California Employment Law Blog

When a job ends in California, your wages do not wait for the next payroll cycle. If your employer fired or laid you off, every dollar you earned is due the moment you leave. Quit with at least 72 hours of notice, and the check is due on your last day. Walk out without notice,…

A warehouse can pass 100 degrees inside long before the air outside does. So can a commercial kitchen, a metal-roofed packing shed in the Central Valley, or the cargo box of a truck idling in Fontana. California now requires employers to guard against heat illness in both indoor and outdoor jobs, and it forbids punishing…

If you signed an arbitration agreement when you were hired, you may believe your sexual harassment case is locked out of the courthouse. That belief is wrong. Since March 3, 2022, federal law has given every California worker who experiences workplace sexual harassment or sexual assault the right to take that claim to court —…

A new California law has given adult survivors of workplace and other sexual misconduct a narrow two-year window to file civil cases that earlier deadlines had erased. Assembly Bill 250, signed by Governor Newsom in October 2025 and effective January 1, 2026, revives previously time-barred claims — and the related employment claims tied to them,…

A pregnant worker in California has some of the strongest job protections in the country — but only if the worker knows where those protections come from and how to use them. State law guarantees up to four months of job-protected disability leave, on-the-job accommodations whenever a healthcare provider recommends them, and twelve weeks of…

Algorithms are making employment decisions about California workers right now. Automated systems screen resumes, score interviews, rank candidates for promotion, flag employees for discipline, and even determine who gets laid off. Many workers never know an algorithm played a role in the decision that changed their career — and that is exactly the problem California’s…

If you ever signed an employment agreement that required you to repay training costs, a sign-on bonus, or relocation expenses when you left a job, you were locked into what California now considers an unlawful restraint on your career. Assembly Bill 692, which took effect on January 1, 2026, prohibits most of these “stay-or-pay” provisions…

California workers who win wage theft claims have long faced a bitter reality: the judgment itself does not guarantee payment. Studies cited by the California Legislature found that only about 12 percent of wage judgments were fully collected between 2018 and 2023. Employers routinely delayed, restructured, or simply refused to pay — and the financial…

If you are starting a new job in Southern California, you might sign a stack of onboarding papers in minutes, often while someone waits for you to hand the packet back. A Los Angeles employment lawyer will tell you that those papers can decide where your future claims get heard, even before any dispute exists.…

If you work in California or are applying for a new job, a Los Angeles employment lawyer will often warn you about one document that is signed quickly and later questioned. The background check disclosure. A California Court of Appeals decision filed February 4, 2026, held that an employee can pursue the Investigative Consumer Reporting…