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Contemporaneous, truthful records of the performance problems and the warnings given are what make a lawful termination defensible, because a discrimination case turns on whether the stated reason is the real one. (a) is the kindest-sounding option and the most dangerous: a softened untrue reason becomes the employer's stated reason, and when the truth emerges at deposition the shift in explanation is itself evidence of pretext under Guz. (b) produces a file created after the decision, which reads as manufactured. (c) is careless rather than unlawful - California requires no particular manner of notice - but it leaves the employer with nothing to show and no record of what the employee was told.

Labor Code §1102.5(b) bars retaliation against an employee who discloses information the employee has reasonable cause to believe shows a violation of law - to a government agency, to law enforcement, or internally to a supervisor or anyone with authority to investigate - and §1102.5(c) protects refusal to participate in an activity that would violate a law. The belief need only be reasonable; the employee does not have to be right. (c) is the near miss: refusing UNLAWFUL overtime is protected under §1102.5(c), but refusing lawfully assigned overtime is not, and California employers may require it subject to the overtime premium. (a) and (b) are ordinary workplace conduct carrying no statutory protection.

Turner defines constructive discharge: the employer either intentionally created or knowingly permitted working conditions so intolerable that a reasonable person in the employee's position would have had no reasonable alternative but to resign, and the law then treats the resignation as a termination by the employer. (d) is the employer's position in every such case, and it is what the doctrine exists to rebut - the resignation letter is not the end of the inquiry. (a) recasts the departure as economic, which would carry no liability. (b) is the same move for an older worker and can itself raise an age claim. The bar is high: ordinary friction, a demotion, or a poor review is not enough.

Labor Code §432.5 makes it unlawful for an employer to require an employee or applicant to agree in writing to any term or condition the employer knows is prohibited by law - the violation lies in demanding the signature, whether or not the clause is ever enforced. The classic example is the non-compete, void under B&P §16600 and, since §16600.5, unlawful even to present. (c) is the practical view many employers take: the clause is unenforceable, so what is the harm in having it. (a) sends the whole problem to federal law, which has no analogue here. (d) inverts the rule. Contractors should audit their hiring packets, because an old template can carry several §432.5 problems at once.

Bus. & Prof. Code §16600 voids most contractual restraints on a person's ability to engage in a lawful profession, trade, or business. California strongly disfavors employee non-compete agreements, and recent legislation reinforces that such clauses are generally void and even unlawful to impose.

Labor Code §2802(a) requires indemnification for all necessary expenditures incurred in direct consequence of the discharge of duties - required tools beyond ordinary hand tools, mileage in a personal vehicle, and a reasonable share of a personal phone bill used for work - and §2804 voids any agreement to waive it. (b) treats reimbursement as an annual discretionary true-up; the obligation attaches as the expense is incurred, and delay adds interest and attorney's fees under §2802(b) and (c). (d) invents an exempt-only limit that runs backwards, since it is usually the field employee who buys the tools. (c) is the plain denial, and it also converts the spend into an unlawful deduction from wages when it drags pay below minimum.

No California statute requires severance; it is owed only where an individual contract, an established company policy, a collective bargaining agreement or an ERISA plan promises it, and a consistently paid past practice can create that promise. (a) and (c) attach a formula to an obligation that does not exist, and (a) is the more believable of the two because Cal-WARN (Labor Code §1400 et seq.) does impose a real duty on a mass layoff at a covered establishment - 60 days' NOTICE, with pay and benefits for the notice period if notice is short, which is not the same thing as severance. (d) inverts it into a prohibition. Earned final wages, including vested vacation under §227.3, are a separate obligation and are always due on time.

Labor Code §1050 makes it unlawful for a former employer to knowingly make misrepresentations that prevent a former employee from obtaining other employment. Such 'blacklisting' can be a misdemeanor and expose the employer to damages, so references should be truthful and factual.

FEHA's anti-discrimination provisions generally apply to employers with five or more employees, but its harassment provisions apply to employers with even ONE employee. This broad coverage means virtually every contractor with staff is subject to FEHA's harassment prohibitions.

FEHA's core anti-discrimination requirements apply to employers with five or more employees. (Harassment provisions reach employers with even one employee.) A growing contractor should know that crossing the five-employee threshold brings the full weight of FEHA's discrimination rules.

FEHA protects against discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity/expression, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, age (40+), military/veteran status, and pregnancy. Personal preferences like a favorite sports team are not protected.

