You used cannabis over the weekend. You came to work Monday and did your job. Your employer ran a drug test and the result came back positive. You were terminated. That pattern shows up often enough that California now has…
Off-the-clock work is one of the most common and most expensive wage-and-hour problems California SMBs face, and it is frequently invisible until the demand letter arrives. The employer believes the rule is simple: if I did not authorize the work,…
“He’s a regular. Just deal with it.” That is what her shift manager said. The customer had been coming in for two years. He always asked for her section. He commented on her body, her hair, what she was wearing…
You were not fired. The work was just harder to do every day. The schedule got reshuffled in ways that targeted you and only you. The meetings you used to be in stopped including you. The performance review that was…
Belief: a vendor’s assurance that an AI hiring tool is “bias-free” or “compliant” covers both fairness and legality. A vendor assurance is a marketing statement. Two distinct compliance frameworks apply to AI tools used in employment decisions, and an employer…
A message from a coworker landed on your phone after hours and the tone was off. A Slack thread crossed a line you could not unsee. A conference trip had a moment in a hotel hallway that you keep replaying….
Belief: harassment by customers, vendors, or other non-employees is not the employer’s exposure because the employer does not control the harasser. FEHA liability for third-party harassment turns on response, not control. The standard is whether the employer knew or should…
Belief: California’s heat illness rules are satisfied by having a written plan on file. The plan is the starting point, not the finish line. Cal/OSHA’s outdoor heat illness standard (Title 8, §3395) and the newer indoor standard (Title 8, §3396,…
“We told them about it in the handbook” is the line that does the least work in the lawsuit. Productivity monitoring software — keystroke logging, screen capture at intervals, idle-time scoring, application-use tracking — has moved into small-business operations. A…
“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…
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