California employment case index

Harris v. City of Santa Monica (2013) 56 Cal.4th 203 holds that FEHA discrimination must be a “substantial motivating factor,” and that an employer’s same-decision showing bars damages, backpay, and reinstatement but not declaratory/injunctive relief or attorney’s fees.

Comparator evidence is admissible in a FEHA case where the plaintiff and the comparator are similarly situated in all relevant respects — similar jobs and similar conduct. Affirming a plaintiff's verdict against San Francisco State University, the First District clarified how Reeves v. MV Transportation governs the admissibility, not merely the weight, of evidence that others outside the protected class were treated more favorably.

The Fourth District reversed summary judgment for the County, holding that a deputy district attorney's internal warnings that a murder prosecution lacked probable cause were protected disclosures under Labor Code section 1102.5 — no express citation of law required, job duties notwithstanding — and that months of testing for a suspected neurological disease raised a triable issue of FEHA disability.

An employer's stereotyping of a long-tenured Filipino nurse over her accent and English skills was not a neutral performance concern but evidence of national-origin discrimination. The Third District reversed summary judgment for Dameron Hospital, holding that a jury could find the hospital's stated reasons pretextual and that accent-based bias falls squarely within FEHA's protection of national origin.

The Court of Appeal reinstated Ada Abed’s FEHA pregnancy claim, holding that a job application is not an element of a failure-to-hire claim. An employer who falsely tells a pregnant woman no position is open — and thereby stops her from applying — can be liable for pregnancy discrimination, even though she never applied.

A unanimous Court of Appeal affirmed a $723,746 judgment for a probationary community-college employee terminated while on approved industrial-injury leave. Granting the leave was not a reasonable accommodation because it led directly to her termination; FEHA and Education Code section 88013 let the district toll, not forfeit, her probation, and its conduct showed no good-faith interactive process.

In Simers v. Los Angeles Times Communications LLC (2018) 18 Cal.App.5th 1248, a celebrated sports columnist won a jury verdict on FEHA age and disability discrimination and constructive discharge, recovering more than $7 million. The trial court let the discrimination liability stand but granted JNOV on the constructive-discharge claim and ordered a new trial limited to damages. The Court of Appeal affirmed all of the orders. Even where age or disability is a substantial motivating reason for a demotion, an employee who resigns in response to standard disciplinary procedures has not suffered a constructive discharge absent “unusually aggravated” conditions or a “continuous pattern of mistreatment.” And because the noneconomic award could not be apportioned between the surviving discrimination theory and the vacated constructive-discharge theory, a new trial limited to damages — not liability — was the proper remedy.

A 15-year Berkeley Tennis Club employee fired after a recorder was found at a board meeting sued for FEHA disability discrimination, harassment, and more, alleging her severe obesity is a protected physical disability. The Court of Appeal held the Club, as summary-adjudication movant, never carried its initial burden of showing Cornell could not prove a physiological cause for her obesity, reinstating her discrimination, harassment, and defamation claims while affirming dismissal of accommodation and retaliation.

A FEHA disparate-treatment verdict collapsed where the only proof of racial animus was the race of the officers’ shooting victim — not the officers themselves — and the City’s risk-management rationale stood unrebutted. The Court of Appeal reversed with directions to enter judgment for the City.

A gay executive's evidence that his sexual orientation was a substantial motivating factor in his termination was enough to revive his FEHA discrimination claim, even though his parallel retaliation theory failed. The Second District applied Harris v. City of Santa Monica's causation and same-decision framework (CACI Nos. 2500, 2505, 2512) to a sexual-orientation disparate-treatment case.

When an employee resigns and the employer promptly accepts, can she undo it by later revealing she was disabled at the time? In Featherstone, the Court of Appeal said no — refusing to let a former employee rescind a voluntary, accepted resignation is not an adverse employment action under FEHA, and an accommodation duty never arises for a disability the employer did not know about when the resignation was accepted.

Five LAPD recruits were injured during Academy training and parked in the Department’s light-duty “Recycle” program until, mid-recovery, the City imposed a new six-month cutoff and forced them out. Atkins holds that the recruits could not win a FEHA disability-discrimination claim — they could not perform a recruit’s physically demanding essential functions, and FEHA never requires eliminating an essential function — yet could win a failure-to-accommodate claim, because they had actually performed the Recycle duties and the City’s own longstanding practice made continued reassignment reasonable. The court also vacated lifetime-career front-pay damages as speculative.

