California employment case index

The Ninth Circuit held the Federal Arbitration Act preempts AB 51 (Labor Code § 432.6), California's attempt to ban mandatory employment arbitration, because a state rule that burdens the formation of arbitration agreements stands as an obstacle to the FAA.

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”…

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.