FEHA requires employers to provide reasonable accommodation for a qualified applicant or employee with a disability, unless doing so would cause undue hardship. The employer must engage in a good-faith interactive process; it cannot simply refuse to hire because of the disability.

As of July 2022, the DFEH was renamed the California Civil Rights Department (CRD). The CRD investigates and enforces FEHA complaints of employment discrimination, harassment, and retaliation. (The federal counterpart is the EEOC.)

Government Code §12960 requires a FEHA claimant to file a verified complaint with the Civil Rights Department - the renamed DFEH - within three years of the unlawful practice, and §12965(b) makes a right-to-sue notice the ticket into court. (a) names a real alternative route that skips the wrong agency: a parallel federal claim goes to the EEOC first, so the choice is which agency, not whether to use one. (d) sends an employment claim to a licensing board with no jurisdiction over it. (c) denies the remedy. Exhausting the administrative step is a prerequisite, and a FEHA suit filed without a right-to-sue notice is subject to dismissal however strong its merits.

Under FEHA, an employer is strictly liable for hostile-environment sexual harassment committed by a supervisor. For harassment by a coworker, the employer is liable if it knew or should have known and failed to take immediate corrective action. Contractors must prevent and promptly address harassment.

FEHA prohibits retaliation against a person for opposing discrimination, filing a complaint, or participating in an investigation. Retaliation is an independent violation even if the underlying discrimination claim ultimately fails, as long as the complaint was made in good faith.

Quid pro quo harassment is the exchange: a supervisor makes a hiring, promotion, assignment or continued-employment decision turn on submission to unwelcome sexual conduct, or punishes a refusal. (a) is the other branch of the same statute - hostile work environment - and the distinction matters because quid pro quo requires someone with authority over the term or benefit, while a hostile environment can be created by coworkers or even by third parties on the jobsite. (d) tests severity: §12923 says a single incident can suffice if severe enough, but an isolated ordinary compliment is not it. (c) is discrimination on another protected basis, actionable under FEHA but not harassment of this kind.

National origin under FEHA covers ancestry, ethnicity, a person's or their family's country of origin, accent, and the use of a language other than English - so rejecting an applicant for an accent is unlawful unless the employer can show the accent materially interferes with performing the job. (a) and (c) are lawful, job-related grounds, and they are where this question gets interesting: a licensing requirement or an essential-functions standard is legitimate only if it is genuinely required by the work, and the same standard applied selectively becomes pretext. (b) is an ordinary lawful reason. Government Code §12951 separately restricts English-only rules to what business necessity actually requires.

FEHA (like the federal ADEA) protects workers age 40 and older from age discrimination. An employer with five or more employees may not refuse to hire, discharge, or otherwise discriminate against someone because they are 40 or over.

Government Code §12945(a)(1) gives an employee actually disabled by pregnancy, childbirth or a related condition up to four months of job-protected leave at an employer with five or more employees, taken as needed for the period of disability rather than as a flat entitlement. (c) overshoots by combining PDL with the bonding leave that follows it - PDL is separate from and in addition to CFRA baby-bonding leave, which can add up to 12 weeks, and stacking them is where the year comes from. (b) borrows a notice-period figure. (a) denies coverage. PDL applies at five employees, a much lower threshold than CFRA's, so a small contractor is covered by one and not the other.

Government Code §12940(l) requires the employer to explore available reasonable accommodations for a sincerely held religious belief or observance - a schedule swap, a shift change, a grooming or dress exception - unless accommodation would impose undue hardship, which §12926(u) defines as significant difficulty or expense measured against the employer's size and resources. (b) is the position that actually generates liability: doing nothing is a refusal, and the failure to engage is itself the violation. (d) skips to discharge without the required exploration. (c) is coercion no statute permits. California's undue-hardship standard is stricter than the federal one, so a defense that would work under Title VII may not work here.

Government Code §12950 obliges every covered employer to take all reasonable steps necessary to prevent discrimination and harassment - posting the required notice, distributing the CRD's information sheet, and maintaining a complaint procedure - and §12950.1 adds, at five or more employees, two hours of training for supervisors and one hour for everyone else every two years. (c) would itself be unlawful under Labor Code §435, which bars audio or video recording in restrooms and changing rooms. (a) and (b) try to prevent harassment by suppressing contact, which no statute requires and which would raise its own problems under Labor Code §232.5 and §1101. The duty is affirmative: prevention, not reaction.

