Labor & Employment

While a police department could not legally discriminate against its employee police officers based on their ethnicity, it could legally take adverse employment action against them based on the race of the man they shot.   Read More

Plaintiff, who was fired when his wife complained to his boss (who was also her mother) that plaintiff was armed, angry and on drugs, failed to state an actionable claim for discrimination based on marital status.   Read More

The Ninth Circuit rejects the Department of Labor’s informal interpretation of the dual job limitation on tip credit against the Fair Labor Standards Act’s minimum wage; "two jobs" is determined by occupation, not individual tasks.   Read More

A collective bargaining agreement explicitly requires arbitration of wage and hour claims by referencing a wage order; so long as a Private Attorney General Act claim survives, decertification of a class is not immediately appealable. Read More

Unionized prison guards’ pay is governed by the union’s memorandum of understanding, which was passed as state legislation, not general state wage and hour laws; but those general laws do apply to non-unionized prison workers.   Read More

The Fair Employment and Housing Act’s one year statute of limitations starts to run from the date of termination of employment of a faculty member, rather than the earlier date on which he was denied tenure for allegedly discriminatory reasons.   Read More

The trial court improperly granted summary judgment to employer defendant on employee plaintiff's claim of FEHA-prohibited retaliation for supporting a co-worker's complaint of sex discrimination, after she provided sufficient evidence of (1) adverse employment actions and (2) retaliatory motive.   Read More

Suits under the Private Attorney Act are unlike class actions in that plaintiffs cannot belatedly add new plaintiffs to carry on the suit in place of the original named plaintiffs, if it turns out the original plaintiffs’ claims fail.   Read More

Claims for statutory damages or penalties payable to individual employees are arbitrable; only Private Attorney General Act claims for civil penalties payable to the state are not arbitrable.   Read More

In a Private Attorney General Act suit, the plaintiff is entitled, as a matter of course, to discovery of identification information of all employees affected by the employer’s alleged violations of wage and hour laws.   Read More

When an employer's policy states that an employee does not begin to earn vacation pay until after a full year's employment, the employer does not owe an employee any vacation pay if employment is terminated less than a year after the date of initial employment.   Read More

A foreign national who was invited to the US to work for defendant was not an "intern" or "trainee" during the 11 months he worked before securing a green card, because the work he did consisted of typical work tasks rather than education; so he was entitled to minimum wages under both federal and state law during this period.    Read More

Trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying class certification in this suit for overtime compensation by claims examiners, since plaintiff had not shown that it could prove, by common evidence, that all of the claims examiners in the proposed class actually worked overtime; hence there was no preponderance of common issues.   Read More

Newspaper home delivery carriers were properly found to be employees, covered by Labor Code wage, hour, and expense reimbursement provisions, not independent contractors.  Read More

Bank’s home loan underwriter was not an exempt “administrative” employee for purposes of the Fair Labor Standards Act and hence was entitled to overtime compensation.   Read More

District court erred in dismissing plaintiff’s employment discrimination suit even though it had become moot, since plaintiff could still receive nominal damages and have his dignity interest vindicated even though he no longer worked for employer.  Read More

Employee’s introduction of evidence of discriminatory remarks by an upper-level supervisor should have enabled him to survive summary judgment on his claim for discriminatory termination due to his sexual orientation, even though employer also introduced evidence of a non-pretextual non-discriminatory motive as well; mixed motives do not absolve the employer.  Read More

An employee may sue his employer's outside counsel for conspiring with Immigration & Customs Enforcement to have him deported as an unregistered alien in retaliation for his having filed suit against the employer alleging a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act.  Read More

The federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act applies to all state and local government agencies without regard to the number of workers they employ, though it applies to private employers only if they have 20 or more workers.  Read More

An EEOC administrative subpoena for names, addresses and phone numbers of co-workers should have been enforced as the information was relevant to the charge the EEOC was investigating, allowing the EEOC to contact co-workers to weigh whether the employer’s test was discriminatory.  Read More