California’s new bereavement leave law, which became effective beginning January 1, 2023, requires most employers to allow their employees to take up to five days of leave upon the death of certain family members.
Continue Reading California Now Requires Bereavement Leave
As we reported in September, effective January 1, 2023, employers face a host of pay disclosure and recordkeeping obligations. The DLSE, the agency in charge of implementing the new law (codified at California Labor Code section 432.3), recently published guidance on the parameters of the new law.
Continue Reading California Pay Transparency Law—Recent DLSE Guidance
Among the new employment laws in effect this new year is the expansion of the California Fair Employment and Housing Act (“FEHA”) to include “reproductive health decision-making” in the list of classifications protected by the FEHA. Accordingly, the FEHA now expressly prohibits discrimination, harassment, and retaliation based on employees’ reproductive health-decision-making.
Continue Reading FEHA Expanded to Include “Reproductive Health Decision-making” as Protected Category
The New Year usually means new laws for California employers. This year, a new privacy law goes into effect with new mandates for employers to ensure that workers have more control over the collection and use of their personal information.
Continue Reading New Year Brings New Privacy Laws to California Employers
On September 18, 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law Assembly Bill (“AB”) 2188, which prohibits employer discrimination based on employees’ use of cannabis off the job and away from the workplace.
Continue Reading New California Legislation Protects Workers’ Personal Marijuana Use
Assembly Bill 1651 or the Workplace Technology Accountability Act, a new bill proposed by California Assembly Member Ash Kalra, would regulate employers, and their vendors, regarding the use of employee data. Under the bill, data is defined as “any information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular worker, regardless of how the information is collected, inferred, or obtained.”
Continue Reading California Assembly Proposes Data Privacy Law for Workers
Assembly Bill 2932, a new bill proposed by California Assembly Members Evan Low and Cristina Garcia, would amend Section 510 of the California Labor Code to change the workweek from the standard 40-hour workweek to a 32-hour workweek for companies with more than 500 employees.
Continue Reading California Assembly Proposes Four-Day Workweek
Governor Newsom has signed SB 331 (the “Silenced No More Act”) into law. As discussed in our prior blog post, SB 331 will expand the existing restrictions on the confidentiality provisions recently put into place by SB 820 (which restricts the usage of confidentiality provisions in agreements related to sexual assault, harassment, or harassment) to also restrict the usage of confidentiality provisions related to all claims of harassment, discrimination, or retaliation under the FEHA.
Continue Reading California Enacts Expanded Restrictions on Confidentiality Provisions
In a huge win for California employers, the California Court of Appeals recently confirmed that courts have discretion to strike claims for penalties under the Private Attorneys General Act of 2004 (“PAGA”) if the claims will be unmanageable at trial. This decision will help employers defeat—or significantly pare down—the broad and unwieldy claims for PAGA penalties that have become popular with the plaintiffs’ bar.
Continue Reading Courts Have Authority to Strike Unmanageable PAGA Claims, Says CA Court of Appeals
Governor Gavin Newsom and the California Department of Public Health (“CDPH”) recently issued new public health requirements in response to the increasing number of hospitalizations and ICU patients in California caused by the highly contagious COVID-19 Delta variant.
Continue Reading New COVID-19 Vaccination Requirements for California State Employees and Health Care Workers