California employment case index

Affirming summary judgment on a 59-year-old communications manager's age claim, the First District adopted Hersant's substantial-evidence pretext standard, gave the same-actor inference "strong" force across a five-year span, and discounted a non-decisionmaker's isolated remark — making Horn the case every California employment plaintiff must be ready to distinguish.

Reversing summary judgment in a FEHA failure-to-promote case, the Ninth Circuit reconciled its competing pretext lines — direct evidence of bias needs only "very little" weight to reach a jury, while circumstantial evidence must be "specific" and "substantial" — a formulation later questioned after Desert Palace but still central to MSJ briefing on both sides.

The FEHA allows employees to sue and hold liable their employers, but not individual supervisors, for discrimination; the same rule applies to common-law claims for wrongful discharge (id. at p. 643).

In Hersant v. Department of Social Services (1997) 57 Cal.App.4th 997, the Court of Appeal affirmed summary judgment for an employer in a FEHA age-discrimination case, adopting the rule that once an employer offers a legitimate, non-age-based reason for an adverse action, the employee must offer substantial evidence that the reason is untrue or pretextual, or evidence of discriminatory animus, or a combination, and not merely triable issues about whether the decision was sound.

Age discrimination in violation of the FEHA supports a common-law claim for wrongful discharge in violation of public policy. When a plaintiff relies on a statutory prohibition to support such a claim, the common-law claim is subject to the statute’s substantive limits (the nature and scope of the prohibition) but not…

Reversing summary judgment for the hospital, Division One held that a registry nurse's point-by-point factual dispute, the employer's conclusory comparative-qualifications showing, and the decisionmaker's anti-Mexican remarks created triable issues of discrimination and retaliation — and that the FEHA's antiretaliation provision protects job applicants, including one whose injury was the loss of temporary contract work.

A conservative Jewish airline employee fired for refusing to work the first day of Passover sued under FEHA for religious discrimination, retaliation, and failure to accommodate. The Court of Appeal reversed summary judgment, holding the claims were not RLA-preempted 'minor' disputes and that a collective bargaining agreement does not, in the abstract, discharge an employer's duty to accommodate where the employer did nothing to explore alternatives. Any reasonable accommodation suffices, but the employer must actually offer one.

Individual supervisors are not personally liable under the FEHA for discrimination, which arises out of the necessary personnel-management functions of the employer; by contrast, harassment — conduct outside the scope of necessary job performance and presumably engaged in for personal gratification or bias — can give…

A school administrator lost his FEHA age- and race-discrimination claims at trial, then won a new trial when the judge decided he had mis-instructed the jury on the McDonnell Douglas prima facie burden. The Court of Appeal reversed, holding the prima facie and rebuttal stages are questions of law for the court, not the jury: once the employer articulates a legitimate reason, the burden-shifting construct drops from the case and only the ultimate question of discriminatory intent reaches the jury.

Nine days after Fatmeh Badih told her employer — a physician with fewer than five employees — that she was pregnant, her last day was set; the DFEH would not even accept her complaint because the office was too small for the FEHA. Division One of the First District affirmed her wrongful-discharge verdict anyway, holding that pregnancy discrimination is a form of sex discrimination under article I, section 8 of the California Constitution, whose fundamental public policy against sex discrimination in employment binds every employer regardless of size. Jennings v. Marralle was distinguished, not disturbed: age has no constitutional anchor, but sex — and therefore pregnancy — does. Badih remains the pleading answer for pregnancy discharges at California's smallest workplaces.

The Sixth District's 1994 decision translated McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting into Code of Civil Procedure section 437c practice — affirming summary judgment for Lockheed where a laid-off 65-year-old answered a documented reduction in force with speculation rather than "substantial responsive evidence," and holding that EEOC-only filings did not exhaust DFEH remedies.

St. Mary’s Honor Center v. HicksDisproving the employer’s stated reason permits — but does not compel — a finding of intentional discrimination; the plaintiff must persuade the factfinder both that the reason was false and that discrimination was the real reason.St. Mary’s Honor Center v. Hicks (1993) 509 U.S. 502Parallel citations: 113 S.Ct. 2742; 125 […]

A Black assistant professor denied tenure won a jury verdict for race discrimination under FEHA, and the Court of Appeal affirmed in the published portion of its opinion. The court held the verdict was supported by substantial evidence and that a tenure plaintiff need not prove intentional discrimination at every stage of a multilevel review: discrimination at one level can infect the ultimate decision. On causation, racial animus need not be the sole motivation, only a but-for cause of the adverse decision.

