Hinshaw & Culbertson LLP is pleased to announce that 80 lawyers are recognized in the 2026 edition of The Best Lawyers in America, with ten receiving this honor for the first time. Additionally, 22 Hinshaw lawyers are included in The Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch.

The national law firm of Hinshaw & Culbertson LLP is pleased to announce that 73 of the firm's lawyers have been selected by their peers for inclusion in the 2024 edition of The Best Lawyers in America. In addition, 28 Hinshaw lawyers were selected by their peers for inclusion in the 2024 edition of The Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch.

Hinshaw congratulates its client Rush-Oak Corporation ("ROC") for recently completing its sale to Wintrust Financial Corporation ("Wintrust"). ROC is the parent company of Oak Bank, an Illinois state-chartered bank which operates a banking location in the Gold Coast neighborhood of Chicago. A Hinshaw legal team led by partner Tim Sullivan served as transaction counsel to ROC on the deal.

Hinshaw partners Anthony Antognoli, Lisa Burman, and James Harbert have each authored chapters in the Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education (IICLE) handbook titled Employment Termination: Procedures, Grounds, and Challenges 2022 Edition. IICLE is the premier provider of continuing legal education in Illinois. Founded in 1961, the Institute publishes a comprehensive set of handbooks designed by and for Illinois attorneys.

Hinshaw attorney Anthony Antognoli recently discussed in a PLANSPONSOR article the options for employers in structuring a student loan repayment program for workers. Under a provision in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, an employer is authorized to contribute up to $5,250 toward a worker’s student debt repayment in 2020. The money is not subject to payroll tax for the employer or income tax for the employee.

A team of Hinshaw authors from the firm's Labor and Employment practice contributed three chapters to the latest edition of the Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education's (IICLE) Employment Termination: Procedures, Grounds, and Challenges handbook. The handbook provides information needed to establish the basis for employment termination, as well as the proper procedures to carry it out and responses to questions that may arise.

For more information, please visit Hinshaw's Annual Labor & Employment Seminar page.

For more information, please visit Hinshaw's 24th Annual Labor & Employment Seminar page.

Hinshaw's Vaishali Rao and Anthony Antognoli will team up to present the next program in our employment web series designed to provide practical insights and best practices on some of the most challenging employment related issues facing companies today. The webinar will be held Thursday, March 8, 2018 from 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. Central. Human resources directors, benefits and payroll supervisors, student loan servicers and those managing employee benefit programs are all encouraged to attend.

Chicago-based partner Anthony Antognoli will co-present a fiduciary-focused and firm-sponsored webinar, titled "Understanding ERISA Duties for Retirement-Plan Committees," on October 22, 2025.

Hinshaw's Anthony Antognoli, Tom Kuzmanovic, and Michael Weis, will team up in a webinar titled "COVID-19: Considerations for Business Owners & Lenders," on April 24, 2020 from 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. Central. In the short term, business owners are worried about paying bills and caring for staff. Long term, however, their concerns shift to whether their businesses can survive the crisis.

In this 50 minute webinar recording, we share myriad advice for businesses and lenders to deal with cashflow issues; IRS tax relief and delayed filing; strategies for addressing employee benefits issues; and much more.

On January 1, 2020, new arbitration procedures for the American Arbitration Association (AAA) with respect to withdrawal liability assessments will go into effect. It is not uncommon for employers—and a good many labor lawyers—to think that the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974's (ERISA) provisions regarding withdrawal liability are among the most "unfair" laws they have to contend with. However, changes to the arbitration fee structure and fee allocation rules will give employers some relief.

Many employers incorporate wellness programs into their group health plans. Studies indicate that such programs, which can provide incentives to employees to encourage healthy behaviors, are offered by more than half of all employers who sponsor a health plan.

When Congressional drafters wrote the Affordable Care Act 10 years ago, they included a provision requiring group health plans to provide preventive care without cost sharing. Much of that coverage requirement was set forth in the Act itself with some specificity. It included immunizations, screenings, and other “evidence-based items or services” recommended by the United States Preventive Services Tax Force. The Act also provided for special rules for preventive care “with respect to women;” however, those rules were not specified in the Act and were to be determined by a government agency. After the law safely passed, the Health Resources and Services Administration, acting on the findings of the Institute of Medicine, decided that preventive care with respect to women must include coverage for contraceptive services without cost sharing. In the decade since that provision became law, plan sponsors have been dealing with nearly constant administrative and judicial pinball regarding this contentious topic.

President Trump issued a Presidential Memorandum on August 8, 2020, directing the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury to use his authority to defer the "withholding, deposit and payment of certain tax obligations." This includes the employee share of certain payroll taxes—employee Social Security taxes and Medicare taxes—on wages or compensation paid from September 1, 2020, through December 31, 2020.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) imposes on employers various new obligations that are to take effect over the next several years. Employers received some measure of relief with the surprise announcement of a one-year delay in the enforcement of the employer mandate until January 1, 2015. Other requirements under the ACA, however, continue to move forward.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act requires that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) establish the Early Retiree Reinsurance Program (the Program), which is designed to provide federal reimbursement to participating plan sponsors for a portion of the costs of providing health coverage to qualifying early retirees. This Alert summarizes the key elements of the Program and reviews the steps that plan sponsors must take in order to apply for Program reimbursements. On June 7, 2010, an application for participation in the Program was published in draft form on the HHS website. The application process has not yet been opened, but will begin sometime prior to June 30, 2010. The date on which applications will begin to be accepted, along with information as to how and where to send completed applications, will be posted on the HHS website in the coming weeks. Applications will be processed in the order in which they are received, and incomplete applications will be denied and must be resubmitted. Overview of the Program

UPDATE:  On February 10, 2012, the President announced a revision to the Section 2713 mandate that would offer an accommodation for group health plans sponsored by religiously affiliated employers. Under this proposed accommodation, certain preventive care services, including contraceptive services, would be provided directly by insurance companies, rather than through the employer-sponsored health plan itself. The new policy does not address how the Section 2713 mandate will apply to self-insured plans. We expect the formal regulatory guidance regarding this new accommodation to be issued in the near future and will keep you apprised on those developments.

With the United States Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, employers should review their employee benefit plans and assess their options and obligations in offering group health plan coverage to their employees. The post-Dobbs landscape is likely to create challenges for multistate employers that provide health coverage to employees in states that have different laws regarding abortion.

The ability to continue group health plan coverage under COBRA following a separation from employment has been a fundamental feature of most employer group health plans for more than 35 years. Despite widespread availability, it is relatively unusual for a separated employee to elect COBRA coverage because the employee typically must pay 100% of the cost. However, in times of economic distress, government programs often have assisted affected workers by subsidizing their COBRA coverage. The recently passed American Rescue Plan Act provides similar assistance in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A new rule under the CARES Act could be beneficial for employees with outstanding student loan debt, and even provide some cost savings for employers as well. The CARES Act expanded the scope of Educational Assistance Programs under Section 127 of the code to include student loan repayments. Under prior law, that provision only allowed for an exclusion from an employee's income for educational assistance that was provided by an employer prospectively. Because of this change, an employer may now repay up to $5,250 of an employee's student loans, and those repayments would not be subject to income or payroll tax for 2020.

Welcome to the Labor & Employment Chronicle, our quarterly newsletter that reviews the top stories from Hinshaw's Employment Law Observer blog.

Download or read the complete newsletter here: Employment Practices Newsletter

Download or read the complete newsletter here: Employment Practices Newsletter