Legal News and Updates
Pregnancy discrimination trial in Napa against restaurant group
On June 3, a pregnancy discrimination trial began in Napa County Superior Court in which a restaurant server alleged that a job transfer from her New York workplace to the company's location in Yountville fell through because of pregnancy discrimination....
Comprehensive employee handbooks a must for California employers
An employee handbook is a document that communicates your company's mission, policies and expectations. Employers give this to employees to clarify their rights and responsibilities while they're employed with the company. Beyond their value in running an...
Filing discrimination claim with EEOC first not jurisdictional
A recent unanimous employment discrimination case out of the U.S. Supreme Court has important takeaways for California employers. Fort Bend County, Texas v. Davis decides an unsettled legal question about Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the main federal...
New proposals for expanding paid parental leave in California
As part of his budget proposals in January, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced support for a change in state law that would allow new parents to take six months of parental leave while receiving partial wage replacement. Families could allocate the time to one...
Claim against Disney for unequal pay
In early April, two female employees filed a lawsuit in California Superior Court in Los Angeles County against The Walt Disney Company, Walt Disney Pictures, and Hollywood Records Inc (collectively "Disney.") The allegations of the lawsuit are that Disney pays them,...
Intersection between ‘ban-the-box’ law and negligent hiring claims
Since January 1, 2018, California has had a "ban-the-box" law that prohibits most employers in the state with five or more employees from asking in the initial stages of the onboarding process whether job applicants have had criminal convictions. We discussed the law...
California amends lactation law effective January 1, 2019
California employers should be aware of a change in our state's lactation accommodation law as of January 1. Previously, an employer could satisfy the requirement for a private room for breastfeeding mothers to express milk so long as the room was not a "toilet...
Court says store must pay workers for unworked on-call shifts
Our state is known for its wide-reaching employee protections. A recent Court of Appeal case illustrates this in the context of a department store that required retail employees to call in two hours before possible on-call shifts to see if they had to report in...
California court allows rounding software for meal-break tracking
In a case widely lauded as pro-employer, the California Court of Appeal in the Fourth District recently agreed with the trial court that a health staffing company's use of time-rounding software to track its employees' required meal breaks was fair and neutral and...
Respondeat superior in California courts (Part 2)
In Part 1 of this post, we introduced the December 2018 case of Moreno v. Visser Ranch, Inc., in which a California appellate court addressed issues of employer liability for losses or injuries caused by an employee when he or she was acting within the scope of...