Articles About Hawaii Labor And Employment Law.

Hawaii has narrowed the scope of what employers can consider regarding an individual’s conviction history when making employment decisions.

Hawaii has long had a law limiting the discretion that employers have to consider older conviction records in making employment decisions.  Effective September 15, 2020, SB 2193 prevents most private sector employers from considering conviction records within the last 10 years, but only convictions within seven years for felony

Effective March 23, 2020 at 4:30 p.m. (HST), all residents on the island of Oahu in Hawaii have been ordered by the mayor to stay at home and work from home through April 30, 2020. A similar mayoral order goes into effect for residents on the islands of Maui, Molokai, and Lanai on March 25, 2020 at 12:01 a.m. Kauai Mayor Derek Kawakami is expected to announce a similar shelter-in-place order. These are in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Hawaii will be joining the salary history ban trend beginning in 2019. On July 5, Governor David Ige signed into law a bill seeking to address the pay disparity between men and women who perform similar work.

On July 5, 2018, Governor David Y. Ige signed Senate Bill 2351 into law, adding Hawaii to the list of jurisdictions generally prohibiting employers from asking applicants about their prior compensation history.1 As long as employers have at least one employee in the state, they are covered.

Taking advantage of a new law that substantially increases penalties, the Wage Standards Division of the Hawaii State Department of Labor & Industrial Relations (“DLIR”) has issued penalties totaling $767,095 to a construction company remodeling a hotel in Waikiki, Hawaii.

Considering whether Hawaii state law would require additional consideration for a non-compete imposed mid-employment, a federal judge has held that “the Hawaii Supreme Court would not require additional consideration beyond continuing at-will employment for [post-employment] restrictive covenants.” Standard Register v. Keala, Civ. No. 14-00291 JMS-RLP (D. Haw., June 8, 2015).

Closing a gap in Hawaii’s medical marijuana law, a new law sets up a regime of vertically integrated grow facilities and retail dispensing licenses for the delivery of medical marijuana to “cardholders” in Hawaii.

Departing from the state’s normally pro-employer laws and judicial attitudes regarding non-compete covenants, a new law bars high-tech companies in Hawaii from requiring their employees to enter into “non-compete” and “non-solicit” agreements as a condition of employment. The new law, Act 158, went into effect on July 1, 2015.

In April 2012, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued its updated enforcement guidance concerning how, in its view, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII) restricts an employer’s discretion to consider criminal records relative to employment decisions. Even before April 2012, and since that time, the EEOC has filed lawsuits against a handful of employers challenging employer screening policies that the EEOC maintains disproportionately affect protected class members (known as “disparate impact” discrimination claims).