What’s New? A Review of Recent Labor and Employments Laws That May Affect Your Business

State and Federal legislatures and regulatory agencies have not been idle. Many new laws and regs are going into effect soon. These include important changes to requiring accommodation for pregnant and lactating workers, restrictions on non-disclosure agreements pertaining to harassment issues, a proposed ban on non-compete clauses, and many more. This program will address these changes so you, like the Scouts, will be prepared.

Presented by Elizabeth K. Dorminey & Sheri Oluyemi.

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Webinar Transcript

Sheri Oluyemi (00:00):
I was just concluding with the Pump Act and the fact that it's required to be paid in certain circumstances, even for non-exempt employees. The second new law that I'd like to talk about is a Pregnant Worker's Fairness Act. So this is a little newer. It comes into effect on June the 27th, 2023. The Pump Act is already in effect, it became effective in December of 2022. However, until April of this year, so just a few weeks ago, there was no private right of action under the Pump Act. But starting in April of this year, employees can bring suit against their employers for failing to provide great times and a private space to express breast, breast milk starting April of this year. The Pregnancy Workers' Fairness Act does not come into effect until June of 2023. And what this does is requires employers to provide a reasonable accommodation for pregnant workers who need some accommodation to be able to continue their work.

Sheri Oluyemi (01:05):
It's very similar to the requirement for a reasonable accommodation that existed under the A D A. However, under the a d a, one thing we say often is pregnancy is not a disability. Barring some illness that is associated with the pregnancy that significantly impairs some major part of the employee's life, just being pregnant would not permit, would not allow the employee to get a reasonable accommodation. The employer just wast on the hook with the Pregnancy Workers Fairness Act, that's no longer a requirement. So just being pregnant, if the employee requires some accommodation to be able to stay at work, the employer would now be on the hook to provide that.

Sheri Oluyemi (01:50):
You already know a lot of the accommodations that might be necessary really is a case by case, case by case determination for that employee. But some of the most common ones you might see is light work. Perhaps a request not to drive or request to sit down. If the job requires standing for extended periods of times it really will, will depend on the employees. Some, some women need to drink a lot of water. Some women need to go to the bathroom all the time. It just depends. So we would advise that you take a case by case approach on determining the, the accommodations that are reasonable for your workplace. In terms of who this applies to, again, it applies to employees just like the A d A, the Pregnancy Pregnant Workers' Fairness Act applies to workplaces with more than 15 employees. The Pump Act, again, because it's part of the F L S A, it applies to all employers. And I was gonna talk about why this is necessary, but I think I've made that abundantly obvious. Betsy, do you wanna chime in on, on what? Well, the,

Elizabeth K. Dorminey (02:53):
The only thing I'd like to add to your very good summary of, of these laws is that, you know, like the ada it's a two-way street, and it's important for the employee to speak up and let you know what, as the, as the employer, as management, what kind of accommodations are, are required or necessary. And you and you know, there's an affirmative obligation under the a d a to, to work in both directions. In other words, you're not expected to guess what people need. They do have to come forward and tell you what kind of accommodation they need, and then you work with them to see if it's reasonable. And as Sherry points out, often it's as simple as, you know, restroom breaks and maybe an opportunity to sit down. So these, these are, these are accommodations that can be accommodated most of the time. But you have to work cooperatively to to make it go. Are we ready to move on to our next lightning summary of a new big topic?

Sheri Oluyemi (03:50):
I I was just gonna act with a list of things to think about when you're preparing for this, these two new laws, first of all you should have a plan. If you do not have a compliant plan that you've trained your managers, trained your supervisors about, you could become tripped up when these are effective. And another thing to just be aware of, they've resulted, these two acts have resulted in new D O L posters as well as new E O C posters. So if you don't already have those, you should go to the D O L website, the EEO website, and download the new posters or, or order the new posters and have them up as soon as possible. I think I've through it, if you wanna take on the next topic. Yeah,

Elizabeth K. Dorminey (04:29):
That's, that's a good reminder. And also the, the, the private right of action is a game changer too. I think you'd agree with that.

