California employment case index

Inglewood’s elected city treasurer accused the mayor of misappropriating public funds, then saw her monthly salary cut from $8,000 to $1,404 and her duties stripped away. Her whistleblower retaliation suit under Labor Code section 1102.5 failed at the threshold: a unanimous Supreme Court held that elected officials are not “employees” within section 1106’s definition. Finding the statutory text inconclusive, the court rested on legislative history and context — section 1106 protects rank-and-file public workers, not officials who answer to the electorate — while noting that other remedies, including the First Amendment, may remain available.

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.