Source: http://bryanschwartzlaw.blogspot.com/2018/
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 04:20:44+00:00

Document:
On December 17, 2018, the Ninth Circuit reversed a decision by the United States District Court for the Central District of California in Biel v. St. James School, A Corp., et al., Case No. 17-55180.
Plaintiff Kristen Biel, a fifth-grade teacher for Defendant, filed a claim under the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) when St. James Catholic School fired her after she told the School that she had breast cancer and needed time off from work to undergo chemotherapy. The district court dismissed Biel’s claims at summary judgment—holding that her lawsuit under the ADA was barred by the First Amendment’s “ministerial exception.” After her case was dismissed, Plaintiff Biel appealed to the Ninth Circuit.
Biel sued St. James in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, alleging that her termination violated the ADA, which prohibits employment discrimination based on disability. St. James moved for summary judgment, arguing that the First Amendment’s ministerial exception to generally applicable employment laws barred Biel’s ADA claims. The district court agreed and granted summary judgment for St. James.
On appeal, the Ninth Circuit reversed, finding that the total circumstances of Biel’s employment did not qualify her as a minister for the purposes of the ministerial exception.
In Hosanna-Tabor, the only case where the U.S. Supreme Court has applied the ministerial exception, the Court focused on four major considerations to determine if the ministerial exception applied: (1) whether the employer held the employee out as a minister, (2) whether the employee’s title reflected ministerial substance and training, (3) whether the employee held herself out as a minister, and (4) whether the employee’s job duties included “important religious functions.” Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. EEOC, 565 U.S. 171, 192 (2012).
In Hosanna-Tabor, Cheryl Perich, a teacher for a Lutheran school, was fired after she was diagnosed with narcolepsy and brought ADA claims against the school. The Supreme Court found that the ministerial exception did apply because Perich was more than just a teacher in the Lutheran school. She had a special title of “Minister of Religion” conferred to her by the congregation and distinct from other teachers. Perich led her students in daily prayer, and she also led the school wide mass that occurred twice each school year. Perich claimed a federal tax benefit for employees earning compensation in the "exercise of the ministry" on her tax returns, and she also had to complete extensive religion training in the Lutheran doctrine that took her six years to complete in order to be a commissioned minister. In light of these circumstances, the Supreme Court held that Perish was a minister covered by the ministerial exception.
The Ninth Circuit found that Biel, by contrast, had no sort of credentials, training or titles like Perich. Biel was Catholic, but St. James Catholic School did not require its employees to be Catholic to teach. Biel did not have any extensive training in religion or the Catholic pedagogy. Biel taught all fifth-grade subjects, including a thirty-minute religion class using a workbook on the Catholic faith prescribed by the school administrators. And while Biel joined her students in prayer twice daily, Biel did not lead her students in prayer, and her only job duties at the School’s monthly mass were to keep her class orderly and quiet.
After a holistic examination of her training and duties demonstrated that Biel had a limited role in her student’s spiritual lives, the Ninth Circuit held the ministerial exception did not apply, reversing and remanding her case back to the district court. Biel’s lawyer, Andrew Pletcher, said Biel is still struggling with cancer but is delighted by the Ninth Circuit's ruling.
When a worker stands in the shoes of the State of California, prosecuting wage violations under the Labor Code Private Attorneys’ General Act (PAGA), that representative plaintiff cannot be forced into arbitration, because the State did not agree to arbitrate. See Iskanian v. CLS Transportation of Los Angeles, LLC, 59 Cal.4th 348 (2014).
In Lawson v. ZB, N.A., 18 Cal. App. 5th 705 (Cal. Ct. App. 4th Dist. Dec. 19, 2017, as modified Dec. 21, 2017), the Court of Appeal rejected the attempt by the defendant Bank to force a PAGA plaintiff into arbitration as to the PAGA penalty requiring restitution of underpaid wages, under Labor Code §558. On March 23, 2018, the California Supreme Court granted review. On August 29, 2018, Bryan Schwartz Law, on behalf of the California Employment Lawyers Association (CELA), submitted an amicus brief supporting affirmance of the Court of Appeal decision.
