Posts tagged Independent Contractor Rule
Employers Ask NLRB To Return To 2019 Contractor Test
February 17, 2026 //
Kim Kavin Commentary: It’s Not There
January 22, 2026 // New Jersey's Office of Administrative Law confirms that Governor Murphy's independent-contractor rule is not adopted, as Governor Sherrill takes over.
New Jersey: ACR177 Joins SCR138
December 12, 2025 // New Jersey Assemblywoman Vicky Flynn has introduced Assembly Concurrent Resolution 177, which is a companion to Senate Concurrent Resolution 138 that Senator Declan O’Scanlon introduced last month. ACR177 and SCR138 would declare the proposed independent-contractor rule at the New Jersey Department of Labor & Workforce Development inconsistent with legislative intent.
GSI, Kavin Give More Reasons for NJDOL to Abandon Independent Contractor Rule
November 3, 2025 // despite more than 99% of opposing comments to it, there were two new developments this week to show even more reasons why the effort should be abandoned. A new analysis from the Garden State Initiative showed how the rule would effectively threaten the livelihoods of thousands of freelancers, caregivers, and small business owners across the state. The report, Independent Contractor Rules Threaten New Jersey’s Small Businesses and Jobs: Lessons from California’s Failed Approach, said the rule would disproportionately affect “women and men with young children who rely on flexible hours,” retirees supplementing their income, and “immigrants and minorities, many who use gig work as a first step into the American workforce.”
Commentary: He Laughed Out Loud
October 2, 2025 // The Labor Department is part of the Murphy administration. The governor has the power to rescind this proposal, to protect the incomes and careers of New Jersey’s estimated 1.7 million independent contractors. He’s choosing not to do it, while laughing about it.
Commentary: ‘The Safety of Our Children’
September 11, 2025 // Here’s an interesting perspective from within the estimated 8,300 public comments that the New Jersey Department of Labor & Workforce Development uploaded last week, with regard to its proposed independent-contractor rule. Denise Lanza, co-chair of the New Jersey Recreation and Park Association Public Affairs Committee, filed a comment that explains how the rule-making would make it a challenge for the statewide parks and recreation community to hire people like youth league umpires and coaches, or yoga instructors for senior citizens at community centers.
Commentary Kim Kavin: Worse than California’s AB5
May 6, 2025 // They tried, and failed, to do just that back in 2019-20 with legislation that mirrored California’s disastrous freelance-busting ABC Test law. Independent contractors from all across New Jersey cried foul. Our elected officials ultimately decided this policy was a bad idea for the Garden State. Trenton bureaucrats are now moving to impose this ABC Test interpretation on us all anyway, through rule-making, in their final months of having power before this fall’s election.
Kim Kavin: Intent to Reconsider
April 8, 2025 // The federal government has indicated in court that it may rescind the Biden-Harris administration’s independent-contractor rule and undertake the process of new rule-making. Yesterday, the U.S. Labor Department filed a status report in one of several lawsuits against the Biden-Harris administration over its independent contractor rule. This status report was filed with regard to the Frisard case, whose plaintiff is represented by Liberty Justice Center and the Pelican Institute.
California: The Lost Report
April 1, 2025 // On December 3, 2020, almost a year after California’s freelance-busting law, Assembly Bill 5, went into effect, the California Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights was created to study AB5’s civil rights implications. The committee’s officially designated term ended December 4, 2024. There were hours and hours of testimony, much of it recorded on video. But the committee never issued a report based on all this testimony its members heard. Members of the committee say they were told that if they issued individual statements in the absence of any committee report, they would be failing to comply with the Federal Advisory Committee Act and the rules of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Independent Contracting in 2025
January 8, 2025 // Independent contractors forgo workplace benefits that employees receive. Portable benefits are a way to give them access to benefits untethered from employment with one employer.