In 2006, San Francisco passed the Health Care Security Ordinance, which requires employers to provide health care coverage for employees working in San Francisco, or else pay a fee to the city.

Effective January 1, 2006, the minimum wage in New York for non-exempt employees, other than food service workers receiving tips, increased from $6.00 to $6.75 (a 12.5% increase), pursuant to the Empire State Wage Act of 2004 (the "Empire Act").

Welcome to Sixty Seconds of Privacy, an e-newsletter brought to you by the Privacy and Data Security practice group at Thelen Reid Brown Raysman & Steiner LLP.

New York recently enacted a statute requiring employers to allow women break time, and make reasonable efforts to provide them a private location, so they can express breast milk for their nursing children while at work.

In Abatie v. Alta Health & Life Ins. Co., __F.3d__ (9th Cir. 2006), 2006 U.S.App. LEXIS 20829, the Ninth Circuit, in an en banc decision, charted a complex, unique course. The court addressed the commonplace situation where a plan administrator, such as an insurance company, has an inherent conflict of interest because it acts as both the administrator deciding claims reviews and the funding source for benefits.

In Davenport v. Washington Education Association, __ U.S. ___ (2007), the United States Supreme Court examined the boundaries within which a State may regulate the political expenditures of a union representing public employees.

"Short selling promotes market liquidity." "Short selling is un-American." "Public companies that choose to fight short sellers are always fraudulent enterprises." "Hedge fund short sellers are heroes; they uncovered Enron." "Hedge funds can only make money by engaging in elaborate market manipulations that buy off research analysts and spread untruths into the marketplace."

A Maryland state law aimed at forcing Wal-Mart to boost the amount it spends for employees’ health care insurance impermissibly interferes with federal employee benefit law, according to a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

For the second time in just six months, Thelen Reid & Priest LLP has won a major appellate victory benefiting all California employers.

The Pension Protection Act of 2006 (the "PPA," the "Act") was signed by President Bush on August 17, 2006. The Employee Benefits practice group of Thelen Reid & Priest LLP has issued a series of reports that summarize selected provisions of the Act.

A group of former Thelen LLP equity partners that had held out on striking a deal with the bankruptcy trustee agreed to settle...according to a proposed deal filed in New York bankruptcy court.

In In Re Kaiser Aluminum Corp., __F.3d__(3d Cir. 2006), 2006 U.S.App. LEXIS 18746 (July 26, 2006), the Third Circuit held that pension plans must be considered in the aggregate, not individually, when an employer in Chapter 11 bankruptcy seeks to terminate more than one plan.

The Tax Increase Prevention & Reconciliation Act of 2005, signed by President Bush on May 17, 2006, allows taxpayers to convert regular IRA balances to Roth IRAs without regard to income limits, beginning in 2010.

The following information is of interest to self-insured employers who need guidance regarding a new law that redefines the responsibilities of the California Insurance Guarantee Association ("CIGA") under specific excess workers compensation policies issued by insurers that are now insolvent. The new law took effect January 1, 2006

Each edition of this e-newsletter addresses one interesting legal development in the area of privacy and data security, in a brief "question and answer" format.

On November 9, 2007, the California Court of Appeals, in Ortega v. Contra Costa Community College Dist., Case No. A113341, held that an employer may not require its employees to submit claims under the state's Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) to a contractual administrative process (for example, grievance procedures under a collective bargaining agreement), except under relatively narrow circumstances.

Under the PPA, hybrid plans (called "applicable defined benefit plans") are generally defined as plans under which the accrued benefit is calculated as the balance of a hypothetical account maintained for the participant or as an accumulated percentage of the participant's final average compensation. A cash balance plan is the most frequent example of an applicable defined benefit plan.

SEC enforcement activity with respect to hedge funds increased significantly in 2005 and is almost certain to increase again in 2006. The outcome of an SEC investigation may involve disgorgement of profits, civil monetary penalties, suspensions or bars from the securities industry, or even criminal prosecution.

American International Group, Inc. (AIG), one of the world’s largest insurance conglomerates, has settled a variety of charges leveled against it by New York State and Federal Authorities.

New York’s highest court has provided a clear and guiding ruling on the application of pay-if-paid clauses in contracts governed by laws of other states. The ruling resolves the split in authority resulting from directly conflicting decisions handed down in 2005 by the First and Second Departments of the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court.