Highlights:
An otherwise facially neutral policy of rounding meal period start and end times are noncompliant with California meal period laws where the policy sometimes resulted in underpayment of meal period premiums.
Where records show noncompliant meal periods on their face, a rebuttable presumption of noncompliance arises.
Employers should consider implementing a system, such as a drop-down menu, whereby the employee’s choice to forego a provided meal period is documented.
On 25 February 2021, the California Supreme Court provided a long-awaited answer to the questions of whether California employers can legally round meal breaks and whether records showing potential noncompliance with meal period requirements create a presumption of noncompliance. Now, more so than ever, California employers should ensure that their timekeeping and meal break policies, practices, and increasingly important technology are up to date and compliant with the current demands of the law.
California Supreme Court Strikes Down Meal Break Rounding natlawreview.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from natlawreview.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
[co-author: Clinton Ford, Jr.]
On Thursday, February 25, 2021, the California Supreme Court issued a long-awaited ruling addressing legal standards for meal period violations in
1 In its opinion, the court required strict compliance for providing meal periods, and specifically condemned the practice of rounding to the nearest time increment for meal periods. The court also clarified that a rebuttable presumption of liability applies when time records show shortened, delayed, or missed meal periods.
In
Donahue, the plaintiff filed a class action against her employer for failure to pay premium wages for meal periods that did not strictly comply with California’s requirement to provide a 30-minute meal period within the first five hours of work. Among the issues raised was the contention that the employer’s time-capturing policy rounded time punches to the nearest 10-minute increment, resulting in meal periods that were as short as 22 minutes being rounded up to 30 minutes. Th
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Seyfarth Synopsis: In Donohue v. AMN Services, LLC, a class action seeking meal period premium pay, the California Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeal and held that employers cannot engage in the practice of rounding time punches in the meal period context, and that time records showing noncompliant meal periods raise a rebuttable presumption of meal period violations.
The Facts
Kennedy Donohue was a nurse recruiter for AMN Services in its San Diego office from September 2012 to February 2014. AMN used a timekeeping system called Team Time, which rounded punch-in and punch-out times to the nearest 10-minute increment. Punch times between 7:55 a.m. and 8:04 a.m. would thus be recorded as 8:00 a.m. Donohue alleged she was discouraged from taking meal and rest breaks, and often had to take short breaks.
If there were ever a time for California employers to have in place meal period policies and timekeeping practices for non-exempt employees that are compliant with California law, now.