Paying employees of one sex less than another for substantially similar work, based on sex, violates both FEHA and California's Equal Pay Act (Labor Code §1197.5). An employee's agreement to the unequal pay does not make it lawful. Pay differences must rest on legitimate, non-discriminatory factors.

Government Code §12952(a) bars an employer with five or more employees from asking about, or considering, conviction history until after a conditional offer of employment has been made - hence 'ban the box', since the box comes off the application. (b) overstates it: the check is still lawful, it simply moves after the offer. (a) inverts the statute into a hiring mandate; an employer may still decline, but §12952(c) requires an individualized assessment of the offense's nature, the time elapsed and its relation to the job, plus written notice and at least five business days for the applicant to respond. (d) is unrestricted, and for a contractor it is necessary - verifying a license is not a conviction inquiry.

Government Code §12940(n) makes it a separate unlawful practice to fail to engage in a timely, good-faith interactive process with an employee or applicant who has requested a reasonable accommodation for a known disability or medical condition - separate, because §12940(m) already requires the accommodation itself, and an employer can be liable for skipping the conversation even where a court later finds no accommodation was available. (c) is the meeting it most resembles and is the trap on a small jobsite, where the accommodation request surfaces during a review and is handled as a performance issue. (a) and (d) are dispute procedures, which is the opposite posture: the interactive process is cooperative and comes before anyone is in dispute.

Government Code §12923(b) states the Legislature's intent that a single incident of harassing conduct is enough to create a triable issue on a hostile work environment if it has unreasonably interfered with the plaintiff's work performance - and §12923(a) rejects any requirement that the conduct destroy the ability to work. (b) is the pervasiveness fallacy, stated with a count: severity and pervasiveness are alternatives, so one serious act can substitute for many minor ones. (a) is the old federal reading §12923 was written to displace. (d) invents a reporting deadline; the FEHA filing period is three years under §12960, and an employee's delay in reporting does not waive the claim, though it can affect the employer's knowledge.

Government Code §12940(j)(3) makes an employee who personally engages in harassment liable in his own right, whatever the employer's liability - so a foreman can be named as a defendant and has no indemnity claim for his own harassment. (a) and (b) state the rule for DISCRIMINATION, which is where the confusion comes from: Reno v. Baird held that individual supervisors cannot be sued personally for discriminatory personnel decisions, only the employer can, and the Legislature deliberately drew harassment the other way. (d) limits exposure to owners; the section reaches any employee. This personal exposure is the strongest argument for putting supervisors through §12950.1 training.

Government Code §12940(m)(1) requires reasonable accommodation only up to undue hardship, which §12926(u) defines as significant difficulty or expense measured against the employer's size, resources and operations - so the specific request may be refused. What cannot be refused is the process: §12940(n) requires the employer to continue looking for an alternative effective accommodation, and stopping at the first refusal is itself a separate violation. (b) reads the duty as absolute. (d) treats the request as insubordination, which is straightforward disability retaliation. (c) states the consequence the undue-hardship limit exists to prevent, and it is the fear that drives employers to (d).

Gov. Code §12950.1 requires employers with five or more employees to provide at least two hours of sexual-harassment prevention training to supervisory employees once every two years (and within six months of assuming a supervisory role).

Gov. Code §12950.1 requires at least one hour of sexual-harassment prevention training for nonsupervisory employees every two years, in addition to the two-hour requirement for supervisors. New employees must be trained within six months of hire.

Government Code §12950(a) requires the employer to post the Civil Rights Department's poster on discrimination and harassment in a prominent place, and §12950(b) requires distribution of the CRD's sexual harassment information sheet to every employee - posting alone does not satisfy the second duty. (a) is the trap for a contractor, because a license number must appear in advertising and on contracts under B&P §7030.5, so licensees are used to thinking of the license as the thing that gets displayed; it is not a harassment posting. (b) would itself be a privacy problem. (d) is nothing any employer posts. 2 CCR §11023 adds the written anti-harassment policy, which must be distributed and acknowledged.