Sheri Oluyemi (04:36):
Yes.

Elizabeth K. Dorminey (04:38):
Anyway, our second topic we were gonna address are non-disclosure agreements, which are, are growing in popularity. But at least the controversy is the, the, the agreements themselves are, are under, under result sort of. This, I think is mainly a product of the Me Too environment that we've experienced the last few years. And we were talking about this and preparing, it may be the reason why we don't have more details about what Don Lemon allegedly did at c than what Tucker Carlson may have done at the Fox network before their respective departures because they, they, and their network, and perhaps any complaining party may have signed a non-disclosure agreement that pro prohibits them from discussing this this matter in in, in person. These are controversial, partly because there's a, you know, there's a lot of competing considerations there.

Elizabeth K. Dorminey (05:35):
You know, is it the person's right to privacy that should take precedents over the public's right to know, you know, it's a, it's difficult. Most of the laws, and there is a federal law and also some states have enacted counterpart laws. But for the most part, the thing to remember about the non-disclosure amendments to these various laws is that they prohibit a non-disclosure agreement being entered into as a condition of employment or when someone is onboarded the they seem to think that giving that up kind of wholesale and in anticipation of some precipitating event is in the sense of the legislature, not what they wanna promote. On the other hand, if a non-disclosure agreement or a non-disparagement agreement, which also says you won't talk ugly about each other, is entered into as a negotiated settlement, most of those are going to be upheld.

Elizabeth K. Dorminey (06:40):
We saw a similar evolution in the rules against class action waivers that were trying to they, they were, they've attempted with, with more and less success to enact that would prohibit someone from entering into an agreement for compulsory arbitration of any employment dispute as a condition of employment. In other words, when they're hired you know, giving up your rights as part of a negotiated settlement, again, is one thing. But an anticipatory waiver of rights is, is is, is going to be what's, what's prohibited here. 

Sheri Oluyemi (07:25):
We wanted to talk about some examples as, as well, Betsy. We know that the Federal Arbitration Act had already outlawed non-compete non-disclosure agreements for sexual assault. I know you had given a webinar about that a little bit late last year or earlier this year.

Elizabeth K. Dorminey (07:44):
Yes, that's right. That was a 2022 amendment. But again, I think, you know, when it's part of a negotiated settlement, it's going to be condoned. And it's just the anticipatory waiver that, that is the subject of the of the of the prohibition and the Federal Arbitration Act. Courts have generally favored arbitration and are, are loath to increase their own workload at the expense of having some arbitrator take care of it in a confidential proceeding. There's a, another example right now in in I think it's a, a state law feature in Florida. A former girlfriend has sued Tiger Woods, and that may be they may be subject to, or I think she's challenging a an agreement that the couple entered into when they started the relationship saying that any disagreements would be settled through our, through confidential arbitration.

Elizabeth K. Dorminey (08:44):
So that, that case is in the courts right now, and we'll be interested, probably tune into Entertainment tonight to find out what's going on with that one as it as it evolves. Of course, that's not exactly an employment agreement, but it's still an example of a non-disclosure agreement being in conflict with what Florida's is called the Speak outlaw which cancels those those cases, and this is more sort of an inside baseball lawyer geek thing, but one of the interesting aspects of some of these laws is an attempt to retroactively prohibit them. In other words, if an agreement is entered into, in most situations prior to the date of it becoming illegal, it may still be enforced, but some of these new laws have provisions that would prohibit the enforcement of an agreement, a non-disclosure agreement that was not illegal when it was entered into. So that's, that's something to be aware of. If something comes up, it's not going to be a, a safe haven to say, well, that was perfectly all right when we, you know, when so-and-so was hired because enforcement may be barred as well.

