Hunton Retail Law Resource

The landscape of immigration enforcement is undergoing a dramatic transformation in 2025. With President Trump's recent executive orders signaling a renewed focus on worksite enforcement, employers across industries must prepare for what many experts anticipate will be the most aggressive immigration enforcement environment in recent history.

Read our full coverage published on Hunton’s Business Immigration blog: Immigration Worksite Enforcement in 2025: What Employers Need to Know Now.

The use of Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) in the workplace has spread rapidly since President Trump left the White House in early 2021.  In recent years, retail employers have started using AI technology in a variety of ways from automating tasks, to implementing data-driven decision making, to enhancing customer experience.  Though the Biden administration started to grapple with the use of AI in the workplace, the second Trump administration could mark a dramatic shift in the federal government’s response to these issues.

On June 17, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to take up a wage and hour case, E.M.D. Sales, Inc. v. Carrera, to address a circuit split regarding the standard of proof that employers must satisfy to show that employees are exempt from the minimum wage and overtime requirements under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”).

In January 2023, the FTC announced a proposed rule that would ban employers from imposing noncompetes on employees. After collecting over 26,000 public comments during the 90-day notice and comment period, the FTC announced a special Open Commission Meeting set to take place on Tuesday, April 23, 2024 to discuss the implications of the proposed rule. While closed to public comment, the public is still able to view the meeting via webcast. 

On April 1, 2024, California’s Assembly Bill No.1228 (“AB 1228”) took effect, making the state’s fast food workers the highest paid in the United States. However, uncertainty regarding precisely who is covered under the new law has left some employers reeling, as the stakes for complying with California’s Labor Code remain as high as ever.