California employment case index

A district court remanded a California wage-and-hour class action on its own motion because the removing employer had not produced evidence justifying the violation rate behind its $15 million amount-in-controversy figure. The Ninth Circuit vacated: a CAFA defendant may rely on a chain of reasoning built from assumptions tethered to the complaint, and cannot fairly be asked to prove violations it denies ever occurred. Ibarra still bites where the defendant's reading of the pleading is unreasonable – but not merely because a lower rate was equally plausible. The uncomfortable corollary for plaintiffs is that vague frequency language such as at times is now a jurisdictional concession made at the drafting table.

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.

Nine days after Fatmeh Badih told her employer — a physician with fewer than five employees — that she was pregnant, her last day was set; the DFEH would not even accept her complaint because the office was too small for the FEHA. Division One of the First District affirmed her wrongful-discharge verdict anyway, holding that pregnancy discrimination is a form of sex discrimination under article I, section 8 of the California Constitution, whose fundamental public policy against sex discrimination in employment binds every employer regardless of size. Jennings v. Marralle was distinguished, not disturbed: age has no constitutional anchor, but sex — and therefore pregnancy — does. Badih remains the pleading answer for pregnancy discharges at California's smallest workplaces.