29 CFR 18.38 - Ex parte communications.

The Department of Labor proposes to revise and reorganize the Rules of Practice and Procedure for Administrative Hearings Before the Office of Administrative Law Judges, from our regulations, which provide procedural guidance to administrative law judges, claimants, employers, and Department of Labor representatives seeking to resolve disputes under a variety of employment and labor laws. The Office of Administrative Law Judges promulgated these regulations in 1983. The regulations were modeled on the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) and have proved extraordinarily helpful in providing litigants with familiar rules governing hearing procedure. Since 1983, the FRCP have been amended many times. Moreover, in 2007 the FRCP were given a complete revision to improve style and clarity. The nature of litigation has also changed in the past 28 years, particularly in the areas of discovery and electronic records. Thus, OALJ has revised its regulations to make the rules more accessible and useful to parties, and to harmonize administrative hearing procedures with the current FRCP. The goal in amending the regulations is to provide clarity through the use of consistent terminology, structure and formatting so that parties have clear direction when pursuing or defending against a claim. In addition to revising the regulations to conform to modern legal procedure, the rules need to be modified to reflect the types of claims now heard by OALJ. When the rules were promulgated in 1983, OALJ primarily adjudicated occupational disease and injury cases. Presently, and looking ahead to the future, OALJ is and will be increasingly tasked with hearing whistleblower and other workplace retaliation claims, in addition to the occupational disease and injury cases. These types of cases require more structured management and oversight by the presiding administrative law judge and more sophisticated motions and discovery procedures than the current regulations provide. In order to best manage the complexities of whistleblower and discrimination claims, OALJ needs to update its rules to address the procedural questions that arise in these cases.