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In Salazar v. McDonald’s Corp., the plaintiff argued that McDonald’s, a franchisor of fast food restaurants, was liable for wage and hour violations as a “joint employer” of its franchisees’ employees.  Last week, a panel of the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected that argument.

The court relied on the California Supreme Court’s…

Today, Governor Newsom signed AB 5 into law, drastically altering how millions of Californians are paid and drastically altering the legal analysis involved in distinguishing between “employees” and “independent contractors.” Daniel Kitzes and Brian Casillas have prepared a thoughtful analysis of this new law. You can read it here.

If you have workers in…

It looks like the back-and-forth about how much employee information will be covered under the California Consumer Privacy Act, CCPA, is likely resolved, at least for now.  The California legislature recently passed AB 25, which excludes most employment information from the CCPA.  If signed by Governor Newsom, it will specifically exclude information collected by

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In 2018, California passed numerous pieces of legislation in response to the #MeToo movement that expanded the obligations of employers to provide sexual harassment prevention training.  SB 1343 is one such piece of legislation that went into effect this year and requires that all California employers with five or more employees provide at least two …

“Unconscionability” is alive and well, as last week the California high Court renewed its 30-year running dog fight with the U.S. Supreme Court over the enforceability of arbitration agreements.  In One Toyota of Oakland v. Kho (“OTO”), the California Court struck down an arbitration agreement as “unconscionable,” and allowed an employee to proceed…

Humans are not unbiased observers and decision makers. I’m not talking here about prejudice based on protected categories. I’m talking more generally about systemic flaws in how our brains interpret and act upon information. Take for example the Ebbinghaus Illusion. There are two red circles in the image below. While people consistently see the left…

There is a lot of confusion about how the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) will impact California employers.  The California legislature is considering AB25, which has been interpreted as eliminating CCPA’s requirements for California employers.  But that is too simple of an interpretation because of the requirements of AB25 in its current iteration, as…