden will present “Technology and Ethics” at the 23rd Annual Texas Bar CLE Advanced Medical Torts Course in Sante Fe, New Mexico. The presentation is scheduled for 2:45pm on Friday, March 18, and is eligible for CLE credit. Additional information>>>

Changes are on the way for the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The legal test for determining whether employees are exempt from overtime under the “white collar” regulation will change sometime in 2016. Employers need to take steps now to ensure they can comply when the change becomes effective. The exact change will not be known until the final regulation is published by the Department of Labor. However the proposed rule published on July 6, 2015 makes clear that the minimum amount of compensation necessary for an exemption will increase significantly and may double.

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Concealed carry by license holders has been the law of the land in Texas since 1995. Effective January 1, 2016, licensed handgun holders in Texas may lawfully carry their holstered handguns in an open manner in many public places.  It is still illegal to carry a handgun on certain types of premises. For example:  schools, collegiate and professional sporting events, bars, polling places, correctional facilities, government buildings, and secured areas of airports.

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