California employment case index

Six BART employees who objected on religious grounds to the agency's COVID-19 vaccine mandate were told they could not be accommodated, lost their jobs, tried the case, and won $7,824,580. The Ninth Circuit affirmed, and in doing so gave the employer's undue-hardship defence a shape it had not previously had in a tried case: it is not enough to prove that vaccination was the most effective available measure, because an employer must show the alternatives were "not only less safe, but less safe by a 'substantial,' 'excessive,' or 'unjustifiable' margin." Reliance on public-health guidance is permissible but not dispositive — and here the guidance BART said it relied on was never put in the record, leaving the agency with two retained experts the jury was free to discount. The panel read its own recent vaccine-mandate decisions, Petersen v. Snohomish Regional Fire & Rescue and Williams v. Legacy Health, as resting on their records rather than on the mandate itself: a transit agency staffing a utility worker, a ticket clerk behind bullet-proof glass and a technician who worked ninety percent alone is not a fire department or a hospital. Most consequentially for practitioners, the court held that undue hardship is a fact-specific inquiry ordinarily reserved to the jury, resolvable as a matter of law only where the burden is so obvious that reasonable minds could not differ. Front pay to one plaintiff who had elected it below was not plain error. The conditional cross-appeal on free exercise was mooted and not reached — though the author of the opinion wrote separately, at length, to say the district court's analysis of it was wrong.

A former SpaceX employee who lived and worked in Redmond, Washington filed a FEHA complaint in California, and SpaceX refused to answer the Civil Rights Department's investigatory subpoena on the ground that FEHA stops at the state line. The Second District affirmed the order compelling compliance, and in the published portion of its opinion it did two things that matter to every multistate employer and every remote worker. It separated the question of what California connections trigger FEHA's investigatory provisions from the question of what connections trigger its substantive ones, observing that the potential for conflict with other sovereigns is far less when the Department investigates than when it enjoins, so that it is at least conceivable that fewer connections are required to open an investigation than to impose liability. And it refused to read Kearney, or the Tidewater-Sullivan-Ward-Oman wage-and-hour line, as laying down any categorical rule that California's employment laws never protect a worker outside the state, leaving Campbell v. Arco Marine intact but confined to a record in which the California connections were already settled. The court did not hold that FEHA reaches this employee; it held that SpaceX had not shown it cannot. Note that the opinion is published except as to part 2 of the Discussion, which may not be cited.

A firm filed a wage-and-hour class action duplicating one it had already filed elsewhere, then opposed a stay with a brief — drafted by a contract attorney using generative AI — full of nonexistent citations and at least eight fabricated quotations. The First District affirms $6,000 in section 128.7 sanctions: counsel of record bear ultimate responsibility for what they sign, and the duty to verify authority cannot be delegated to any form of technology.

Nine hospital-system employees sought religious exemptions from a COVID-19 vaccination requirement and sued under Title VII when they were denied. The Ninth Circuit affirms judgment for the employer: after Groff v. DeJoy, undue hardship means a “substantial” burden — including realistic health, safety, and staffing costs — and exempting unvaccinated clinical staff during the Delta surge met that standard.

A terminated COO forwarded her employer’s e-mails — some attorney-client privileged — to her personal account and handed them to her lawyers for her wrongful-termination and harassment cross-claims. The Fourth District holds the State Fund rule on handling privileged materials applies even to such intentional, unauthorized disclosures, and reverses the denial of the employer’s motion to disqualify counsel.

Intuitive Surgical defended a harassment suit by pointing to the adequacy of its attorney-led investigation, then tried to withhold the investigator’s findings as work product. The Sixth District grants the employee a writ: putting the investigation’s adequacy at issue waives privilege and even core work product over the investigator’s factual findings and anything bearing on the investigation’s scope and adequacy.

Two Chico State physics professors sued the CSU Trustees for retaliation, alleging a sham investigation and sabotage of their move to a new university after they reported harassment. The Trustees moved to strike the claims under the anti-SLAPP statute as “based in part” on protected speech. The Third District affirms denial: a movant must analyze each claim element-by-element and identify which acts are protected — “based in part” is not enough.

A nursing student said the faculty member running her hospital clinical rotation sexually harassed her and tanked her grade when she refused him. The Fourth District holds a student in a required clinical placement is an “unpaid intern” protected by FEHA, and reverses summary judgment on standing, Government-Claims-Act notice, and deliberate indifference.

Cambodian villagers forced to work at Thai seafood factories sued a U.S. marketer under the trafficking civil-remedy statute; their case was dismissed because the statute then reached only those who succeeded in benefiting, not those who attempted to. After Congress amended the law, the en banc Ninth Circuit holds the clarifying amendment retroactive — and that Landgraf governs all such amendments, overruling the “clarifying amendment” exception — reviving the claims.

A resident manager whose apartment came with the job refused to leave after she was terminated. The Appellate Division affirms an unlawful detainer judgment: housing provided as part of employment compensation is not a protected tenancy, the former manager became a tenant at sufferance or licensee outside the Tenant Protection Act, and her retaliatory-eviction defense failed for lack of evidence.

A fire-department mechanic repeatedly confronted management and then alluded to an incident in which a firefighter fatally shot another firefighter. The Second District affirms a three-year workplace violence restraining order under section 527.8: the veiled reference was a credible, implied threat outside the First Amendment, and the order’s firearm restriction survives Second Amendment review under Rahimi.

