AI lawsuits and complaints: Employers and courts all over the country have experienced a steady increase in pro se litigants. Many legal experts believe that Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) is partially responsible for this boom in unrepresented litigants. Between 2021 and 2025, the Lex Machina 2026 Employment Litigation Report reflected a nearly two-fold increase in the number of pro se employment case filings, from 2,052 to 4,388. Some large employment law firms, conducting their own statistical analysis, identified somewhere between a 40-50% increase in pro se employment litigation. Defending pro se cases which use GAI is expected to cost about 10-15% more than a traditional lawyer-brought case. This is largely because AI dramatically lengthens the discovery period, as pro se litigants may be more likely to engage in frivolous motion practice. One firm reported that a pro se plaintiff filed as many as 29 separate motions in a single case. Similarly, pro se litigants are rarely familiar with the rules of discovery, leading to extensive (and expensive) discovery phases. That same pro se litigant filed as many as 236 interrogatories, 144 requests for admission, and 38 requests for production. Not only that HR is seeing a rise in inhouse complaints alleging everything under the sun. Source: FordHarrison 6/25/26

Retaliation charges at an all-time high: Workplace retaliation charges hit a record high in the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's last fiscal year, continuing a long-running upward climb. In the agency's 2025 fiscal year, which closed in October, the commission received more than 54,000 retaliation charges, which is a record. The 2025 filings easily cleared the previous high watermark of about 46,000 from the commission's 2023 fiscal year. Training should be a priority for HR and managers in this area. Source: Law360 6/29/26

Why is a job interesting? Not money: What makes one job more attractive than the next one? The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics seems to have a clue: Earlier in June, a BLS report served as the culmination of a study on job characteristics, explaining how a change in certain characteristics could affect “self-assessed job quality.” BLS researchers analyzed Federal Reserve data on workers who started a new job between 2021 and 2023, aiming to capture how both monetary and non-monetary factors affect an individual’s view of their old job versus their new job. The verdict? BLS said it found “strong evidence that workers value characteristics beyond pay and benefits in evaluating their new jobs, although pay and benefits remain important predictors of job quality.”  Specifically, BLS said, an employee’s interest in their work is particularly predictive of their assessment of overall job quality, even after controlling for changes in pay and benefits. Of particular interest to HR may be BLS’ finding that if a new hire felt their current role was more interesting than the last one, they were 27% more likely to consider the new job better overall. Source: HR Dive 6/29/26

Affirmative Action Guidance officially rescinded by EEOC: The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced June 30 it had rescinded several decades-old guidance documents relating to voluntary workplace affirmative action plans, concluding the prior positions were out of step with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The agency voted Monday to withdraw the materials, according to the announcement, although the items had been put on the agenda for a public meeting Wednesday. The now-defunct documents include a 1979 interpretative rule, called "Affirmative Action Appropriate Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964," which outlined how employers can voluntarily implement affirmative action plans that comply with federal civil rights law. Source: Law360 6/30/26

Restricted stock units (RSUs) not included in regular rate of pay for OT: The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California recently became the first federal district court to hold that restricted stock units (RSUs) need not be included in the "regular rate" of pay used to calculate overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). In Costa v. Apple Inc., No. 3:23-cv-01353-WHO (June 11, 2026), the district court granted Apple's motion for summary judgment, holding that the company's RSU awards are excluded from the regular rate under both the "gift" exception of 29 U.S.C. § 207(e)(1) and "equity" exception of Section 207(e)(8). Costa provides important guidance for employers that grant equity to nonexempt workers. First, employers should inventory which nonexempt populations receive RSUs or other equity awards and confirm whether payroll currently includes or excludes vested RSU value from the regular rate and document the legal basis for any exclusion to support a good-faith defense barring liquidated damages and a finding of willfulness. Next, employers should ensure that equity grants remain discretionary in both plan documents and practice and plan documents should not create an enforceable contractual right to a specific award amount for nonexempt employees. Source: Holland & Knight 6/29/26

OMB extends OFCCP’s Disability Self-ID Form through 2029 even as a rule to eliminate it moves forward: On July 16, 2026, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), acting through its Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), approved, without change, the OFCCP's information collection request supporting Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. That approval keeps Form CC-305, the Voluntary Self-Identification of Disability form, in force for federal contractor use through July 31, 2029. Source: DirectEmployers 7/20/26