PAGA civil-enforcement claims invoking Labor Code §558 include both the default civil penalty plus the penalty concerning underpaid wages. Lawson created a split with Esparza v. KS Industries, 13 Cal.App.5th 1228 (5th Dist. Aug. 2, 2017), which held that Labor Code §558(a)’s reference to a penalty including “an amount sufficient to recover underpaid wages” created a “private dispute,” to which the Iskanian rule does not apply.
Bryan Schwartz Law’s brief on CELA’s behalf demonstrates that Lawson was correctly decided, and Esparza was wrong, because all PAGA actions are representative actions, not individual actions. The amicus brief illuminates the breadth of the State’s police power, which cannot be limited by a mandatory, pre-dispute arbitration agreement with an individual worker. The language, legislative history, and purposes of PAGA and Labor Code §558 demonstrate the Legislature’s clear intent to permit PAGA plaintiffs to recover the full measure of relief that would be available to the State in a public enforcement action. Defendant ZB Bank’s contention that PAGA and Labor Code §558 would be preempted by the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), 9 U.S.C. §§1, et seq., clearly contravenes the Supreme Court’s analysis in Iskanian and McGill v. Citibank, N.A. (2017) 2 Cal. 5th 945. The FAA does not strip the State of its enforcement authority, or strip employees of their non-waivable, substantive state law right to pursue vital workplace protections.
CELA is an organization of approximately 1400 California attorneys whose members primarily represent workers in a wide range of employment cases, including wage and hour actions and PAGA actions. CELA and its members have taken a leading role in protecting the rights of California workers, including by submitting amicus briefs and oral argument in such groundbreaking employment rights cases such as Iskanian, Murphy v. Kenneth Cole Productions, Inc. (2007) 40 Cal.4th 1094, Gentry v. Superior Court (2007) 42 Cal.4th 443, Brinker Restaurant Corp. v. Superior Court (2012) 53 Cal.4th 1004, Ayala v. Antelope Valley Newspapers, Inc. (2014) 59 Cal.4th 522, and Dynamex Operations W. v. Superior Court (2018) 4 Cal.5th 903. Bryan Schwartz Law has been instrumental to CELA’s amicus briefing in a host of key California cases.
The California Supreme Court’s decision in Lawson will have widespread ramifications for California workers. If the State’s PAGA penalty provisions forcing restitution to victims of wage theft can be shunted to individual arbitration, it will deeply undermine PAGA’s goal to strengthen the State’s enforcement power against wage law violators who steal from workers and unfairly compete against law-abiding businesses.
If you are seeking to assert wage claims representing your co-workers and are facing an employer who seeks to force you into individual arbitration, contact Bryan Schwartz Law.
California Supreme Court Delivers Workers a Victory in Troester v. Starbucks Corp.
Though the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Janus v. AFSCME dealt a major blow to workers, and the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the high court might mean more devastation will follow, California has once again claimed its position as a progressive counter to an oppressive federal agenda. The California Supreme Court’s ruling today in Troester v. Starbucks Corp. defends the interests of working people by ensuring greater protection for those who regularly perform small amounts of uncompensated work - which add up to valuable unpaid wages, over time.
The plaintiff, a Starbucks employee named Douglas Troester, has argued Starbucks owes him wages for the time he spent running end-of-day computer software, activating a building alarm, locking the door, and walking coworkers to their cars as required by company policy. All of these duties, alleges Troester, add up to four to ten additional minutes each shift. Over a seventeen-month period, Troester’s unpaid time totaled twelve hours and fifty minutes, adding up to $102.67 at the then-applicable minimum wage of $8 per hour.
