Rule 6-2

[Jeremias Resendez]

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The misclassification of employees as independent contractors may deny workers minimum wage, overtime pay, and other protections. This final rule will reduce the risk that employees are misclassified as independent contractors while providing a consistent approach for businesses that engage with individuals who are in business for themselves.

The final rule creates certainty for consumers by defining the specific circumstances in which airlines must provide refunds. Prior to this rule, airlines were permitted to set their own standards for what kind of flight changes warranted a refund. As a result, refund policies differed from airline to airline, which made it difficult for passengers to know or assert their refund rights. DOT also received complaints of some airlines revising and applying less consumer-friendly refund policies during spikes in flight cancellations and changes.

The final rule also requires airlines to provide prompt notifications to consumers affected by a cancelled or significantly changed flight of their right to a refund of the ticket and extra service fees, as well as any related policies.

In addition, in instances where consumers are restricted by a government or advised by a medical professional not to travel to, from, or within the United States due to a serious communicable disease, the final rule requires that airlines must provide travel credits or vouchers. Consumers may be required to provide documentary evidence to support their request. Travel vouchers or credits provided by airlines must be transferrable and valid for at least five years from the date of issuance.

The Department received a significant number of complaints against airlines and ticket agents for refusing to provide a refund or for delaying processing of refunds during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. At the height of the pandemic in 2020, refund complaints peaked at 87 percent of all air travel service complaints received by DOT. Refund problems continue to make up a substantial share of the complaints that DOT receives.

The final rule on refunds can be found at -news and at regulations.gov, docket number DOT-OST-2022-0089. There are different implementation periods in this final rule ranging from six months for airlines to provide automatic refunds when owed to 12 months for airlines to provide transferable travel vouchers or credits when consumers are unable to travel for reasons related to a serious communicable disease.

Citizens in Washington City favoring self-government organized protests and meetings, and in 1802, petitioned Congress for a municipal charter. The Charter granted by Congress made Washington an incorporated city and gave voters the right to elect a local legislature (called a Council) that could pass laws and levy a tax on real estate to pay for city services. The local government also included a mayor appointed by the President.

Nearly seventy years later, Georgetown, Washington City, and Washington County were absorbed into a new territory governed by a governor and a council appointed by the President, a popularly-elected house of delegates, and a non-voting delegate to Congress. The territorial government lasted about three years until replaced by a temporary board of three commissioners appointed by the President.

During this period, District residents and Congressional supporters continued to press for self-government and representation in Congress. The Senate passed bills providing some form of home rule six times between 1948 and 1966, but, each time a similar bill died in the House District of Columbia Committee. The commissioner form of government was replaced in 1967 by a mayor-commissioner and a nine-member city council appointed by the President.

In 1963, District residents won the right to vote for President and Vice-President of the United States with the ratification of the 23rd Amendment to the Constitution. Four years later, citizens won the authority to elect a School Board. In 1970, the District gained a nonvoting delegate to the House of Representatives. While the fight for local autonomy proceeded step by step, Congress, particularly the House Committee on the District of Columbia, continued to exercise great authority over the local affairs of the District.

Finally, in 1973, the Home Rule Act passed in Congress, and District residents approved it in a special referendum the next year. In a historic leap for greater self-determination, District citizens elected a Mayor and Council in the fall of 1974. Voters also approved the election of Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners who represent every 2,000 residents to advise the Council on neighborhood concerns.

In 1978, Congress passed the Voting Rights Amendment giving the District voting representation in Congress. However, the Amendment died in 1985, after failing to be ratified by 38 states. In 1980, voters approved an initiative calling for a state constitutional convention to write a constitution, and, two years later, approved the constitution for the state of New Columbia.

Since then, bills to admit New Columbia as the 51st State of the Union and other bills to expand the authority of the local government are regularly introduced in both the House and Senate, but have failed to pass Congress. In November 1990, as mandated by the Constitutional Convention, District voters elected two Statehood senators and one representative to lobby Congress. The push for local autonomy continues.

The National Labor Relations Board will issue its final rule tomorrow, February 26, 2020, governing joint-employer status under the National Labor Relations Act. The final rule restores the joint-employer standard that the Board applied for several decades prior to the 2015 decision in Browning-Ferris, but with the greater precision, clarity, and detail that rulemaking allows. As a result, the final rule provides clear guidance in this significant area of the law.

The joint-employer standard under the NLRA is a matter of consequence because it determines whether a business is an employer of employees directly employed by another employer altogether. If two entities are joint employers, both must bargain with the union that represents the jointly employed employees, both are potentially liable for unfair labor practices committed by the other, and both are subject to union picketing or other economic pressure if there is a labor dispute.

The NLRB issued an NPRM concerning joint-employer status under the NLRA on September 13, 2018. In response to its request for public comments, the Board received and considered nearly 29,000 comments. The final rule will be effective April 27, 2020.

Established in 1935, the National Labor Relations Board is an independent federal agency that protects employees, employers, and unions from unfair labor practices and protects the right of private sector employees to join together, with or without a union, to improve wages, benefits and working conditions. The NLRB conducts hundreds of workplace elections and investigates thousands of unfair labor practice charges each year.

The proposal that FinCEN is issuing today was prepared in consultation with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the National Credit Union Administration in order to collectively issue proposed amendments to their respective BSA compliance program rules for the institutions they supervise.

**Note: A U.S. District Judge stayed the joint-employer rule until March 11, 2024.

Today, the Board issued its Final Rule addressing the Standard for Determining Joint-Employer Status under the National Labor Relations Act.

The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking was published by the Federal Register on September 6, 2022 and the comment period for initial comments was open until December 7, 2022. The Board received over 13,000 comments that it reviewed and considered in drafting the Final Rule. The effective date of the new rule is December 26, 2023, and the new standard will only be applied to cases filed after the effective date.

Established in 1935, the National Labor Relations Board is an independent federal agency that protects employees from unfair labor practices and protects the right of private sector employees to join together, with or without a union, to improve wages, benefits and working conditions. The NLRB conducts hundreds of workplace elections and investigates thousands of unfair labor practice charges each year.

That changes today. This rule will make it harder for criminals and other prohibited persons to obtain untraceable guns. It will help to ensure that law enforcement officers can retrieve the information they need to solve crimes. And it will help reduce the number of untraceable firearms flooding our communities. I am grateful to the professionals across the Department who worked tirelessly to get this important rule finalized and implemented, and who did so in a way that respects the rights of law-abiding Americans.

As the final rule explains, from January 2016 to December 2021, ATF received approximately 45,240 reports of suspected PMFs recovered by law enforcement, including in 692 homicide or attempted homicide investigations.

The Justice Department issued the following statement from Attorney General Merrick B. Garland on the arrests of alleged leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel, Ismael Zambada Garcia (El Mayo) and Joaquin Guzman Lopez:

On February 6, 2019, the Bureau issued two proposed rules to revoke the mandatory underwriting provisions of the rule and to delay the August 19, 2019 compliance date for those provisions to November 19, 2020.

The Continuum of Care (CoC) Program interim rule focuses on regulatory implementation of the CoC Program, including the CoC planning process. The CoC Program was created through the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act As Amended by S.896 Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing (HEARTH) Act of 2009.

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