Takeaways

  • New amendments significantly restrict how employers draft employment, separation, and settlement agreements.
  • Expanded leave laws require immediate policy and handbook updates.
  • New AI restrictions directly impact recruiting, hiring, and other employment decisions, with notice and anti-discrimination requirements.

As 2025 draws to a close, employers should be aware of new Illinois employment laws going into effect in January 2026.

Below is a summary of the upcoming changes to Illinois law:Continue Reading 2026 Illinois Employment Law Update: New Compliance Obligations on AI, Leave, Pay, and Workplace Agreements

Over the past decade or so, there’s been much effort by the government to expand the scope of who may be deemed a joint employer. Those efforts have been to make contractors and their subcontractors, franchisors and their franchisees, and staffing agencies and their clients, joint employers. If they are joint employers, then one may be liable for the employment law wrongs of the other, and one may even have to engage in collective bargaining with respect to employees on the other joint employer’s payroll. Major efforts in this regard were made during the Obama Administration, all of which were rolled back during the Trump Administration.Continue Reading The Rules on Who’s a Joint Employer Have Dramatically Changed