Workforce Bulletin

On March 6, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit issued a significant decision clarifying how discrimination claims brought by majority-group plaintiffs should be analyzed under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (NJLAD). In Massey v. Borough of Bergenfield, the court concluded that majority-group plaintiffs should not be required to satisfy the “background circumstances” rule—a doctrine that imposed a heightened burden on plaintiffs alleging discrimination against majority groups. In reaching that conclusion, the court, predicting that the New Jersey Supreme Court would do the same, relied on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, which rejected the background circumstances rule in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII) cases. Massey marks the first federal appellate decision to apply Ames to state law.

We previously reported that the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development (“NJDOL”) issued proposed regulations to implement New Jersey’s Temporary Workers’ Bill of Rights (the “Act”), including its pay equity requirement. On September 16, 2024, the NJDOL adopted N.J.A.C. 12:72 (the “Regulations”) implementing sections 1 through 7, and 10 of the Act, pertaining to “workplace protections, as well as temporary help service firm and third-party client responsibilities.” The key provisions are summarized below.

Pay Equity Requirement

Significantly, the Regulations provide a formula for calculating the minimum hourly rate of pay for temporary workers, which under the Act is determined by “the average rate of pay and average cost of benefits” of comparator employees, i.e., employees of the third-party client who perform:

the same or substantially similar work on jobs the performance of which requires equal skill, effort, and responsibility, and which are performed under similar working conditions for the third-party client at the time the temporary laborer is assigned to work at the third-party client.

On June 3, 2024, the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights proposed new regulations addressing Disparate Impact Discrimination, N.J.A.C. 13:16 (the Proposed Rules) under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (LAD).

The Proposed Rules clarify that in addition to the LAD’s prohibition against conduct that treats people differently because of their membership in a protected class, the law also prohibits practices and policies, in employment, housing, public accommodation, credit, and contracting, that have a disproportionately negative effect on members of a protected class, unless the practice or policy is necessary to achieve a “substantial, legitimate, nondiscriminatory interest and there is no less discriminatory, equally effective alternative that would achieve the same interest.”

The Proposed Rules, which largely codify state and federal case law, provide the legal standard and burdens of proof for determining whether a policy or practice has discriminatory effect, and give examples of practices or policies that may result in disparate impact on a protected class.

New York City employers, time is running out to update your bulletin boards. Local Law No. 161, which took effect January 2, 2024, requires New York City employers to display and distribute to each employee a multilingual “Know Your Rights at Work” poster (the “Poster”) by no later than July 1, 2024. The Poster’s main feature – a QR code – directs employees to the Workers’ Bill of Rights website created by the New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) to summarize protections available under federal, state, and local laws.

Specifically, Local Law No. 161 requires New York City employers to: