Tag: Third Circuit

NEWS FLASH: The Ban Is Back! Philadelphia Employers Can’t Ask About Salary, Wage, and Benefits History

Thomas J. Szymanski

Effective immediately, Philadelphia employers are prohibited from asking job applicants about their salary, wage, and benefits history.

As a bit of background, in 2016, the Philadelphia City Council passed an ordinance banning salary, wage, and benefits history inquiries by employers (and also barring employers from setting a new hire’s initial pay based on their salary history), which was signed into law in January 2017. However, the ban on salary and wage history inquiries has been on ice since April 30, 2018, when it was enjoined by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit dissolved the district court’s injunction; therefore, Philadelphia employers must immediately stop asking job applicants about their salary, wage, and benefits history. The Third Circuit also upheld the lawfulness of the ordinance’s bar on using salary history to set initial pay.

Please contact a member of Blank Rome’s Labor & Employment practice group if you have any questions about compliance with Philadelphia’s salary, wage, and benefits ban or any other employment issues.

Third Circuit Indicates Support for Use of Broader Restrictive Covenants in Post-Hire Agreements Rather Than a Uniform Approach at Hiring

Kevin M. Passerini

We wrote an earlier post about the Third Circuit’s opinion in ADP, LLC v. Rafferty, et al., confirming courts’ blue penciling authority (see here); but the Third Circuit’s analysis of ADP’s two-tiered restrictive covenant structure is also worth discussing, as it may have employers doing some head scratching.

Why the focus on ADP’s two-tiered contracting approach?

ADP’s first-tier agreements for new hires included confidentiality obligations and a one-year customer non-solicit tailored to the employee’s assigned role and contacts, but no non-compete. ADP’s second-tier agreements (used in connection with stock incentives offered to high-performing employees) added a one-year territory-based non-compete and broadened the scope of the one-year non-solicit to include all customers and business partners for which ADP has provided services and all prospects for which ADP reasonably expects to provide services during the two-year period following the employee’s termination—regardless of the employee’s responsibility for them or access to confidential information about them during employment. Continue reading “Third Circuit Indicates Support for Use of Broader Restrictive Covenants in Post-Hire Agreements Rather Than a Uniform Approach at Hiring”

Third Circuit Confirms Courts’ Authority to Salvage Over Broad Restrictive Covenants

Kevin M. Passerini

On April 26, 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit weighed in on a pair of district court rulings which had denied ADP, LLC’s requests for preliminary injunctive relief against two former employees who ADP alleged had violated post-employment restrictive covenants. In ADP, LLC v. Rafferty, et al., the Court unanimously reversed the rulings and remanded to the district courts with instructions to “blue pencil the agreements and reconsider the four-factor preliminary injunction standard” as it relates to the former employees’ non-competition and customer non-solicitation obligations. The Third Circuit’s opinion restates what has long been the law in New Jersey and clarifies for anyone still in doubt that “New Jersey has evolved from invalidating overbroad restrictive covenants outright to presumptively ‘compress[ing] or reduc[ing]’ their scope ‘so as to render the covenant reasonable’” (alterations in original; citations omitted).

What is “blue penciling”? Continue reading “Third Circuit Confirms Courts’ Authority to Salvage Over Broad Restrictive Covenants”

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