California employment case index

A Tesla yard hostler who moved 53-foot trailers of out-of-state auto parts around the Fremont factory — never crossing a state line — sued for wage-and-hour violations, and Tesla moved to compel individual arbitration. In the published portion of its opinion, the First District holds yard hostlers are FAA section 1 transportation workers exempt from arbitration, and clarifies which wage claims Labor Code section 229 keeps in court.

After 19 years of litigation, a bifurcated bench trial produced a $43 million judgment for ~400 escrow workers who claimed they were misclassified as exempt. The Fifth District reverses on two independent grounds: the trial court could not delegate the entire damages phase to a private referee without the parties’ consent, and the liability-phase trial plan violated Duran by using representative sampling to prove classwide liability while barring the employer from contesting individual exempt status.

An employee with an undisclosed bipolar diagnosis was fired after two episodes of erratic, irrational behavior at work, then sued Target under FEHA. The Second District affirms summary judgment: employer knowledge is a prerequisite to FEHA disability liability, and it is imputed only when disability is the “only reasonable interpretation” of the conduct — not where intoxication, medication, or sleep deprivation could equally explain it.

A railcar repairman who inspected and repaired freight cars taken out of service in a rail yard brought a wage-and-hour class action and argued his arbitration agreement was exempt as a transportation worker’s contract. The Second District disagrees: he is neither a “railroad employee” nor a “transportation worker” under FAA section 1, because repairing decommissioned cars is too far removed from actual transportation — so his arbitration agreement and class waiver are enforceable.

An EMT sought to certify a 135-worker class alleging the employer left nondiscretionary “EMS Bonuses” out of the regular rate, underpaying overtime and premiums. The Fifth District reverses the denial of class certification: the employer’s gift/discretion defense applied to every EMS Bonus, so it was not a defense “unique” to the named plaintiff.

A former Work Practice Apprentice at the San Francisco Zen Center won a wage award, but the trial court held the First Amendment’s ministerial exception barred his claims. The First District reverses, adopting its companion case Lorenzo: the exception bars only claims that require resolving ecclesiastical questions, and the Center showed none. NOTE: the controlling ministerial-exception issue is now before the California Supreme Court in Lorenzo (S294565), so this opinion is citable for persuasive value only.

An employer must prove a reasonable, good-faith attempt to comply before escaping liquidated damages under Labor Code section 1194.2.

Must a California employer accommodate an employee who is not disabled but who cares for someone who is? Castro-Ramirez said in 2016 that FEHA “may reasonably be interpreted” to require it — and expressly declined to decide. Nine years on, no published California decision has answered, the Civil Rights Council’s 2020 request for public input produced no regulation, and CACI 2547 still calls the element optional. Meanwhile five federal district courts — Castro v. Classy, McVay, and 2025’s Acosta, Head, and De Wit — have all held that failure-to-accommodate and interactive-process claims may rest on associational disability. This analysis maps the statutory argument, the unpublished contrary authority, and how to plead the caregiver’s claim while the question stays open.

Two veterinary workers signed a standing written waiver of their meal break for shifts of six hours or less — revocable at any time — then sued years later, arguing meal periods can be waived only shift by shift after the right accrues. Division Seven disagreed: section 512 and the wage orders are silent on timing and form, and eighty years of IWC history treats written prospective waivers as employee protection, not evasion. But the holding is expressly conditional: the court reserved unconscionable, coerced, unknowing, and irrevocable waivers, and oral prospective waivers entirely. Bradsbery is a safe harbor for clean waiver programs — and a litigation roadmap against defective ones.

After a harbor patrol officer’s on-duty accident left him unable to work, the Port San Luis Harbor District told him retirement was his “single option” — then denied his CalPERS disability-retirement application and terminated him on a resignation theory it later admitted was false. Division Six affirmed summary judgment on his FEHA claim anyway: denial of disability-retirement payments is not an adverse employment action, because retirement benefits begin when employment ends, and a claimant who cannot perform his essential duties is not a “qualified individual” under Green. The remedy for a wrongful denial is an appeal to the Office of Administrative Hearings and administrative mandamus — a route Lowry lost by following a repealed procedure.

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.

The California Supreme Court unanimously upholds Proposition 22 (Bus. & Prof. Code, § 7451), holding that the Legislature’s “plenary” and “unlimited” authority over workers’ compensation under article XIV, section 4 is not exclusive of the people’s reserved initiative power — while expressly reserving the harder questions about Proposition 22’s seven-eighths amendment rule.

