California employment case index

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.

Tilly’s required retail workers to phone the store exactly two hours before every on-call shift — under threat of written discipline — and paid nothing if the answer was ‘don’t come in.’ Division Three held, 2–1, that this triggers Wage Order 7 reporting-time pay: ‘reporting for work’ means presenting oneself as ordered, and the employer’s own directions define the manner, whether that is walking through the door, logging on remotely, or making a mandatory call. The holding is deliberately tied to the two-hour call-in regime, the retroactivity question was expressly left open, and Justice Egerton’s partial dissent — built on 18,000 pages of IWC history — supplies the employer playbook. Review was denied; Ward remains the leading California authority on call-in scheduling.

A defendant moving for summary judgment bears the burden of showing that a cause of action has no merit — that one or more elements cannot be established or that there is a complete defense — by either conclusively negating an element or showing the plaintiff does not possess, and cannot reasonably obtain, evidence to…