California employment case index

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.

A produce-plant forklift driver was fired after complaining his pay lagged behind coworkers’. He wrongly believed the Equal Pay Act reached the gap — but the Fourth District holds his mistake of law does not sink his Labor Code section 1102.5(b) whistleblower verdict, because the statute asks only whether he had objectively reasonable cause to believe a violation occurred, a question for the jury.

A coworker’s off-site sexual advances were not work-related and not imputable to the employer — yet the Fifth District held the employee still stated a FEHA hostile-work-environment claim, because the employer’s refusal to act and its HR representative’s mocking response could independently alter the workplace in an objectively severe manner. A pleading-stage reversal that imports the Ninth Circuit’s totality-of-the-circumstances, employer-response framework (Fuller, Okonowsky) into California law.

A sheriff’s deputy proved every element of his whistleblower retaliation claim — and still left the courthouse owing costs. The jury found his protected disclosures were a factor in the County’s actions against him, but also that the County would have made the same decisions anyway. Division Four held that a plaintiff defeated by the section 1102.6 same-decision defense who obtains no relief has not brought a “successful action” under section 1102.5(j): no attorney’s fees, and the employer is the prevailing party for costs. The panel declined to extend Harris v. City of Santa Monica’s FEHA rule, agreed the contrary result would be “a rational policy choice,” and pointedly left the fix to the Legislature.

Inglewood’s elected city treasurer accused the mayor of misappropriating public funds, then saw her monthly salary cut from $8,000 to $1,404 and her duties stripped away. Her whistleblower retaliation suit under Labor Code section 1102.5 failed at the threshold: a unanimous Supreme Court held that elected officials are not “employees” within section 1106’s definition. Finding the statutory text inconclusive, the court rested on legislative history and context — section 1106 protects rank-and-file public workers, not officials who answer to the electorate — while noting that other remedies, including the First Amendment, may remain available.

An LAPD captain never witnessed officers passing around a fake nude photo of her and was never confronted to her face — yet the Second District affirmed a $4 million FEHA verdict, holding that her secondhand knowledge of the department-wide circulation, and the LAPD’s refusal to stop it, supplied substantial evidence of a severe or pervasive hostile work environment. A leading application of Government Code section 12923.

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.

The Ninth Circuit reversed summary judgment for the Bureau of Prisons, holding that a corrections lieutenant’s off-duty Instagram page targeting a prison psychologist — followed by more than a hundred coworkers — is part of the totality of the circumstances in a Title VII hostile-work-environment claim. There is no rule that only conduct inside the physical workplace counts, ‘especially in light of the ubiquity of social media,’ and the employer’s dismissive, ineffectual response can independently create a hostile environment.

The First District held that an employer's same-decision showing under Labor Code § 1102.6 is a complete defense to a § 1102.5 whistleblower claim — barring declaratory relief and attorney's fees along with damages — expressly declining to import Harris v. City of Santa Monica's FEHA partial-defense rule.

Eight warehouse workers alleged their employer let staff blast “sexually graphic, violently misogynistic” music for nearly two years over almost daily complaints. The Ninth Circuit vacated a Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal, holding that pervasive sexist content can create a Title VII hostile work environment even if it targets no one and offends both sexes — and that an employer’s “equal opportunity harasser” status “provides no escape hatch for liability.”

People ex rel. Garcia-Brower v. Kolla’s, Inc.A protected “disclosure” under Labor Code section 1102.5(b) includes an employee’s report or complaint of a legal violation to an employer — even when the recipient already knows of the violation.People ex rel. Garcia-Brower v. Kolla’s, Inc. (2023) 14 Cal.5th 719Parallel citations: 529 P.3d 49; 308 Cal.Rptr.3d 388. Supreme […]

A Rite Aid district manager sent a staff pharmacist lewd photos in a late-night, off-site text exchange that grew out of a friendship predating her employment. The Fifth District affirmed summary judgment for the employer, holding that FEHA strict liability for supervisor harassment attaches only when the supervisor acts “in the capacity of supervisor,” not where the conduct arises from a completely private relationship — and that the plaintiff, invited back after the harasser was fired, was not constructively discharged.

Months after Lawson, the Third District affirmed summary judgment for the County of Sacramento under Labor Code § 1102.6 — undisputed evidence of insubordination, disrespect, and dishonesty proved clearly and convincingly that the county would have released the probationary employee anyway — while leaving open whether § 1102.5 requires an actual belief that the law was violated.

Reversing summary judgment for the UC Regents, the Second District mapped the post-Lawson landscape — Labor Code § 1102.6 governs § 1102.5 claims, Government Code § 8547.10(e) supplies the same framework for University of California whistleblowers, and McDonnell Douglas still governs Health and Safety Code § 1278.5 claims, under which Scheer's clause-by-clause dismantling of his termination letter raised a triable issue of pretext.