In Naranjo II (2024) 15 Cal.5th 1056, the California Supreme Court holds that an employer’s objectively reasonable, good-faith belief that its wage statements complied with the law defeats both Labor Code § 226 penalties (no “knowing and intentional” violation) and § 203 waiting-time penalties (no “willful” failure) — harmonizing the two penalty statutes around a common good-faith defense.

A solar-project electrician queued unpaid at a security gate while guards inspected vehicles, drove miles of access road under strict site rules, and ate lunch confined to a designated area under a CBA calling meal periods “unpaid.” Answering the Ninth Circuit, a unanimous Supreme Court held the exit procedure is compensable “hours worked”; the gate-to-lot drive is compensable only as “employer-mandated travel,” and only if the gate is the first location required for a reason beyond site access; and no collective bargaining agreement can waive the minimum wage for a meal period during which the employer’s confinement forecloses otherwise feasible personal activities.

Estrada v. Royalty Carpet Mills, Inc. (2024) 15 Cal.5th 582 holds that trial courts lack inherent authority to strike a PAGA claim as unmanageable, even if it is complex or time-intensive. Manageability is a class-action requirement that does not apply to PAGA; complexity must be handled through ordinary case-management tools, not dismissal.

Adolph v. Uber Technologies, Inc. (2023) 14 Cal.5th 1104 holds that a PAGA plaintiff whose individual claims are compelled to arbitration retains standing as an “aggrieved employee” to litigate the non-individual representative claims in court — California’s answer to the standing question left open by Viking River.

A unanimous Court of Appeal reversed summary judgment for Kaiser, holding that even though the employer granted every accommodation the employee requested, it could still be liable for failing to accommodate and failing to engage in the interactive process because, through her supervisor, it knew of but never provided a needed lighter-tasks accommodation. The court also reinstated the disability-discrimination and retaliation claims on a cat’s-paw theory.

Home Depot’s Kronos system recorded Delmer Camp’s time to the minute — then quarter-hour rounding paid him for 470 fewer minutes than his own timecards showed. The Sixth District reversed summary judgment: under Troester and Donohue, an employer that can capture and has captured exact worktime must pay for all of it, and no California text authorizes rounding that underpays an identifiable employee. The panel invited the Supreme Court to decide whether See’s Candy neutral rounding survives at all — and the Court granted review (S277518), where the case remains pending. Cite it as persuasive only, with the review-granted parenthetical, and re-verify status before filing.

Naranjo v. Spectrum Security Services, Inc. (Naranjo I)Premium pay owed for missed meal and rest breaks under Labor Code section 226.7 constitutes “wages,” so it must be reported on wage statements under section 226 and is subject to waiting-time penalties under section 203 when not timely paid at separation.Naranjo v. Spectrum Security Services, Inc. (2022) […]

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.

Ferra v. Loews Hollywood Hotel, LLC (2021) 11 Cal.5th 858 holds that the meal/rest premium under Labor Code § 226.7(c) must be paid at the “regular rate of compensation,” which is synonymous with the overtime “regular rate of pay” and includes all nondiscretionary payments — not just base hourly wages. The holding is retroactive.

Donohue v. AMN Services, LLC (2021) 11 Cal.5th 58 holds that employers may not round meal-period time punches, and that time records showing short, late, or missed meal periods raise a rebuttable presumption of a violation — usable even at summary judgment.

Vazquez v. Jan-Pro Franchising International, Inc. (2021) 10 Cal.5th 944 holds that the ABC test adopted in Dynamex applies retroactively — to all cases not yet final when Dynamex was decided — exposing pre-2018 wage-order conduct to the new worker-classification standard.

The Court of Appeal held that a plaintiff suing for failure to engage in the interactive process under Government Code section 12940, subdivision (n) must prove a reasonable accommodation was actually available. Substantial evidence supported finite leave as an available accommodation for the plaintiff’s carpal-tunnel (wrist) injury, but none supported any accommodation for her later shoulder injury. Because the general verdict did not reveal which disability the jury relied on, the judgment was reversed for a limited retrial.

The Court of Appeal affirms a statewide preliminary injunction against Uber and Lyft, holding the People likely to prevail under prong B of the ABC test (Lab. Code, § 2775) — rideshare driving is within the usual course of the companies’ business — and rejecting the “technology platform” defense as a false dichotomy. (Predates Proposition 22; see Castellanos.)

Frlekin v. Apple Inc. (2020) 8 Cal.5th 1038 holds that time spent waiting for and undergoing mandatory exit bag-and-device searches is compensable “hours worked” under the control clause — even after clocking out, and even though employees could have avoided a search by not bringing a bag. It applies Morillion and rejects the “optional” defense.