In Davis v. Farmers Ins. Exchange (2016) 245 Cal.App.4th 1302, the Court of Appeal held that the mixed-motive, same-decision framework adopted in Harris v. City of Santa Monica for FEHA disparate-treatment claims applies equally to a common law wrongful-termination-in-violation-of-public-policy claim grounded in the policy against age discrimination — even though the plaintiff pleaded no FEHA claim. Because the jury found age was a substantial motivating reason but that Farmers would have fired Davis anyway, the same-decision finding left no damages, no equitable relief, and no fees; the court nonetheless reversed a directed verdict on his wage claim, holding the employer bears the burden of proving paycheck deductions lawful.

Wallace v. County of StanislausA FEHA disability-discrimination plaintiff need not prove the employer acted out of animosity or ill will; it is enough that the disability was a “substantial motivating reason” for the adverse action — even a well-intentioned but mistaken one.Wallace v. County of Stanislaus (2016) 245 Cal.App.4th 109Parallel citation: 199 Cal.Rptr.3d 462. Court […]

Soria v. Univision Radio Los Angeles, Inc. A detailed application of the summary-judgment framework to FEHA disability claims: triable issues on the employer’s knowledge of the disability, pretext, and the interactive process defeated summary judgment. Soria v. Univision Radio Los Angeles, Inc. (2016) 5 Cal.App.5th 570 Parallel citation: 210 Cal.Rptr.3d 59. Court of Appeal of […]

A Black firefighter's discrimination verdict collapsed because he could not show the City's reasons were pretextual or marshal the statistical proof a disparate-impact theory requires, and the continuing-violation doctrine could not rescue time-barred claims. The Second District reversed with directions to enter judgment for the City, illustrating the demanding pretext and impact standards behind CACI Nos. 2502, 2505, and 2508.

An employee who cannot work under a particular supervisor because of anxiety and stress tied to that supervisor’s ordinary oversight has no disability under FEHA. In Higgins-Williams, the Third District affirmed summary judgment for Sutter on that single ground, which dissolved the plaintiff’s discrimination, accommodation, retaliation, and wrongful-termination claims, while remanding only the cost award under Williams v. Chino Valley.

Government Code section 12965(b) governs both fee and cost awards in FEHA actions and makes them discretionary under the asymmetric Christiansburg standard: a prevailing plaintiff ordinarily recovers fees and costs, but a prevailing defendant may recover them only if the action was objectively frivolous, unreasonable,…

UPS accommodated drivers hurt on the job, drivers with ADA disabilities, and drivers who lost their DOT certifications — but told pregnant driver Peggy Young she could not work under a 20-pound lifting restriction. The Supreme Court vacated summary judgment and built the governing framework for PDA accommodation claims: show the employer accommodated others similar in ability to work, and a jury may infer discrimination if the policies significantly burden pregnant workers and the employer’s reasons are not strong enough to justify it. In California, where the PDLL and FEHA impose affirmative accommodation duties, Young is the federal floor — essential in pure Title VII postures, rarely the lead theory at home.

A disabled Santa Monica refuse worker argued his employer could have kept him on by stripping heavy lifting from the job or holding a position open. The Court of Appeal disagreed, holding that eliminating a true essential function is not a reasonable accommodation, that reassignment is required only where an actual qualifying vacancy exists, and that a bare request for accommodation is not protected activity for a retaliation claim.

In Swanson v. Morongo Unified School Dist. (2014) 232 Cal.App.4th 954, the Court of Appeal reversed summary judgment for a school district sued by a breast-cancer-survivor teacher whose contract was not renewed. The court held that FEHA imposes a continuous, good-faith duty to engage in the interactive process under Government Code section 12940, subdivision (n) — not satisfied by a single gesture — and that reasonable accommodation can require reassignment to a vacant position under subdivision (m), implicating CACI Nos. 2541 and 2546.

In Cheal v. El Camino Hospital (2014) 223 Cal.App.4th 736, the Court of Appeal reversed summary judgment for the hospital in a FEHA age-discrimination suit, holding triable issues existed on whether the 61-year-old dietary technician performed satisfactorily and on discriminatory animus. Although “satisfactory performance” is ordinarily within the employer’s sole discretion, an employer cannot conclusively establish the governing standard merely by asserting the plaintiff fell short; the hospital’s own written policies anticipated and tolerated the errors charged, and the supervisor’s recorded admission that she favored younger workers was admissible against interest.

