California employment case index

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.

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.

The employee-non-solicitation provision was void under section 16600 because it restrained the individual defendants — recruiters whose profession is recruiting and placing nurses — from engaging in their chosen profession; applying Edwards, the court declined to use the older “reasonableness” analysis and held such…

Brinker Restaurant Corp. v. Superior Court (2012) 53 Cal.4th 1004 is California’s foundational meal-and-rest decision: an employer must provide a duty-free meal period but need not ensure no work is done; it sets the meal-timing and rest-period rules and confirms that courts may resolve merits questions enmeshed with class certification.

Section 16600 voids contracts that restrain anyone from engaging in a lawful profession, trade, or business; Edwards’s noncompetition agreement was therefore invalid. California does not recognize the federal courts’ “narrow-restraint” exception — even a limited or partial restraint on practicing one’s profession is…

The employee bears the burden of proving he or she is a qualified individual under the FEHA — that is, able to perform the essential duties of the position with or without reasonable accommodation — just as the federal ADA requires; it is not the employer’s burden to disprove qualification.

The FEHA requires only that a physiological disease or condition affecting a body system “limit” — not “substantially limit” — the plaintiff’s ability to participate in a major life activity, a standard broader than the federal ADA; the later Poppink Act merely clarified, and did not change, that existing “limits”…