California employment case index

A former SpaceX employee who lived and worked in Redmond, Washington filed a FEHA complaint in California, and SpaceX refused to answer the Civil Rights Department's investigatory subpoena on the ground that FEHA stops at the state line. The Second District affirmed the order compelling compliance, and in the published portion of its opinion it did two things that matter to every multistate employer and every remote worker. It separated the question of what California connections trigger FEHA's investigatory provisions from the question of what connections trigger its substantive ones, observing that the potential for conflict with other sovereigns is far less when the Department investigates than when it enjoins, so that it is at least conceivable that fewer connections are required to open an investigation than to impose liability. And it refused to read Kearney, or the Tidewater-Sullivan-Ward-Oman wage-and-hour line, as laying down any categorical rule that California's employment laws never protect a worker outside the state, leaving Campbell v. Arco Marine intact but confined to a record in which the California connections were already settled. The court did not hold that FEHA reaches this employee; it held that SpaceX had not shown it cannot. Note that the opinion is published except as to part 2 of the Discussion, which may not be cited.

An employer must prove a reasonable, good-faith attempt to comply before escaping liquidated damages under Labor Code section 1194.2.

A solar-project electrician queued unpaid at a security gate while guards inspected vehicles, drove miles of access road under strict site rules, and ate lunch confined to a designated area under a CBA calling meal periods “unpaid.” Answering the Ninth Circuit, a unanimous Supreme Court held the exit procedure is compensable “hours worked”; the gate-to-lot drive is compensable only as “employer-mandated travel,” and only if the gate is the first location required for a reason beyond site access; and no collective bargaining agreement can waive the minimum wage for a meal period during which the employer’s confinement forecloses otherwise feasible personal activities.

Troester v. Starbucks Corp. (2018) 5 Cal.5th 829 holds that California has not adopted the federal de minimis doctrine: an employer that requires small but regularly recurring off-the-clock work — here, several minutes of closing tasks each shift — must pay for that time and cannot invoke de minimis to avoid it.

Neither Labor Code section 1194 nor section 218.5 authorizes an award of attorney fees to a party that prevails on a section 226.7 claim; such claims are not actions for the nonpayment of minimum wages or overtime (§1194) and are not the kind of nonpayment-of-wages action that triggers §218.5 fee-shifting, so each…

Three Oracle instructors living in Colorado and Arizona worked a limited number of days in California for their California-headquartered employer. Answering certified questions from the Ninth Circuit, the California Supreme Court held that the Labor Code's overtime provisions apply to work performed in this state regardless of residence, and that those violations support a UCL claim – but that the UCL does not reach FLSA violations occurring in other states on these stipulated facts. The court confined its holding to overtime and to entire days and weeks worked in California.

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.

California does not permit wage averaging: the minimum-wage standard applies to each hour worked, and an employer must pay at least the minimum wage for every compensable hour; it cannot use higher pay for some hours to offset unpaid or sub-minimum hours.

FEHA never names leave as a reasonable accommodation, yet leave is the most common accommodation dispute in practice. Two published decisions supply both halves of the rule: Hanson v. Lucky Stores holds that a finite leave can be a reasonable accommodation where the employee is likely to be able to work at the end of it, and that an employer need not wait indefinitely; Jensen v. Wells Fargo Bank fixes what an employer must establish to end such a case on summary judgment. This analysis states the rule, the proviso, the indefiniteness limit and the duty to reassign, and corrects the subdivision lettering that briefs still get wrong.

When Lillian Garland returned from pregnancy disability leave to find her receptionist job filled, California’s guarantee of leave and reinstatement collided with her employer’s theory that Title VII forbade treating pregnancy “better” than other disabilities. The Supreme Court sided with California: the Pregnancy Discrimination Act is a floor beneath which pregnancy benefits may not drop, not a ceiling above which states may not rise — and employers can always comply with both laws by leveling benefits up. Guerra remains the constitutional foundation of the PDLL and of every California pregnancy protection built since.