Sheri Oluyemi (09:56):
Another indication that this law is going to be heavily enforced is some decisions that have come out of the National Labor Relations Board, basically stating that non-disclosure agreements within settlement agreements violate the L N L R A, because if you're supposed to let employees under the N L R A to speak with each other about terms and conditions of their employment, so if they've signed non-disclosure agreements saying, we can't talk about this the N L R B is looking into whether that's a violation of section seven.

Elizabeth K. Dorminey (10:28):
Good, good point. Because as you say that the, the, the ultimate aims of the, of the law sometimes come into conflict with one another.

Sheri Oluyemi (10:36):
Right.

Sheri Oluyemi (10:38):
So how how would our,

Elizabeth K. Dorminey (10:40):
Go ahead.

Sheri Oluyemi (10:41):
How will our listeners get prepared for these changes in the law? How do they make sure that they don't run af file in the future?

Elizabeth K. Dorminey (10:50):
Well, I would say the first thing to do is to make sure that your, any employment agreements that you enter into don't contain these prohibited clauses, because that's going to be a non-starter. And it would be a good time to revisit what's in your employment agreements if you have those with your with your employees. Some, some employers do, some employers don't. As we all know, provisions in employee handbooks and so forth are subject to being changed by the employer at any time, at least in Georgia, and they don't constitute a contract. But if you have an employment contract with a that's specifically written out, or particularly an arbitration agreement, it'll be important to review those to make sure that they're in compliance with these new requirements.

Sheri Oluyemi (11:37):
Very good tip for our attendees to keep in mind. Anything else we'd like to add on the restrictions on non-disclosure agreements before we move on to our next topic?

Elizabeth K. Dorminey (11:50):
I think we can tole on, if that's okay with you. We were going to next talk about non-compete agreements, which have been getting in, in the news again a little bit recently, because that's a, that's a big change. In January, 2023, the Federal Trade Commission, which usually doesn't get involved in these things proposed a new rule that would bar the enforcement of non-compete agreements. And those are controversial because many employers like a non-compete agreement. Cause they say that if I'm going to spend the time and energy training an employee and allowing them access to all of my confidential business information and, you know, developing a client list and things like that, the last thing I wanna do is to fund somebody's education and see them walk away from employment with me and go over and take a nice job with my competitor. So that's been the the, the impetus behind non-compete agreements, which are certainly not universal, but they're more common at higher levels.

Elizabeth K. Dorminey (12:50):
I think one of the reasons for this legislative, well not legislative regulatory proposal by the Federal Trade Commission is that some employers, maybe were including non-compete agreements in for lower level employees, where the the, the ability to, to find other work is is, is, you know, it's, it's, it's less specific. I mean, it's one thing to have a senior engineer who's going to be working on proprietary processes, and it's another one to say, you know, if you were the manager of fast Food Establishment A, then you can't go and work at Fast Food Establishment B for for a period of time following employment. Now, state courts, particularly Georgia courts, have been hostile to these agreements if they're over broad for for many years. They've got a long track record of that. And they will refuse to enforce any agreement that usually lasts for a, an unreasonable period of time, probably anything more than a year they would consider too much.

Elizabeth K. Dorminey (13:57):
And geographical scope also needs to be pretty narrowly limited because the courts have taken the position that, you know, it's, it's just not reasonable to think that, you know, somebody who goes to work in North Dakota is gonna be a direct competitor with Georgia, even if the industry they're working in, you know, feels otherwise. So these have, these have been somewhat controversial now, when the the federal Trade Commission published this rule in accordance with the general administrative procedure Act processes, they have to post the rule and solicit comments, collect the comments, analyze them, and then do all of that before they, the rule becomes final. I understand that there has been an absolute avalanche of commentary, and I think that they have even perhaps extended the period and or extended four comments or the period of time for them to analyze all the comments to deal with all of the uproar that this is generated within the industries that have used these more more consistently.