World Vision revoked a job offer to a customer-service applicant after learning she was in a same-sex marriage. The Ninth Circuit held the ministerial exception barred her Title VII and WLAD claims, because — viewed in the context of World Vision’s religious mission — CSRs perform “vital religious duties” by communicating the faith and praying with donors. A striking extension of the exception’s functional reach to an entry-level, remote position.

The University of California refuses to employ undocumented students who lack federal work authorization. The First District held that the policy facially discriminates based on immigration status under the FEHA national-origin regulations, and that the University’s only justification — fear that the federal government might read IRCA to cover it and prosecute — could not sustain the policy, because the University never attempted the regulation’s clear-and-convincing showing that federal law requires the discrimination. The court issued a writ directing the Regents to reconsider the policy on proper criteria, while pointedly declining to decide whether IRCA applies to state entities at all.

Marlean Ames, a heterosexual woman, lost a promotion to a lesbian candidate, then was demoted and replaced by a gay man. The Sixth Circuit threw out her Title VII case because she had not shown “background circumstances” suggesting her employer was the unusual one that discriminates against the majority. A unanimous Supreme Court vacated: Title VII protects “any individual,” and its prima facie standard does not vary with the plaintiff’s group. Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Gorsuch, concurred to question whether McDonnell Douglas belongs at summary judgment at all — an invitation with consequences for FEHA practice under Guz.

A Postmaster of Chinese ethnicity was demoted after coworkers targeted her with complaints her supervisor believed were racially motivated, and the demotion was confirmed by an official who reviewed only the paperwork. The Ninth Circuit reversed summary judgment, holding that replacement by a white man satisfied the McDonnell Douglas fourth element and that a genuine dispute existed over whether the confirming decision was “actually independent or influenced by subordinate bias” — a Ninth Circuit application of the cat’s-paw doctrine.

Reversing summary judgment for United Airlines, the Court of Appeal held that whether three male employees with comparable social-media accounts were "similarly situated" comparators was a question for the jury, applied the continuing violation doctrine and section 12923's low bar to the harassment claim, and found a two-week complaint-to-termination gap sufficient for retaliation causation.

In Hoglund v. Sierra Nevada Memorial-Miners Hospital (2024) 102 Cal.App.5th 56, a 62-year-old hospital laboratory supervisor won a bench verdict for FEHA age discrimination, harassment, and wrongful termination after her director made years of ageist remarks and steered her selection for layoff. The Court of Appeal affirmed. Applying the “cat's-paw” (imputed-animus) theory, it held that a biased subordinate's discriminatory motive may be imputed to the employer where the subordinate was a “significant participant” in the adverse decision — even though a separate, formally unbiased officer signed off on the final call. Animus by a significant participant supports an inference that the decision itself was discriminatory.

Muldrow v. City of St. LouisA Title VII plaintiff challenging a discriminatory job transfer must show only “some harm” to a term or condition of employment — not a “significant” or “material” disadvantage.Muldrow v. City of St. Louis (2024) 601 U.S. 346Parallel citations: 144 S.Ct. 967; 218 L.Ed.2d 322. Supreme Court of the United States. […]

An Evangelical Christian postal worker who would not work Sundays sued under Title VII after being disciplined for declining Sunday Amazon deliveries. The Third Circuit, reading Hardison to require only 'more than a de minimis cost,' affirmed summary judgment for the employer. A unanimous Supreme Court vacated and clarified the standard: an employer that denies a religious accommodation must show that granting it would result in substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business, not merely a more-than-trivial cost.

California religious-accommodation litigation runs on two tracks that are routinely confused, and Groff v. DeJoy answers only one of them. Groff told the lower courts that the de minimis gloss they had drawn from a single line of Hardison does not establish undue hardship, and that an employer must instead show substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business — while expressly declining to adopt the ADA's "significant difficulty or expense" standard, which is the very phrase Government Code section 12926, subdivision (u) has long used to define undue hardship under FEHA. This analysis sets the two texts side by side, states precisely what Groff did and did not do to Hardison, traces the collective-bargaining limit through Soldinger, and then marks the point at which none of it matters: where the ministerial exception applies, it is an affirmative defence that removes the claim rather than a weight in the hardship calculus.

When a medical resident sues her residency program for discrimination, the program's 'academic' justification for dismissing her is not entitled to the deference courts extend to genuine academic judgments. The Second District held that a resident is predominantly an employee, not a student, so the jury must evaluate the program's real reason without deference — and the contrary instruction required a new trial.

An employer cannot rebut a discrimination plaintiff’s prima facie case by professing ignorance: stage-two production under McDonnell Douglas demands the actual nondiscriminatory reason for a failure to interview, not a witness’s “I don’t know.”

In the Sixth District's treatise-level employment-MSJ opinion, a security supervisor laid off days before his expected return from knee surgery revives his disability discrimination and wrongful termination claims — the employer's RIF showing was inadequate under Guz's "roadmap" because it never explained retaining two lower-ranked supervisors, and its failure to accommodate, the timing, and an overpayment vendetta were substantial evidence of animus — while the retaliation claim fails because pre-2016 accommodation requests were not protected activity.

A 60-year-old engineer cut in a 306-person, budget-driven layoff lost on both procedure and merits: his EEOC and post-closure DFEH amendments could not exhaust class and disparate-impact theories, and his pretext case failed for want of combined-position qualifications, controlled statistics, and comparators.

An employer that fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender violates Title VII. Discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity necessarily entails discrimination because of sex, because it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being gay or transgender without taking the…