Labor & Employment Law Blog

The California Civil Rights Department (CRD) recently rolled out its latest guidance and model notice for employees who are victims of violence or abuse and wish to take time off under law that was amended effective January 1, 2025. The guidance, which the CRD released earlier this month, is designed to ensure that employees understand the rights they are entitled to under AB 2499 that California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law last year.

On April 17, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision which will make it easier for employees to establish discrimination under Title VII of the U.S Civil Rights Act of 1964. In the case of Muldrow v. City of St. Louis (USSC Case No. 22-193), the Court held that an employee need only show that an employment action brought about "some harm to an identifiable term or condition of employment," as opposed to "materially significant disadvantage” in those terms or conditions. The Court expressly acknowledged that this is a less burdensome standard than those which had been adopted by federal appellate courts in the past, and that "many cases will come out differently" under this new standard. 

Is a staffing employer required to immediately pay final earned wages to a temporary employee whose assignment ends as a result of their being terminated by a client employer but where the temporary employee remains an employee of the staffing agency?  No, held a California Court of Appeal in the recent case of Young v. REMX Specialty Staffing No. A165081, 2023 WL 3331378, at *1 (Cal. Ct. App. May 10, 2023).

On September 2, 2022, the California Court of Appeal, Second District, delivered a rare victory for California construction employers in Jerome Oswald v. Murray Plumbing and Heating Corporation (2022) __ Cal.Rptr.3d __, Dkt. No. B312736.  At its core, this case shows how qualifying employers can—and should—take advantage of California’s construction industry exemption from the Private Attorneys General Act of 2004 (“PAGA”).

On March 29, 2021, the California Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling involving the State’s prevailing wage law, holding for the first time that the law’s requirements could be applied to employees who performed work for a private employer under a contract with a sanitation district.  (Kaanaana v. B. Bus. Servs., Inc., No. S253458, 2021 WL 1166963 (Cal. Mar. 29, 2021))  Prior to this decision, the law had generally been interpreted to apply only to construction work pursuant to a contract entered into with a public entity.

On February 8, 2021, the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision clarifying the circumstances under which a per diem benefit must be included in the regular rate of pay for overtime purposes under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).  The court held that since per diem benefits functioned as compensation for work rather than as reimbursement for expenses incurred by traveling healthcare clinicians, they were improperly excluded from the clinicians’ regular rates of pay for purposes of calculating overtime pay under federal law. Clarke v. AMN Servs., LLC (9th Cir., 2021) No. 19-55784, 2021 WL 419473.

On January 4, 2021, a California appellate court held an employer waived its right to enforce an arbitration agreement against a truck driver who filed a wage and hour class action against it, by waiting almost twenty months after the case was filed to make an arbitration demand.  The court held that the delay was unjustified because the employer’s conduct in defending the case in court for that period of time was inconsistent with its right to arbitrate and because such delay prejudiced the employee’s ability to use the benefits and efficiencies of arbitration. Garcia v. Haralambos Beverage Co., No. B296923, 2021 WL 22015 (Cal. Ct. App. Jan. 4, 2021).

On September 25, 2018, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the claims of potentially hundreds of thousands of Uber drivers for misclassification as independent contractors cannot proceed as a class action.  (O’Connor v. Uber Technologies, Ninth Circuit Case No. 16-15595.)  In this case, the drivers signed arbitration agreements containing class action waivers, which the Ninth Circuit initially refused to enforce based on the state of the law at the time.  However, in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Epic Systems (Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, ––– U.S. ––––, 138 S.Ct. 1612, 200 L.Ed.2d 889 (2018)) which issued in June, the appellate court held that the waivers must be enforced and that the case cannot proceed as a class action.  The court ordered that the arbitration agreements be enforced so that the arbitrations proceed on an individual basis. 

In a decision issued by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on September 10, 2018, the court rejected a challenge based on federal preemption grounds to the California Labor Commissioner’s use of the Borello standard for determining independent contractor status. The challenge was made based on the motor carrier provisions of the Federal Aviation and Administration Authorization Act of 1994 (“FAAAA”), 49 U.S.C. § 14501, et seq., which prohibit states from enacting or enforcing laws or regulations that relate to “a price, route or service of a motor carrier . . . with respect to the transportation of property.”

What kinds of provisions in arbitration agreements will cause the courts to invalidate them?  The Court of Appeal in the recent case of Baxter v. Genworth North America Corporation analyzed and rejected several of them, in upholding the denial of a motion to compel arbitration of an employee’s wrongful termination and discrimination claims.  Baxter v. Genworth North America (October 26, 2017 ...