In UAW v. Johnson Controls, Inc. (1991) 499 U.S. 187, the Supreme Court held that an employer's fetal-protection policy excluding all fertile women from lead-exposed jobs is facial sex discrimination under Title VII as amended by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act — not a neutral practice to be tested for business necessity. The narrow bona fide occupational qualification defense reaches only qualifications affecting an employee's ability to do the job, and cannot be grounded in feared harm to a future fetus or in cost and tort-liability concerns.

The FEHA does not displace other state-law remedies, including common-law claims, for employment discrimination; an employee need not exhaust FEHA’s administrative process before pursuing nonstatutory causes of action; and sex discrimination in employment may support a tort claim for wrongful discharge in…

In Johnson Controls, Inc. v. Fair Employment & Housing Com. (1990) 218 Cal.App.3d 517, the Court of Appeal struck down a fetal-protection policy barring fertile women from lead-exposed battery jobs as overt sex discrimination under FEHA. The court articulated California's two-part bona fide occupational qualification test — the sex-based qualification must be reasonably necessary to the normal operation of the business, and the employer must show that all or substantially all of the excluded class cannot safely and efficiently perform the job — and held the employer failed both prongs.

Larry Hardison was fired when his Saturday Sabbath collided with a low-seniority shift at TWA's around-the-clock maintenance base. Reversing the Eighth Circuit, the Supreme Court held that Title VII does not require an employer to override a bona fide seniority system to accommodate an employee's religion, and that requiring an employer to bear more than a de minimis cost is an undue hardship. Justices Marshall and Brennan dissented. The de minimis standard was later clarified and raised by Groff v. DeJoy (2023).

In Teamsters v. United States (1977) 431 U.S. 324, the Supreme Court drew the foundational line between disparate-treatment and disparate-impact discrimination, explained the Government's pattern-or-practice burden to prove that discrimination was a company's “standard operating procedure,” shielded bona fide seniority systems under section 703(h), and recognized the “futile gesture” doctrine excusing non-applicants deterred from applying by a known discriminatory policy.

In McDonald v. Santa Fe Trail Transportation Co. (1976) 427 U.S. 273, two white employees were discharged for participating in the theft of antifreeze from a shipment in their employer's care, while a Black employee charged with the same misconduct was retained. The Supreme Court held — unanimously as to Title VII, and seven-to-two as to 42 U.S.C. § 1981 — that both statutes protect against racial discrimination directed at any race, including white persons. An employer “may justifiably refuse to rehire one who was engaged in unlawful, disruptive acts against it, but only if this criterion is applied alike to members of all races.” The judgment dismissing the complaint was reversed and the case remanded.

The Supreme Court held that back pay should normally be awarded to make Title VII victims whole — an employer’s good faith is no defense — and that job-validation studies must meet professional standards before discriminatory employment tests can stand.

Four women who paid into California’s employee-funded disability insurance program were denied benefits because their disabilities arose from pregnancy. Six Justices upheld the exclusion: the program’s risk selection was rational social-welfare line-drawing, and — in footnote 20, the most consequential footnote in pregnancy-discrimination law — the classification was not sex-based at all, because it divided “pregnant women and nonpregnant persons.” Congress answered with the Pregnancy Discrimination Act; California answered with the FEHA’s definition of sex, the PDLL, and Badih v. Myers; even the SDI statute now expressly covers pregnancy. Yet the constitutional holding stands, reaffirmed in Dobbs — a live obstacle for equal-protection claims, and a museum piece everywhere else.

Title VII disparate-treatment claims proceed under a three-step framework: (1) the plaintiff must establish a prima facie case of discrimination; (2) the burden of production then shifts to the employer to articulate a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for its action; and (3) the plaintiff must then have the…

Title VII prohibits employment practices that operate to exclude protected groups and are not demonstrably related to job performance, regardless of the employer’s intent (disparate-impact liability). If a neutral practice has a disparate impact on a protected class, the employer must show the practice is job-related…