Yesterday, a three-judge Ninth Circuit panel revisited its own 2021 order and finally struck down California’s anti-mandatory employment arbitration law, Assembly Bill 51 (“AB 51”). In an opinion drafted by the former dissenting judge, Judge Sandra Ikuta, the new majority declared AB 51 was preempted by the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”).
The statute in question, signed into law by Governor Newsom in 2019, was California
In recent years, employees (and their lawyers) have taken a variety of approaches to challenging the enforceability of workplace arbitration agreements. One common tactic has been to claim that they “don’t remember signing it” and, therefore, should not be required to arbitrate their claims. And at least one Court in the Second Appellate District has accepted this excuse. See Gamboa v. Northeast Community Clinic
On January 13, 2023, a Sacramento County Superior Court judge issued a preliminary injunction to stop the controversial Fast Food Accountability and Standards Recovery Act or “FAST Recovery Act” (AB 257) from taking effect, pending a vote by California voters. Previously, on December 30, 2022, the court had issued a temporary restraining order against the new law, which was signed by Gov. Newsom
In the weeks and months since it changed its name from the Department of Fair Employment and Housing to the California Civil Rights Department (“CRD”), the agency has been busy. Most recently, the CRD released proposed modifications to the regulations under the Fair Employment and Housing Act (“FEHA”) related to the use and consideration of criminal history information in employment decisions—a process that is already
On November 22, 2022, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously passed the Fair Work Week Ordinance (“FWWO”). Set to take effect in April 2023, the new law imposes significant requirements on retail employers in the City of Los Angeles with respect to both scheduling and hiring. It follows in the footsteps of similar predictive scheduling laws already on the books in other major cities, including
To properly calculate the overtime rate for a non-exempt employee, employers must first calculate the “regular rate of pay.” Under federal law, and the laws of most states, the regular rate is determined by dividing the employee’s total weekly remuneration (except for a handful of categories that are specifically excluded, such as gifts and payments for non-working hours) by the total number of hours actually worked by the employee that week. But certain states, including California, require a different calculation—one that, depending on the nature of the compensation, can only be divided by some, but not all, of the total hours worked in the week.
A decade ago, a California Court of Appeal held that employers lawfully could round employees’ time punches if the rounding policy was neutral on its face and as applied. See See’s Candy Shops, Inc. v. Super. Ct., 210 Cal. App. 4th 889 (2012). In arriving at this conclusion, the See’s Court relied on regulations under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) and the
On August 1, 2022, the California Court of Appeal joined longstanding Ninth Circuit precedent in determining that online-only businesses are not “public accommodations” covered under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) in Martinez v. Cot’n Wash, Inc., 2022 WL 3025828 (Cal. Ct. App. 2022). This may signal a change of tides of sorts for employers and other companies who have
On June 15, 2022, in Viking River Cruises, Inc. v. Moriana, Case No. 20-1573,_ U.S. _ (2022), by an 8-1 majority, the U.S. States Supreme Court held that the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”) preempts the California Supreme Court’s central holding in Iskanian v. CLS Transportation Los Angeles, LLC, 59 Cal. 4th 348 (2014), that actions brought under the California Labor Code Private
As covered previously here, the California Chamber of Commerce (“Chamber”) once again has identified a handful of “job killer” bills making their way through the legislative process. This year’s crop of proposed legislation would, among other things, inflate employer data reporting requirements and further expand the scope of the Fair Employment and Housing Act (“FEHA”). Several of these recently introduced bills already have passed