California employment case index

A trucking-job applicant brought an FCRA class action over confusing, noncompliant background-check disclosure forms; after Limon v. Circle K required concrete injury, the trial court decertified the class. The First District reverses and declines to follow Limon: California courts are not bound by Article III, and a willful FCRA violation supports statutory damages of $100–$1,000 and standing without proof of harm.

Two Nordstrom employees worked stretches of more than six consecutive days, but never seven days inside a single established workweek, and always with at least one short shift. The Ninth Circuit certified three questions, and a unanimous Supreme Court answered all of them on one page: the day-of-rest guarantee runs by the workweek rather than on a rolling seven days, so runs spanning two workweeks are not per se prohibited; the six-hour exemption applies only where the employee never exceeds six hours on any day of that week, because the contrary reading would let a single short shift swallow the rule; and an employer 'causes' a lost day of rest by inducing the employee to forgo it, owing a duty to apprise employees of the right and then maintain absolute neutrality about its exercise.

There is no California statute or case law authorizing or prohibiting employee time rounding, so Division One borrowed the federal rule: an employer may round punch times to the nearest tenth of an hour if the policy is fair and neutral on its face and, as applied, does not fail over time to compensate employees for the time they actually worked. The posture is narrow – a writ vacating summary adjudication on two of the employer's affirmative defenses, with the court expressly leaving open whether either side will prevail. The plaintiff's expert lost the case by treating the employer's separate grace-period policy as if it were rounding. Whether neutral rounding survives at all is now pending before the California Supreme Court in Camp v. Home Depot, S277518.