California employment case index

Tipped employees won preliminary certification of a nationwide FLSA collective in Arizona, and the district court authorised notice to out-of-state servers because one Arizona plaintiff had sued. The Ninth Circuit held that theory wrong, joining four circuits against the First to hold that Bristol-Myers Squibb applies in FLSA collective actions: where jurisdiction is specific, each opt-in plaintiff's claim must bear its own connection to the forum. The panel simultaneously preserved the Campbell two-step and refused to require pre-notice rulings on absent employees' arbitration agreements — a split decision whose wins and losses both reshape forum strategy in hybrid wage cases.

Three Oracle instructors living in Colorado and Arizona worked a limited number of days in California for their California-headquartered employer. Answering certified questions from the Ninth Circuit, the California Supreme Court held that the Labor Code's overtime provisions apply to work performed in this state regardless of residence, and that those violations support a UCL claim – but that the UCL does not reach FLSA violations occurring in other states on these stipulated facts. The court confined its holding to overtime and to entire days and weeks worked in California.

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.