California employment case index

The Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act of 2021 reaches only a “dispute or claim that arises or accrues on or after” March 3, 2022 — and in Combs v. Netflix the Ninth Circuit decided, for the first time in the circuit, what each of those words means. A claim accrues when the plaintiff has a complete and present cause of action; a dispute arises, in the employment setting, when an employee registers disagreement with the employer — internally, externally or otherwise — and the employer expressly or constructively opposes that position. The panel rejected both extremes: a dispute need not await a formal agency or court filing, but neither does it arise merely because the harassment happened. On Jessica Combs's own allegations — years of internal complaints that Netflix ignored, and a firing in December 2021 — both triggers fell before the cut-off, the EFAA did not apply, and her arbitration agreement was enforced. The decision is the gateway authority for every EFAA fight in the circuit, and it cuts in both directions.

The California Supreme Court granted review on March 25, 2026 in Barbosa v. Sierra Pacific Orthopaedic Center Medical Group to decide whether an arbitration agreement that designates the Federal Arbitration Act thereby imports the FAA's substantive provisions and their preemptive force, even where no interstate commerce is shown. The underlying Court of Appeal opinion is nonpublished, and the Court denied the requests to publish it on granting review. The paired grant-and-hold, Tuufuli v. West Coast Dental Administrative Services, is published but itself under review, and answered the question yes. This pending-review analysis sets out the Court's own issue statement, the competing answers below with their correct citability under rule 8.1115(e)(1), and what the answer decides for Armendariz, Labor Code section 432.6, the arbitration-fee statutes and the EFAA.

The Supreme Court’s foundational “cat’s paw” decision: an employer is liable when a biased supervisor performs an act intended to cause an adverse employment action that is a proximate cause of the ultimate decision — even if the formal decisionmaker had no discriminatory animus. A decisionmaker’s “independent investigation” does not automatically break the causal chain, especially when it credits the biased actor’s report without independently confirming the action was justified.

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.