Elizabeth K. Dorminey (15:07):
So those are, I will, you know, in other words, this, this regulation has been proposed, but not necessarily completed the notice and comment period before it becomes final. And as we know with many regulations, the fact that one administration adopts something doesn't necessarily guarantee that a subsequent administration is going to retain or enforce that rule. So we'll wait and see, but it'll be interesting to to see where the federal Trade Commission ends up. I suppose they have dipped into this because it is about competition, and that's what the F T C is all about. But normally something like this would be a Department of Labor matter and not an FTC matter, but that's, that's the way they chose to do it this time. You wanna contribute, Sherry?

Sheri Oluyemi (15:59):
Well, I was going to say that especially for employers in Georgia, this is going to give them significant whiplash because like you said, for for decades in Georgia restrictive covenants like this are not favored. Most, most times the judges will toss them for whatever reason, whether it's the geographic scope or the temporal scope. There'll be a reason why an an employer would not be able to enforce these. And then starting in 2011 where the Restrictive Covenants Act was passed, restrictive covenants were then favored anything under two years for specific type of employee would be enforceable. And judges have routinely been enforcing them in Georgia since 2011. Now comes the F T C and basically says no non-competes for anyone in any job capacity whatsoever. It's, it's going to be difficult for employer in Georgia to adopt that basically. And it's also backward looking, unlike some of the other laws that we've talked about forward looking with, if this rule were to come into place, you'd have to cancel any and non-compete that you'd signed with an employee, even though you may have paid some consideration, you may have paid some settlement funds in exchange for that agreement, it would become worthless.

Sheri Oluyemi (17:12):
So it's, it's going to be subject to a lot of challenge, especially coming out of a state like Georgia. There are other states that have pulled back non-competes either completely or down to the bare bones like California Colorado, Illinois. But in Georgia, it's, it's going to be a hot topic if this rule ever gets passed. I can imagine a challenge similar to the COVID 19 vaccine mandates where employers are going to argue that the FTC does not have the authority to issue this type of rule. Like you said, ordinarily it would be under the purview of the D O L. So can the FTC even do what it's trying to do? It's going to be a big, big topic and we'll do our best to keep you updated. For now, it's still in the rules in the noticing comment period. So we don't have, we just wait and see at this point.

Elizabeth K. Dorminey (18:03):
Well, thank you for the further illumination. Do do we have time for questions now or what do you think? Well,

Sheri Oluyemi (18:09):
No, we do have one more topic and ah, sorry, we have some time for questions. And this is something we should have covered at the beginning. We will have a lot of time at the end for questions. If you have any questions you'd like to pass along, please raise your hand using the icon at the bottom of your screen and I will click on you, give you the floor to speak and ask a question. If you'd like to put your question in a chat, I'm happy to read that out. And Betsy and I will do our best to answer your question. As long as it's not too detailed, if you say, you know, I have X employee and she needs X time to breastfeed and she works this job, we might need to take that kind of question offline. But generally, if you have some some questions for us, we'd be happy to answer that at the end of the webinar.

Sheri Oluyemi (18:59):
So I'll just take us off to our last topic, and this is one that has been really popular in the news, even though it's not new. It's about regenerative AI and how this is being used in workplaces. The E O C had started looking at this topic back in 2016 but there wasn't much buzz about it Now, so earlier, earlier in 2002, the E O C created an initiative that specifically looks at how AI is being used in the workplace, and they're trying to determine whether or not the use of this regenerative AI could result in violations of Title seven, the A d A, the A D E A, et cetera. And just to step back a little bit to explain what we mean by ai, we're talking about artificial intelligence, intelligence software that employers are using in various ways, including to screen out resumes, to chat with potential employees to see whether or not they would qualify or just algorithms that are being used to figure out what type of employee would be most, most successful in this particular job position.

