2025 Employment Law Checklist

Each year, LP’s Employment & Executive Compensation Practice Group is pleased to provide a short checklist of steps that all companies should consider taking to measure their readiness for the coming year. We hope you find our 2025 Employment Law Checklist a helpful guide to best practices for the year ahead.

• Comply With Pay Disclosure Requirements. Pay transparency (giving employees and applicants visibility into what others are being paid and what is being offered) continues to be a hot topic across the country. Effective January 1, 2025, most employers with employees in Illinois are required to include the wage or salary range and a general description of benefits in all job postings and to provide that information to current employees within 14 days. Minnesota and New York implemented similar provisions effective January 1. Massachusetts implements their version of pay transparency on February 1, and the New Jersey and Vermont requirements will roll out this summer. Human Resources and recruiting teams need to make sure they understand and comply with the law in the states where they operate to avoid applicable penalties and claims.
• Make Sure Paid Leave Policies Comply With Expanding Laws. In the last year, many jurisdictions have updated their sick leave laws, while others (including Alaska, Missouri, and Nebraska) have implemented new requirements. Illinois’ Paid Leave for All Workers Act has been in effect since January 2024, but new Chicago-specific provisions requiring that employees be provided with “general paid time off” in addition to sick leave went into effect on July 1, 2024. New York has a new Paid Prenatal Leave requirement that provides for a separate bank of 20 hours per year for pregnancy and fertility-related absences in addition to regular paid sick leave (and thus requires separate tracking). Connecticut, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, and Washington State have also updated their requirements to be more friendly to employees. All of these laws are different when it comes to coverage, carryover and use rules, and effective dates, so make sure you understand the law in every state where you have employees to ensure that you’re able to stay on the right side of these varied requirements.
• Be Aware of New Protected Categories. The grounds on which employees can claim discrimination or harassment continue to expand. In Illinois, employees are now protected from discrimination or harassment based on “family responsibilities” and “reproductive health decisions.” Minnesota has also expanded its definition of protected categories to include “familial status,” and certain California cities have made “family” and “relationship structure” protected classifications. In addition to avoiding making decisions on these newly protected grounds, employers should confirm that their leave policies and practices don’t inadvertently discriminate based on family situations or reproductive health decisions.
• Think Carefully About How You Use Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Employment Decisions. There is no question that AI has become part of the workplace, and state legislators are taking steps to make sure that its use doesn’t cause discrimination. Both the EEOC and the state of New Jersey have issued guidance making clear that anti-discrimination laws apply to AI-facilitated decisions. And starting in 2026, both Colorado and Illinois will prohibit employers from using AI in ways that discriminate against workers, with Colorado’s law also requiring employers to monitor and report use of AI in the hiring process. We expect to see other states following suit this year. With AI guidance in place and these laws on the horizon, employers should consider and fine-tune how the company is using AI, especially in tracking performance and making hiring, termination, compensation, and other employment decisions.
• Revisit Remote Work Policies & Practices. As more and more companies require employees to return to the office, it’s important to make sure that return-to-work policies are applied consistently and that proper procedures are in place to handle employee requests to work remotely due to a disability or sincerely held religious belief. Without consistency and processes to consider exceptions that could be required by law (and approve them where appropriate), employers risk claims that they failed to engage in the interactive process or failed to provide a reasonable accommodation.
• Comply With New Employment Authorization Program Requirements. Illinois employers that use authorization and eligibility verification programs like E-Verify now need to comply with additional notification requirements, including  providing notice before taking any adverse action based on discrepancies between the information provided by the employee and the information received from the verification program: notifying employees within 72 hours of receiving a request from a government agency to inspect work authorization documents and advising the impacted employee of any discrepancy found in their work authorization documents by the employer or any government agency.
• Keep an Eye on State-Specific Requirements for Restrictive Covenants. On the national level, the Federal Trade Commission’s non-compete ban is no longer a concern, but employers need to stay up to date on state and industry-specific limitations imposed by their local legislators. Bills limiting restrictive covenants in the healthcare industry or limiting enforceability of covenants against employees and freelancers are currently before the legislatures in Connecticut, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, South Carolina, and Washington State. And with a conservative turn in Washington, we are anticipating more employee-friendly efforts to limit non-competes and non-solicits in more liberal states. In order to protect the business, it is very important that employers know the law (and any proposed requirements) in states where their employees and applicants are located, and that agreements be tailored to the particular location.
• Comply With All Training Requirements Required by State Law. Illinois and New York employers are required to provide harassment-prevention training to employees annually. In addition to the harassment training, Chicago employers are also required to annually provide manager-specific harassment training and a bystander intervention training for employees who work in or supervise employees in Chicago. California requires most employers to provide one hour of sexual harassment and abusive conduct prevention training to nonsupervisory employees, and two hours of sexual harassment and abusive conduct prevention training to supervisory employees, every two years. Effective January 1, 2025, California’s employers may obtain temporary restraining orders on behalf of employees for harassment, broadening the existing law that only covered workplace violence or credible threats. Connecticut, Delaware, and Maine all also have their own state requirements, with many other states encouraging employers to provide harassment training. States have specific deadlines and requirements for their trainings. Human Resources teams should ensure their trainings and procedures comply with the standards set by the department of labor in the states where they have employees.

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