The First Monday in October is Right Around the Corner
By Michael Santo, COSHRM Legislative Director and Managing Attorney at Bechtel & Santo
Like baseball’s Opening Day, the Supreme Court of the United States has its own Opening Day. Dating back to 1917, the Supreme Court always starts its term on the first Monday in October, which this year will be October 6, 2025. So, with the Supreme Court about to throw out its “first pitch”, it’s a good time to look at three recent court decisions on employment-HR issues.
The first decision comes from the Colorado Supreme Court in the case of By the Rockies v. Perez and concerns the statute of limitations for wage claims. A “statute of limitations” is a law setting a deadline to start a legal proceeding, such as a lawsuit or prosecution, after an alleged wrong has occurred. The statute-of-limitation timeframe varies significantly based on the jurisdiction (state or federal) and the type of claim or offense. If the legal action is not initiated within this timeframe, the claim may be permanently barred.
In By the Rockies v. Perez, Mr. Perez brought a wage claim five years after the alleged violations. Mr. Perez argued that while federal wage law under the Fair Labor Standards Act clearly identifies that the statute of limitations for wage claims is two years or three years if the violation(s) is willful, Colorado should employ a six-year statute of limitations because Colorado’s wage law was less than clear on a specific statute of limitation, according to Mr. Perez. Colorado uses a six-year statute of limitations if the specific statute at issue does not have a defined statute-of-limitations period. Mr. Perez argued that since Colorado’s wage law was not, in his opinion, clear, courts should use Colorado’s general, default six-year statute of limitations. The District Court, where Mr. Perez filed his wage claim, disagreed and dismissed Mr. Perez’s complaint. But a split Court of Appeals determined that the six-year statute of limitations applied. Subsequently, the organization appealed the decision from the Court of Appeals to the Colorado Supreme Court.
While that appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court was in process, Representative Matt Soper, Colorado House District 54, sponsored House Bill 23-1035. This Bill attempted to define Colorado’s statute of limitations as similar to that under federal law (i.e., two years or three years if the violation is willful). Unfortunately, that House Bill did not make it out of Committee and Colorado employers faced the potential of a six-year statute of limitations period while the Colorado Supreme Court addressed the appeal in By the Rockies v. Perez. Fortunately, for employers in Colorado, it was worth the wait. In short, on September 15, 2025, the Colorado Supreme Court determined that the 2-year/3-year if-a-willful-violation statute of limitations was the correct period. In that ruling, the Court noted:
In the absence of any clear intent to the contrary, statutes that are part of a single scheme or that deal with the same subject should be construed harmoniously, to avoid absurdities. Here, the Wage Claim Act and Minimum Wage Act are part of the same statutory scheme that addresses the payment of wages. Both acts share the same purpose: allowing for the recovery of unpaid wages. We accordingly construe the acts together.
The Supreme Court’s holding is also in line with Colorado’s requirement that employers keep payroll records for three years. So, in short, the decision is very good news for Colorado employers because it sets the period as either two or three years, instead of a six-year period.
Another recent wage-and-hour case that was decided by the United States Supreme Court is E.M.D. Sales v. Carrera. This case concerned the evidentiary standard courts should use when determining whether an employer has established that an employee meets one of the FLSA’s duty-basis tests. An employer must meet two tests to classify an employee as exempt: (1) the salary-basis test; and (2) the duty-basis test. Courts have traditionally held that when determining the duty-basis test, courts should use the “preponderance of the evidence” test, which means, in essence, that the majority of the evidence supports the decision. In Carrera, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals determined that that was too low of the standard and that organizations must establish that the employee met one of the FLSA’s duty-basis tests by “clear-and-convincing” evidence, which carries a greater burden than the preponderance-of-the-evidence test. Fortunately for employers, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a decision that the correct standard is the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard, instead of the clear-and-convincing standard. So, similar to By the Rockies v. Perez, this decision is more good news for employers.
The other recent U.S. Supreme Court decision concerning employment/HR issues was Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services. In this case, the Supreme Court determined that the evidentiary standard was the same for “reverse discrimination”, as it was for the traditional “reverse-discrimination” claims. That is, previously, certain courts required reverse-discrimination plaintiffs to prove “background circumstances” (e.g., that there was a pattern of discrimination against the majority group and that the minority group made the decision that the plaintiff claimed was discriminatory) that plaintiffs are not required to prove in non-reverse discrimination claims. But the Supreme Court in Ames determined that the burden of proof should be the same for all plaintiffs.
Finally, as readers will recall, in the Connections August 2025 newsletter, there was an article regarding the status of Colorado Senate Bill 24-205, which is the law surrounding artificial intelligence. In the 20+ page AI bill, the proponents identified the bill’s intent was ensuring that developers and deployers, which is a term referring to users of AI, employed “reasonable care” to protect consumers from any known or reasonably foreseeable risks of algorithmic discrimination in high-risk systems, which the bill identified as loan approvals, hiring determinations, medical-care decisions, etc. The article opined that there appeared to be some concern about the law from state and federal legislators. Well, that “some resistance” appears to be growing. That is, on August 28th, Governor Polis signed a modification to the Act’s implementation date from February 1, 2026, to June 30, 2026, while others hinted that there may be further modifications to the Act during the upcoming Colorado legislative session. So, the upcoming Colorado legislative session, which starts on Wednesday, January 14, 2026, should be an interesting one with respect to what happens with this Act. Stay tuned.
