California employment case index

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.

Does every PAGA action contain an individual claim an employer can compel to arbitration? The split the California Supreme Court will resolve.

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.

Estrada v. Royalty Carpet Mills, Inc. (2024) 15 Cal.5th 582 holds that trial courts lack inherent authority to strike a PAGA claim as unmanageable, even if it is complex or time-intensive. Manageability is a class-action requirement that does not apply to PAGA; complexity must be handled through ordinary case-management tools, not dismissal.

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 […]

Adolph v. Uber Technologies, Inc. (2023) 14 Cal.5th 1104 holds that a PAGA plaintiff whose individual claims are compelled to arbitration retains standing as an “aggrieved employee” to litigate the non-individual representative claims in court — California’s answer to the standing question left open by Viking River.

The FAA preempts Iskanian to the extent it bars division of a PAGA action and prevents arbitration of an employee’s individual PAGA claim; an employer may compel the individual PAGA claim to arbitration. (The Supreme Court further opined that, under its reading of California law, the plaintiff would then lack standing…

Settling and dismissing individual Labor Code claims does not strip an employee of standing to pursue a PAGA claim. PAGA standing depends on being an “aggrieved employee” — someone employed by the alleged violator against whom one or more Labor Code violations were committed — not on maintaining an unredressed…

The unpaid-wages component of section 558 is not a civil penalty recoverable through PAGA; only the fixed civil penalties ($50/$100 per employee per pay period) are PAGA penalties. Because the unpaid wages are not part of the PAGA claim, the trial court could not compel that portion to arbitration as if it were.

Iskanian v. CLS Transportation (2014) 59 Cal.4th 348 holds that class-action waivers in employment arbitration agreements are enforceable after Concepcion (abrogating Gentry), but a predispute waiver of a representative PAGA action is contrary to public policy and not preempted by the FAA, because a PAGA claim belongs to the state.

Arias v. Superior Court (2009) 46 Cal.4th 969 holds that a representative PAGA action for civil penalties need not satisfy class-action requirements, while a representative UCL claim for the same Labor Code violations must — and that a non-class PAGA action does not violate the employer’s due-process rights.

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.