Labor Code §1183(d) and §1207 require the applicable IWC Wage Order and the current minimum-wage order to be kept posted where employees can read them - for a contractor that is Wage Order 16 on site and Wage Order 4 in the office. The full jobsite set also includes the §207 payday notice, the §3550 workers' compensation notice, the §6328 Cal/OSHA notice, the CRD harassment poster, the EDD benefit notices, and on public works the prevailing wage determination. (c) is the closest of the wrong three: the license number does have to appear in advertising and on contracts under B&P §7030.5, which is a disclosure duty, not a posting duty. Posting is cheap and its absence is the easiest citation an inspector can write.

Labor Code §6328 requires the Cal/OSHA 'Safety and Health Protection on the Job' notice to be posted where employees can see it, and 8 CCR §340(b) requires any citation to be posted at or near the place of the violation for three working days or until abated. (c) is the near miss worth knowing: the Form 300A annual summary of injuries and illnesses must be posted from February 1 to April 30, but it reports TOTALS, and 8 CCR §14300.35 requires individual names to be protected for privacy-concern cases - so a public list of injured workers gets the duty backwards. (a) treats posting as discretionary. (b) is unrelated to safety.

Government Code §12950.1 requires at least one hour of interactive sexual harassment prevention training for every nonsupervisory employee within six months of hire and every two years thereafter, and two hours for supervisors within six months of assuming supervisory duties, at any employer with five or more employees. (c) is the one-and-done belief, which is how a great many small employers actually operate - the training is treated as an onboarding item rather than a recurring obligation, and the two-year clock is what they miss. (a) stretches both figures. (d) attaches training to separation, which is backwards. Seasonal and temporary employees expected to work fewer than six months are trained within 30 calendar days or 100 hours worked.

The EDD administers unemployment insurance, state disability insurance and paid family leave, and Unemp. Ins. Code §1089 requires the employer to post the notice of those benefits (DE 1857A) and to give the separating or leave-taking employee the corresponding pamphlets - DE 2320 for UI and DE 2511 for disability and paid family leave. (b) belongs to the CSLB, (c) to USCIS, and (d) to the city; none of them is an EDD posting. The pamphlet duty is the part employers forget, because it is triggered by an individual event rather than satisfied once by pinning something to a wall.

SB 616 increased California's minimum paid sick leave. Effective January 1, 2024, employers must permit use of at least 40 hours (or five days) of paid sick leave per year, up from the prior 24 hours/three days. Nearly all employers with employees in California are covered.

Labor Code §246 provides that under the accrual method, employees accrue at least one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked. Employers may instead use a lump-sum (front-loading) method that grants the full annual amount at the start of the year.

Labor Code §246.5(c) forbids denying the right to use accrued sick leave and forbids discharge, discipline or any other retaliation for using it or for filing a complaint about it, with a rebuttable presumption of retaliation if adverse action follows within 30 days. (d) is the at-will defense, which fails because at-will permits termination for any lawful reason and this reason is unlawful. (a) invents an age limit; §246.5(a) covers a child of any age, along with parent, spouse, registered domestic partner, grandparent, grandchild, sibling and a designated person. (c) offers notice as a cure, and notice cures nothing when the motive is the protected use.

SB 1383 expanded CFRA (Gov. Code §12945.2) so that, effective January 1, 2021, it applies to employers with five or more employees. CFRA provides up to 12 weeks of job-protected leave for baby bonding, a serious health condition of the employee, or to care for a covered family member.

CFRA provides eligible employees up to 12 weeks of job-protected leave in a 12-month period for their own serious health condition, to care for a family member with a serious health condition, or to bond with a new child. To be eligible, the employee generally must have worked at least 1,250 hours in the prior 12 months.

FMLA reaches a private employer that employed 50 or more employees for 20 or more workweeks in the current or preceding year, and an individual employee is eligible only if 50 employees work within 75 miles of the worksite - which is why a contractor with scattered crews can be a covered employer with ineligible employees. (c) is the California figure, dropped to five employees by SB 1383, and it is the practical point: most small contractors owe CFRA leave while owing no FMLA leave at all, so the federal threshold is the wrong one to check. (a) is the FEHA and Title VII discrimination threshold. (d) is invented.

CFRA and FMLA both guarantee reinstatement to the same or a comparable position with equivalent pay, benefits, shift and other terms; denying it is interference, not merely retaliation, so the employee need not prove a bad motive. (c) is the practice that looks reasonable and is unlawful - requiring the returning employee to compete for the job treats protected leave as a resignation. (b) and (d) are adverse actions dressed as accommodations of the absence. 'Comparable' is not 'any job at the same pay': 2 CCR §11089 asks about substantially similar duties, conditions, and worksite proximity, so moving a returning superintendent to a distant project can itself be a denial.