Troester first filed his case in Los Angeles County Superior Court, but Starbucks removed the case to federal court, and the district court granted summary judgment for Starbucks based on the federal “de minimis” doctrine. First set forth in the 1946 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co., the de minimis doctrine holds that employers need not compensate employees for small amounts of otherwise compensable time if the employer can show tracking that time is administratively difficult. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit recognized that although the de minimis doctrine applied to federal wage and hour law, the California Supreme Court had never addressed whether the doctrine applied to wage claims under California law. The California Supreme Court agreed to the Ninth Circuit’s request to answer specifically whether the doctrine applied to claims for unpaid wages under California Labor Code sections 510, 1194, and 1197.
In today’s decision, the California Supreme Court first held that, based on a review of the relevant statutes and Industrial Wage Commission (“IWC”) Orders, California had not previously adopted the federal de minimis doctrine. The California Supreme Court, explains the decision, must interpret the Labor Code and IWC Orders liberally to best further their purposes. And, the Court held, California is free to offer greater protection to workers than federal regulations, which the state already has done, regarding, for example, on-call employees’ compensation for sleep and other personal activities (Mendiola v. CPS Security Solutions, Inc., 60 Cal.4th 833 (2015)), the definition of “employ” (Martinez v. Combs, 49 Cal.4th 35 (2010)), and transportation time (Morillion v. Royal Packing Co., 22 Cal.4th 575 (2000)).
The lawsuit now returns to the Ninth Circuit, which will factor in the California Supreme Court’s decision when it rules on Troester’s case. We hope that fairness for working people will prevail, as it did today in our state’s high court.
If you believe your employer has violated wage and hour laws, contact Bryan Schwartz Law.
Read the full opinion here: Troester v. Starbucks Corp., 2018 BL 265635, Cal., S234969, 7/26/18.
UPDATE (September 13, 2018): For a comprehensive review of the many reasons to oppose the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court, please read this statement from the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
Even when Brett Kavanaugh – who voted in favor of forcing a child to give birth in federal lockup against her will - is nominated to serve for an anticipated 30-40 years as a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Even if this same man believes the President – not the Supreme Court – gets the ultimate say on whether a law or a use of the vast federal executive power is constitutional (not that this Supreme Court would get it right regardless).
Even if this same man believes the President is above the law, meaning he or she can commit any crime he or she wants without anyone being able to do anything about it while the President is in office.
In this spirit, this firm has come to you before to oppose what was then a threat to our constitutional system, poised to take root.
We ask you to stand with us again because we no longer just face the prospect of a threat. Instead, we are in the midst of the most dangerous attack on our cherished rights since the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the Supreme Court wrongly decided that bakers working in nauseating, filthy conditions should have the “freedom” to work for less than minimum wage (in Lochner v. NY) (see also http://bryanschwartzlaw.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-us-supreme-court-exploits-first.html), when the Supreme Court endorsed “separate but equal” conditions that led millions of African-Americans to live under the oppression of Jim Crow laws for decades (in Plessy v. Ferguson), and when the Supreme Court gave its seal of approval to prison camps for Japanese-American citizens based solely upon their national origin (in Korematsu v. US; George Takei talks about his experience living through internment by his own government here).
Sister District Project: This organization seeks to flip state legislatures blue, a vital step in ensuring fair redistricting come 2020.
Swing Left: This organization seeks to flip U.S. Congress seats.
Flip the 14: This organization seeks to flip every single U.S. Congress seat up for grabs in California.
Working America: This organization canvasses flippable districts in California.
Local Indivisible groups: Indivisible is setting up a national phone bank this Sunday, July 15 to reach progressive voters in flippable senate districts so that Democrats can retake the Senate in November.
I know you are exhausted. We and our families, friends, and neighbors are too. But we cannot and must not forget, there is no one coming to save us. No one else will fix what has been broken nor protect what remains except you, me, and the people who will stand with us in this moment.
We are the ones we have been waiting for. We cannot afford to wait any longer.

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