September 25, 2025
As fall kicks into gear, employers should accommodate workers’ requests for time off for religious holidays, seasonal illnesses and voting, and businesses that employ minors should watch for requirements that kick in during the school year, attorneys said.
The new season brings unique compliance issues. Employers could find themselves fielding questions about time off for holidays that tend to impact only certain communities of workers, for example.
. . .
Accommodate Holidays
While employers generally provide time off for federal holidays in autumn, like Thanksgiving, they must also consider how to treat fall holidays for certain communities, such as Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Diwali, attorneys said.
The key is consistency, said Travis Jang-Busby of management-side firm Blank Rome LLP.
“You don’t want it to look like you’re favoring one group over the other,” he said.
Both management- and worker-side attorneys said floating holidays that workers can use as needed can be helpful in such situations, though there are special considerations to keep in mind.
“Best practice here is probably to have a bucket of days of paid leave that workers can use to apply to whichever holidays they observe,” said Rebecca Ojserkis of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, who represents workers. “That way, employers aren’t making any judgment calls about trying to distinguish between … religions.”
. . .
Give Time to Vote
Elections are happening in some jurisdictions this fall, including the mayoral race in New York City and statewide elections in New Jersey and Virginia. Employers in those places could get requests from workers for time to go vote.
“It’s great when employers provide time to vote,” Cohen Milstein’s Ojserkis said, adding that it is especially important in places that have restricted early voting and mail-in voting. “We certainly don’t want to be excluding anybody from the voting process simply because they have to earn a living wage.”