California employment case index

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

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.

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.

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.