Working from Home: Unraveling the Employment Law Implications of the Remote Office

While remote work has numerous benefits for both employees and employers—such as improving employee happiness, boosting workplace productivity, and reducing office costs—remote work also creates a web of new legal obligations for employers and new entitlements for employees. This is because both employers and employees may become subject to the employment, tax, and corporate laws of the states in which remote employees live and spend their workdays.Let us take as an example an employer that is based in New York City and has employees who live in Connecticut and New Jersey. When those employees work from Manhattan, their employer is subject to New York employment laws. When some of those same employees work from home, the employer becomes subject to Connecticut and New Jersey employment laws in addition to those of New York. If we further assume that this employer has a District of Columbia office with employees who live in Maryland and Virginia, then the employer, which was once obligated to comply with the employment laws of just two states, must now comply with those of six!The sudden shift to working from home during the pandemic untethered “work” as a verb—what people do—and “work” as a noun—where people do it. While we cannot predict the extent to which current events will permanently reshape the future of work, it is clear from innumerable public declarations of large employers that many employees will have more choice about where they work than they did before the crisis. This paper is intended to help employers, their professional advisors, and employment law scholars understand the more common legal issues that arise when employees work in a state or city that is different from that of their employer.