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Porzio, Bromberg & Newman, P.C. is a full-service law firm with over 90 lawyers throughout offices in Morristown, NJ; Trenton, NJ; Ocean City, NJ; New York, NY; Westborough, MA; Wilmington, DE; Philadelphia, PA; and San Juan, Puerto Rico. The firm is committed to serving clients, providing high-quality work, and achieving results through legal strategy, advocacy, technology, and consulting services offered through the law firm and its two wholly-owned subsidiary companies. The firm provides legal services in corporate, employment, litigation, bankruptcy and restructuring, intellectual property and trademark, real estate, and other areas to businesses of all sizes ranging from start-up companies to Fortune 500 corporations, including public and private organizations.
As 2025 comes to a close, employers faced one of the most active years in recent memory for labor and employment law.
United States
New Jersey
New York
Employment and HR
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As 2025 comes to a close, employers faced one of the most active
years in recent memory for labor and employment law. Courts
revisited agency authority and employee remedies. State and local
legislatures reshaped employer obligations from pay transparency to
leave entitlements. Federal executive action reframed compliance
approaches for DEI, immigration enforcement, and more. And the
practical realities of managing risk – across handbooks,
payroll systems, training practices, and day-to-day workplace
culture – shifted accordingly.
This year’s
2025 Employment Law Year in Review focuses on the
changes that mattered most to employers operating in New York, New
Jersey, and nationally. It reflects a year defined by recalibrated
enforcement power at the federal level, expanding worker
protections at the state and local level, and increasingly nuanced
standards for employer policies on speech, arbitration, and
compensation practices. Below, we preview the themes and concrete
developments you will find explored throughout this report, and we
close with our forward-looking view of what 2026 is likely to bring
and how to prepare now.
What This Year in Review Covers
The report is organized to help practitioners and in-house
leaders quickly find actionable guidance, with each article
offering practical takeaways, jurisdictional notes, and compliance
checklists:
Labor Relations and Union Activity:
Federal limits on NLRB remedies; New Jersey’s expansion of
“captive audience” prohibitions; and the evolving
standard for regulating political expression on employee uniforms
in customer-facing roles.
Wage and Hour: The Third Circuit’s
reaffirmation of “actual time worked” principles and
implementation guidance for tracking and compensating pre- and
post-shift activity.
Harassment & Discrimination: The
NJLAD’s expanded constraints on non-disparagement provisions;
the Supreme Court’s equalized Title VII framework for
majority-group plaintiffs; and compliance strategies for DEI
programming amid heightened scrutiny.
Immigration and Worksite Enforcement:
Practical templates for response planning, onsite procedures, and
executive-order-sensitive risk management.
Arbitration: Enforceability best
practices with an emphasis on presentation, assent, and
recordkeeping under New Jersey law.
Compensation, Transparency, and Pay
Practices: New Jersey’s proposed regulations
implementing pay transparency, including scope, range calibration,
and enforcement processes.
Workplace Relationships: Policy design,
disclosure protocols, and executive contract safeguards to mitigate
harassment, retaliation, and reputational risk.
The 2026 Outlook: What to Expect—and How to
Prepare Now
In 2026, employers should expect intensified enforcement and
continued state and local innovation, with several themes shaping
compliance nationwide. Court-imposed limits on NLRB remedies will
shift disputes away from agency adjudication and into courts, even
as agencies and the EEOC refine guidance and priorities,
particularly around harassment, DEI, and algorithmic
decision-making.
We further anticipate pay transparency broadening beyond
early‑adopter jurisdictions, with tighter rules on posted
ranges and internal notice practices likely to spread.
Wage‑and‑hour litigation should continue to probe
“micro‑time” and off‑the‑clock tasks
in both on‑site and remote settings.
Leave laws will likely expand and converge as New York
City’s ESSTA amendments take effect in early 2026.
Immigration worksite activity will remain more visible,
underscoring the need for response plans and disciplined onsite
procedures.
The accelerating use of AI in hiring, scheduling, performance
management, and monitoring will draw heightened scrutiny under
Title VII, the ADA, and state and local bias‑audit regimes,
prompting expectations for transparency, validation, and
accommodation processes. At the same time, employers should
anticipate continued scrutiny of employee speech and dress
policies, closer review of arbitration agreements, and attention to
executive conduct and conflicts. Pay transparency enforcement, DEI
compliance under dual federal‑state regimes, and expanding
paid leave will require harmonized policies, stronger
recordkeeping, and coordinated HR, recruiting, payroll, and legal
workflows.
To prepare now, employers should standardize multistate
pay‑posting templates (with compliant ranges and internal
notice workflows), tighten timekeeping for pre/post‑shift and
remote tasks (policy, training, and system prompts), modernize
arbitration agreements, update leave policies for 2026 changes
(including New York City’s ESSTA), devise a documented
immigration response plan with warrant and media protocols, and
implement AI governance by inventorying HR tools, embedding vendor
and bias‑testing requirements, providing notice and
human‑in‑the‑loop review, and aligning
accommodation processes.
Thank You and the Road Ahead
To our clients and colleagues, thank you for entrusting Porzio
Bromberg & Newman with your most important employment matters
this year. It has been our privilege to guide you through a
fast-changing regulatory environment with practical,
business-focused advice. We look forward to partnering with you in
2026 to anticipate risk, strengthen compliance, and support your
strategies with clarity and confidence. Here’s to another
year of progress, preparation, and purposeful leadership.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general
guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought
about your specific circumstances.