California employment case index

Two Highland Hospital workers sued the public hospital authority running Alameda County’s medical facilities for meal-and-rest violations, unpaid wages, and PAGA penalties. A unanimous Supreme Court ended the case at the definitions: Labor Code section 18’s “person” — the term that controls who is an “employer” under the wage order and who can be penalized under PAGA — affirmatively excludes public entities. Absent express words bringing the government in, break rules and PAGA penalties stop at the public-sector line. The court disapproved Sargent’s contrary rule for statutes carrying their own penalties, declined to decide whether Government Code section 818 independently bars such penalties, and reserved the effect of the 2024 PAGA reform.

Kindercare’s arbitration agreement contained a “poison pill”: a clause providing that the whole agreement is invalid if its class/representative-action waiver is unenforceable. Because a wholesale predispute waiver of representative PAGA claims cannot be enforced after Iskanian and Viking River, the Court of Appeal held the poison pill voided the entire agreement — sending every claim, including the employee’s individual claims, to court. Had Kindercare omitted the poison pill, Viking River would have let it compel the individual claims; its own drafting foreclosed that path. The drafter was held to the all-or-nothing clause it wrote.