As expected, the White House issued a memorandum to the heads of all executive departments and agencies within the first few hours after President Biden’s inauguration on January 20, requesting that they halt all non-emergency rulemaking and regulatory activity pending review by the new administration. The memo effectively does away with the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL)’s January 7, 2021 Final Rule on independent contractor classification, which would have reduced the number of primary factors the agency would consider when determining whether a worker is an independent contractor or an employee to two “core factors”—the nature and degree of control over the work and the worker’s opportunity for profit or loss based on initiative and/or investment. Biden has promised to work with Congress to establish a federal standard for independent contractor classification modeled on the “ABC test” for all labor, employment, and tax laws.  The ABC test—used as the basis for several states’ laws, such as California’s AB5 legislation—is the most stringent of various tests used to determine worker status.

Read the full post on Proskauer’s Law and the Workplace blog.