“She never asked for anything” is the sentence that turns a manageable performance issue into a FEHA case. Under FEHA, the duty to engage in the interactive process is not triggered by a formal accommodation request. It is triggered when…
Most California small employers know the FEHA list — race, religion, sex, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, and the rest. Family structure is not on it, so the assumption is that hiring decisions, leave requests, and bereavement policies do…
Belief: when a California-based employee works a week in Nevada, Texas, or Arizona, that state’s overtime rules apply because that is where the work happened. California courts and the Labor Commissioner have rejected that view. California’s daily-and-weekly overtime rules generally…
Belief: if your HR or benefits-plan vendor has a SOC 2 report, your employee data is covered. A SOC 2 report is a point-in-time snapshot of a vendor’s controls, scoped and methodology-dependent. It is not a guarantee, and it does…
Belief: a casual “we’re hiring” post on Instagram or LinkedIn does not have to comply with California pay-scale rules because it is not a real job ad. For employers with fifteen or more employees, California Labor Code §432.3(c)(3) requires the…
Belief: employees with unlimited plans aren’t incurring cost, so reimbursement is optional. California reimbursement rules focus on whether the employer required a business expense to be carried by the employee, not whether the phone bill went up. If the job…
Belief: dashcams are only about accidents, so they reduce employment risk. Dashcams often collect employee data: audio, location, driver behavior, and sometimes scoring. Once a company uses that data in coaching or discipline, the system becomes employment evidence. California adds…
Belief: one bad arbitration decision means your arbitration program is unusable. In California, mixed arbitration outcomes happen for a simple reason: different decision-makers sometimes read the same language differently. That is not a license to ignore the problem, but it…
Belief: seasonal allergies are a personal annoyance, not a workplace accommodation issue. Most of the time they are minor. But the legal risk comes from how managers respond when an employee says allergies are interfering with breathing, concentration, or the…
Belief: keeping everything is safer than deleting anything. Over-preservation feels safe until it turns into a liability layer. Old data becomes searchable, discoverable, and costly to manage—especially when legal holds never get released. The operational failure pattern is hold drift….
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