Paid Family Leave pays partial wage replacement for up to eight weeks, funded entirely by the employees' own SDI contributions, while a worker bonds with a new child or cares for a seriously ill family member or a military member's qualifying exigency. (b) is the crucial confusion and the one that costs workers their jobs: PFL is a CHECK, not a leave right, so an employee at a four-employee contractor may draw PFL benefits and still have no protected leave, because job protection comes from CFRA (five or more employees) or FMLA (fifty) if either applies. (a) and (c) are unrelated to any EDD program. The employer pays nothing toward PFL; it simply must not retaliate for the absence that CFRA or FMLA protects.

Labor Code §230(b) forbids discharging or in any way discriminating against an employee for taking time off to serve on a jury, provided reasonable notice is given, and §230(e) allows reinstatement and lost wages for a violation. (a) is the subtler version of the same violation - a retaliatory reduction in benefits is discrimination under §230(b) even though the employee kept the job - which is why it is the answer an employer trying to be clever lands on. (b) treats the summons as negotiable with the employer rather than with the court. (c) is the plain violation. The time off is unpaid for most private employers; §230(c) extends comparable protection to crime victims and witnesses attending proceedings.

Under the accrual method, Labor Code §246(d) carries accrued unused paid sick leave over into the following year, and §246(j) lets the employer cap total accrual at 80 hours or ten days and cap annual use at 40 hours or five days - the figures SB 616 raised in 2024. (a) is the forfeiture rule the section forbids, and it is the practice most employers had before 2015; note the contrast with the front-loading alternative in §246(e), where granting the full annual amount up front means no carryover is required, which is why some employers believe forfeiture is lawful. (b) would convert sick leave into wages, and unlike vested vacation under §227.3, unused sick leave is not paid out at all. (c) is invented.

Labor Code §233 - the kin care rule - requires that where an employer provides paid sick leave, the employee may use it on the same terms to attend to the illness of a family member as defined in §246.5(a): child of any age, parent, parent-in-law, spouse, registered domestic partner, grandparent, grandchild or sibling. (d) is the under-reading, treating sick leave as strictly personal. (b) is the over-reading, and it is nearly right for a different reason: since 2023 §246.5(a)(4) adds a 'designated person' the employee may name, one per twelve-month period, which can be a friend - but it is a single designation, not anyone the worker chooses on the day. (c) mistakes a workplace relationship for a family one.

Labor Code §230(c) protects any employee who is a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking who takes time off to obtain a restraining order or other judicial relief, and §230.1(a) extends that at employers with 25 or more employees to time off for medical attention, victim services, counseling, and safety planning - with no retaliation permitted. (c) is the closest wrong answer: the employee MAY choose to use accrued vacation, sick leave or paid time off for the absence, but the employer cannot make that the only route or require it. (d) denies a leave the statute grants. (a) is retaliation of the most direct kind. §230(f) adds a duty to provide reasonable safety accommodations at work.

Pregnancy Disability Leave under Government Code §12945(a)(1) covers the period of actual pregnancy-related disability, up to four months, and CFRA bonding leave under §12945.2 is a separate entitlement of up to 12 weeks that does not run concurrently with PDL - so an employee can take PDL for the disability and then CFRA afterwards. (c) is the intuition that 12 weeks is the ceiling, which is true under FMLA, where pregnancy disability and bonding both draw on the same 12 weeks; the divergence between the federal and California schemes is the whole point. (a) invents a doubling rule that produces roughly the right answer for the wrong reason. (b) inverts federal law, which sets a floor with a cap of its own.

8 U.S.C. §1324a(b) requires every U.S. employer, of any size, to complete Form I-9 for each new hire - the employee attests to authorization in Section 1 by the first day of work, and the employer examines acceptable documents and completes Section 2 by the third business day after work for pay begins. (d) is completed for the same new hire in the same week but reports the hire to the state for child-support enforcement, not work authorization. (c) is not a hiring document at all; a 1099-NEC goes to someone who is not an employee, and issuing one is no substitute for the I-9 where the worker is in fact an employee. (a) is the contractor's own license, unconnected to any employee.

California employers must report new hires (and rehires) to the EDD's New Employee Registry within 20 days of the start-of-work date, using Form DE 34. This reporting supports enforcement of child-support obligations and helps prevent benefit fraud.