Sheri Oluyemi (20:05):
Now, in theory, it sounds great, you would need an army of recruiters to do some of the things that AI can do in a matter of minutes, and it sounds like it's an ideal software for us to use. But what has resulted is due to some biases that are being programmed into the AI or some of the biases that it's creating on its own, there has been some discrimination against specific categories of people. For example, the E O C has brought a lawsuit against a tutoring company that had used some software to, to screen potential employees. And the results of that screening, and I don't mean to laugh, was that employees over a certain age were all excluded from consideration to the next level of in-person interviews. Of course, this was not the intended result of using the software, but that is what happened. So we're looking at a disparate impact claim, and the E O C is pursuing that issue in court. So again, it's not a new one, but lately, if you've heard chat G P t, if you've heard Bard, if you've heard about Bing and all of their AI software, it's a hot topic now. So I believe employees will be asking employers more about how they go through these HR processes and more employers are looking to vendors to purchase AI software. So I think Go

Elizabeth K. Dorminey (21:23):
Ahead. Well, that's a very interesting, that's a very interesting point, and I'm glad you brought that up, but it, it, it makes me kind of look into my crystal ball a little bit too and, and think social media policies, I believe are something that we all need to be looking at again. And if you don't have a social media policy, it's probably a good idea to to, to take a look at adding one to your employee handbook and to your policies. And I, I mentioned this because again, you know, watching the news there was an incident in Atlanta not so very long ago, where some OBGYN nurses to take us back to the first topic of pregnancy and childbirth got in a heap of trouble for making a TikTok video at work, wh in which they said disparaging things about some of their patients.

Elizabeth K. Dorminey (22:13):
Now, for, for the younger generation, if I may be a bit ageist in the other direction myself social media is, is is like air and water. It's just part of the world. And it's so much a part of the world that I think frequently people forget to, that they are having a broadcast conversation rather than a more narrowly focused one. And so I think, I think it that's a, a when you're looking at your policies and practices, now you might give a view toward limiting explicitly what you expect people to be doing with TikTok and LinkedIn and Facebook and other things, and particularly focusing on letting employees know who may not be conscious of this, what you consider to be appropriate behavior in the workplace and what you will not consider to be appropriate behavior.

Sheri Oluyemi (23:11):
I agree entirely. Same thing with the use of these regenerative AI softwares at work. Make sure that you are not ignoring the problem, like Betsy says, well, it's not necessarily a problem, but ignoring the potential for a problem because this, this software is being used at your workplaces, whether you like it or not. So the best thing to do is to a, recognize it, first of all and address it usually with a well drafted policy, a well drafted procedure on which you trained your managers and your employees. Right. So what, how to, how to prepare for this? Again, just to understand that you cannot delegate liability. This company that the E O C has sued is going to be liable for violations of the A D E A, regardless of the fact that they were using software to accomplish these tasks.

Sheri Oluyemi (24:07):
So if you're using software, something as simple as keystrokes monitoring or if, if you are using some kind of algorithm to test whether the employee is a good fit for your organization, you need to recognize whether or not it's systemically screening out a certain protected class and, and make changes to your process and procedure based on what you find from looking at that and conducting audits regarding that. So that was our last topic, the four that we intended to go over with you. This afternoon we're really excited to take your questions about any of the laws that we've, we've spoke to. So I'll just pause for a second and go through the q and a, go through the chat to see if I have some questions. And I do have one, so I'll start here if that's okay. I'll read it out.

