In an action anticipated since it issued its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in March, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) officially has withdrawn the Joint Employer Final Rule published during the previous administration. The Rescission Final Rule was published on July 30, 2021, and becomes effective on September 28, 2021.
The Joint Employer Final Rule was published under the Trump Administration and went into effect in January 2020. It addressed the standard for determining whether an employee may be deemed to be jointly employed by two or more employers. The Rule instructed that joint employer liability was to be guided by four primary, albeit non-exclusive, factors derived from the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Bonnette v. California Health & Welfare Agency, 704 F.2d 1465 (9th Cir. 1983).
