California employment case index

The California Supreme Court holds that CCP §1281.98's arbitration-fee-payment forfeiture rule is not preempted by the FAA — but, rejecting the rigid automatic-forfeiture reading, only where a late payment is willful, grossly negligent, or fraudulent rather than a good-faith mistake or excusable neglect.

The University of California refuses to employ undocumented students who lack federal work authorization. The First District held that the policy facially discriminates based on immigration status under the FEHA national-origin regulations, and that the University’s only justification — fear that the federal government might read IRCA to cover it and prosecute — could not sustain the policy, because the University never attempted the regulation’s clear-and-convincing showing that federal law requires the discrimination. The court issued a writ directing the Regents to reconsider the policy on proper criteria, while pointedly declining to decide whether IRCA applies to state entities at all.

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.

The California Supreme Court holds that a coworker's single use of the N-word can be actionable harassment under the FEHA if sufficiently severe under the totality of the circumstances, and that withdrawing an employee's means of reporting harassment can be an adverse action for retaliation; summary judgment reversed.

Raines v. U.S. Healthworks Medical Group Business-Entity Agents Can Be Directly Liable Under FEHA Raines v. U.S. Healthworks Medical Group (2023) 15 Cal.5th 268 Parallel citations: 534 P.3d 40; 312 Cal.Rptr.3d 301. Supreme Court of California. Opinion filed August 21, 2023. Docket No. S273630. On a question certified by the United States Court of Appeals […]

Analysis · Key Case Cvejic v. Skyview Capital, LLC (2023) 92 Cal.App.5th 1073 Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District, Division Eight · Docket No. B318880 · Decided June 28, 2023 Verify before relying. A summary and analysis as of its publication date — not legal advice, and not a representation that the decision remains good […]

Fired the day she returned from pregnancy-related bed rest, a caregiver defeated summary judgment with declarations from four coworkers describing pregnancy-triggered firings by the same supervisors — evidence the court held admissible as a matter of law to prove motive, not propensity.

A White news anchor’s claim that his station’s “on-air style” rationale masked race-conscious hiring failed on summary judgment because the record corroborated the employer’s subjective assessment, and his sole contrary showing — that the executive lied about counseling him — could not alone support the inference that race was the real reason.

The Fourth District affirmed a whistleblower-retaliation verdict for an Office on Aging director fired after warning that a County reorganization was unlawful — holding the County waived its exhaustion defense by first raising it after trial — while reversing her sexual-harassment claim under the pre-§ 12923 "severe or pervasive" standard and affirming a remittitur-backed new trial order on damages.

The Fourth District held that while the timing of an adverse action can carry a FEHA retaliation plaintiff past the prima facie stage — even on an uncorroborated declaration — temporal proximity does not, standing alone, create a triable issue of pretext once the employer produces evidence of a legitimate reason, and it expressly rejected Gemini Aluminum's suggestion that employers must also prove their termination procedures were objectively fair.

On retransfer from the Supreme Court in light of Yanowitz, the First District reversed a $75,000 retaliation verdict, holding that file memoranda, a letter of instruction, an investigation, an unimplemented 30-day suspension, and a lateral transfer to a comparable position did not — separately or collectively — materially affect the terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, and that the surgeon's beliefs about her employer's motives were not substantial evidence of pretext.

The Sixth District affirmed summary judgment for the City, holding that a five-year pattern of stripping a female employee's coveted technical duties was "a collection of isolated employment decisions" that had acquired permanence by 1996 under Richards v. CH2M Hill — and that a biased supervisor's sexist remarks could not show pretext where he neither knew of her candidacy nor took part in the challenged hiring.

“Academic catfighting or anti-Semitism?” — a professor’s proof that her tenure denial rested on a hidden, forbidden “collegiality” criterion defeated her own FEHA claim, because the same evidence showed the real motive was a colleague’s grudge, not her religion.

Affirming a remitted $500,000 FEHA retaliation judgment for a Nigerian-American harbor-department engineer, the Second District held that pretext may be shown by direct evidence of decisionmakers' retaliatory remarks and by comparative evidence of disparate treatment — not only by a head-on attack on the employer's stated performance reasons — and that lay testimony alone can support a substantial emotional-distress award.