Sheri Oluyemi (25:07):
It says, how well are non-competes enforced for a remote C P G company with an online presence selling nationwide as D two C? It's hard to determine geographical limits here. That's a really good question. If you're selling nationwide and you're trying to enforce a restrictive covenant that, for example, prohibits non-solicitation nationwide, that is entirely enforceable based on that, that geographic scope or not, or non-compete provision that you're trying to enforce nationwide, if that is actually your, your customer base is actually nationwide, you're selling in every state in every territory, then it could be enforceable because there, there's a match there for the area that you're trying to protect. However, if the representative who signed the non-compete does not sell nationwide, perhaps their contacts are regional, then it would be less enforceable if you can't prove that this employee really has information or contacts that they could use nationwide. Betsy, would you, would you agree with that? I know this. Oh,

Elizabeth K. Dorminey (26:13):
Certainly. I think that's good because there is a, there, there, the part of the, part of the reaction I think that leads that led to the non-compete was over breath. You know, if you, if you, if you overreach, you're likely to get your hands slapped, whatever it is. And requiring an employee to adhere to a non-compete agreement that is not proportional to the kind of work that the employee has done is a recipe for getting it invalidated. And the same thing with with time, you know most industries seems to move and change rather quickly. Now you know, a one year non-compete might hold up a six month one, two or five years, maybe you're gonna have more trouble with that. It again, depends on your industry and it depends on what's proportional to the kind of work that the person has been doing.

Sheri Oluyemi (27:06):
Well, if you're in Georgia, the maximum duration of a non-compete is two years, unless it was contingent to the sale of a business, in which case you may be able to get away with five years. But in Georgia for, for temporal for the time limits two years or less. The, the statute in enacted in 2011 made that a really simple, simple analysis. Is it two years or less? It's enforceable. But, but yes, the question speaks specifically about territory and, and it is, it's not too hard to determine the limits. Like, like we've said, if the employees really selling nationwide, if they have a nationwide patch as part of their sales goal, or let's say they're director of sales, it covers the entire country. It it could be enforceable. We have another

Elizabeth K. Dorminey (27:55):
On there again, too, when you have a specific employee who has specific and more high level responsibilities, I think you're, you're, the likelihood of being able to enforce a non-compete in that context is considerably greater than if it's just a one size fits all that you throw at all your employees.

Sheri Oluyemi (28:15):
Agree. We hope we've answered that question. We have another one that I will read out. It says here, okay, it says, can I make a salaried employee use a vacation day if they call out sick? So the employee is exempt, salaried, or non-exempt salary doesn't say,

Elizabeth K. Dorminey (28:44):
Well, here's, here's the thing with that is you can't, you can't part of it depends on whether you have a sick leave policy or not, but I think in general, anticipating what Sherry would say, if you have a salaried employee, you, you're in effect you have to ensure that you, that they get paid their whole salary for every day they work and you are in effect reducing their pay if you are requiring them to use a vacation day. So I, I think that that may be, that may run afoul of the Fair Labor Standards Act

Sheri Oluyemi (29:18):
And the attendee who's asked the question has clarified that he or she was referring to an exempt salaried employee. So can she make someone who is exempt from the F L S A use a vacation day if they call out sick? And I agree with Betsy if they're using a vacation day, you might cause them to have less than the required minimum salary for the week. You might be jeopardizing your exemption if you do that. And again, like she said, it has to be pursuant to a written sick leave policy in which the employee has knowledge.

Elizabeth K. Dorminey (29:55):
And if you don't wanna, you don't wanna lose that exemption if you've got it because then you're on the hook for two or possibly three years of, of back pay and overtime. And that's, that's not fun.

Sheri Oluyemi (30:08):
All right. Thank you Betsy. And I believe we've answered this question. I'm just clicking it off here. We have another few minutes for any questions that our guests may have. Please feel free to either raise your hand and I will give you the floor to speak to the group or you could type your question into the Q and a. I'm just making sure I didn't miss any. Okay. Well, while we wait for questions from the audience, do I see any hands? I'll ask you one Betsy, about non-disclosure, non-disclosure agreements let's see here. Now, would, would this issue of being able to speak out about terms, words, terms of and conditions of employment being impacted by these restrictions on non-disclosure agreements, is that a union issue or non-union issue, or both?