In a case of first impression, the Court of Appeal held that an employee disabled by a high-risk pregnancy who was terminated after exhausting the four months of leave guaranteed by the Pregnancy Disability Leave Law may still state a FEHA claim, because the PDLL augments rather than supplants the independent reasonable-accommodation duty of Government Code section 12940, subdivision (m). A finite leave exceeding four months can be a reasonable accommodation, and the plaintiff's allegations cleared demurrer.

A correctional lieutenant who lost the use of his left arm could no longer use a baton or subdue inmates. In Furtado v. State Personnel Bd. (2013) 212 Cal.App.4th 729, the Court of Appeal held that FEHA's reassignment duty, though affirmative, does not require an employer to waive an essential function or create an administrative position that does not exist; medical demotion to a position the employee could perform was proper.

In Lui v. City and County of San Francisco (2012) 211 Cal.App.4th 962, the First District affirmed a defense judgment, holding that strenuous patrol duties — forcible arrests, pursuing suspects, emergency response — are essential functions of administrative police positions because the Department must be able to deploy every full-duty officer during mass mobilizations, even if those situations are infrequent. A disabled officer who cannot perform those duties is not a qualified individual under FEHA, and the employer need not create a permanent light-duty post.

Reversing a $113,830 pregnancy-discrimination verdict against Lucasfilm, the First District held that a FEHA defendant is entitled, on request, to a “business judgment” jury instruction — the rule that an employer may act on a wrong, unwise, or mistaken but nondiscriminatory reason — and that an abstractly correct “no fetal-hazard defense” instruction untethered to any defense actually in the case was misleading error. The cumulative instructional errors required a retrial.

Nielsen fired Christine Earl, 59, for recording the wrong house address on a recruitment form, citing her history of policy violations. The Ninth Circuit reversed summary judgment on her FEHA age discrimination and wrongful termination claims: recruiters aged

A disabled LAPD officer placed in a permanent administrative light-duty post under the department's longstanding accommodation policy is a qualified individual under FEHA if he can perform that post's essential functions — not the field duties of a sworn officer generally. Removing him because a workers' compensation administrator rated him 100% disabled violated Government Code section 12940, subdivision (m). The Court of Appeal affirmed a $1,571,500 judgment.

The FEHA protects an employee’s disability status, not threatening or violent conduct; an employer may discipline or terminate an employee for making workplace threats even if the threats are caused by a disability, and doing so is not unlawful disability discrimination (195 Cal.App.4th at p. 147).

The Supreme Court’s foundational “cat’s paw” decision: an employer is liable when a biased supervisor performs an act intended to cause an adverse employment action that is a proximate cause of the ultimate decision — even if the formal decisionmaker had no discriminatory animus. A decisionmaker’s “independent investigation” does not automatically break the causal chain, especially when it credits the biased actor’s report without independently confirming the action was justified.

The Third District affirmed summary adjudication against a pregnant executive assistant whose two-month tenure ended in resignation after a pointed email exchange about her maternity-leave dates, holding the conduct neither severe nor pervasive enough to be FEHA harassment and not an adverse employment action under Yanowitz. In a holding of lasting evidentiary importance, the court also held that emails Holmes sent her attorney on the company computer — after being warned it was monitored and not private — were not confidential under Evidence Code section 952 and so were not privileged.

A salesman who suffered a stroke and was fired raised triable issues of age and disability discrimination, even though the same people who hired him made the decision. The Fourth District reversed summary judgment, holding that cane use met the disability threshold, that unexplained employer actions can supply the prima facie inference, and that a strong same-actor inference is still only an inference for the jury (CACI Nos. 2500, 2540, 2570).

Evidentiary objections made in writing before the summary-judgment hearing are preserved for appeal even if the trial court does not expressly rule on them. And California does not adopt a rigid stray-remarks doctrine: discriminatory remarks are not categorically irrelevant but must be considered, with all the…

A plaintiff who relies on his superior qualifications to prove discrimination must show a substantial disparity — a juror who finds the comparison merely 'close' will not ordinarily infer bias. Affirming summary judgment, the First District surveyed the federal relative-qualifications cases and held that the gap between the rejected applicant and the person hired was not wide enough to raise a triable issue.