Elizabeth K. Dorminey (31:23):
Well, it, it, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's an N L R B issue. Let me finesse it that way. Certainly in the union context, people have the right to bring grievances and you, you would not be able to prohibit them from, from talking about things there because that would come under the, the heading of wor of worker coercion. And that's of course illegal under the N L R A, whether you have a union representing your employees or not, they have the right to enter into discussions about these things. And I think probably that was one of the motivating factors behind behind this this, this rule change. Certainly there again, you have a different kind of consideration when it's a negotiated settlement as opposed to when it is a term of employment. And I think that, you know, certainly the N L R A has a, has a point saying that you cannot, you cannot make people waive rights as that they're guaranteed under that law as a condition of their employment.

Elizabeth K. Dorminey (32:29):
But if you have a dispute lawsuit, arbitration settlement agreement, which imposes a non-disclosure agreement on both parties and certainly mutuality matters there, because without it, it doesn't really mean too much. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> then then I think that those, those are, those are not adversely affected by these rule changes. But, but that probably is one of the ingredients that went into devising this rule was the notion that people ought to have the right to speak up about terms and conditions of work. Cuz as we saw during the big explosion of, of Me Too complaints a couple years ago, you know, one person complains about Harvey Weinstein and suddenly there's hundreds of people complaining about Harvey Weinstein and had the persons complaining been allowed to exchange that information more freely with each other than perhaps it wouldn't have gotten risen to the levels that it did.

Sheri Oluyemi (33:30):
Good. I agree.

Sheri Oluyemi (33:33):
I'm checking for questions. If anyone has a question that we can answer, you can raise your hand or pop it into the q and a. I'll ask a question that I, I am getting fairly often, which is, how far does the employer have to go to accommodate a pregnant worker? Is it the same analysis under the a d a And the answer that I've been given is the analysis is very simple. You're not, it is very similar. You're not required to create a position, but you are required to once, of course, they've requested the accommodation, you're required to try to the point of undue hardship. So if that, if that requires you giving the same type of light duties that you give other employees who are on injuries, maybe because of worker's comp related issues, then you have to extend the same accommodations to that pregnant worker. It's, it, the analysis doesn't require you to do much of, much different things than under the a d a. What it really changes is the eligible employee, previously they had to be pregnant with some illness complication, and now just being pregnant is, is sufficient.

Elizabeth K. Dorminey (34:46):
Well, that's a, that's a good point and an and an additional consideration there too is that the the accommodation that the employee requests may not be ultimately the one that they get because it has to be a, a midway point. As Sherry and I both can attest, there are many, many jobs including practice law that can be performed very effectively in a remote fashion. That's not true of all jobs. So, you know, it would depend very much on a, on an individualized examination of the circumstances of the employment and the request so that, you know, perhaps working remotely is something you can accommodate given this person's job duties or the, you know, the es the essential job duties and perhaps it's not, perhaps, you know, you have to come to other, another kind of accommodation. I suppose part of the good news is that, you know, even though it may not always feel that way, pregnancy does not last forever, <laugh> it is a condition that, that you move on from and then you have a whole new set of problems to deal with. But the, the, the ones requiring accommodation are changing you know, will change af at a certain point.

Sheri Oluyemi (35:55):
Excellent. And on that note, we just have two minutes. I do not see any additional questions. So we're going once, going twice

Elizabeth K. Dorminey (36:08):
Per class. Well, and then honor it being Friday, I think we'll we'll adjourn if that's it. <Laugh>.

Sheri Oluyemi (36:13):
Sounds good. We'll give you three minutes back. Again, thank you for joining us this afternoon. We hope you received our contact information where you registered for this webinar. If you have any questions you need answered offline please reach out to us by email, phone call, we'd be happy to help.

Elizabeth K. Dorminey (36:30):
All right, and thank you very much, Sherry. You're a great moderator and and and contributor.

Sheri Oluyemi (36:35):
And you too, Betsy. Have an excellent weekend. Bye. Bye.