Unanimous California Supreme Court agrees to decide Fair Employment and Housing Act question
April 27, 2022 – The California Supreme Court today voted 7-0 to accept the firm’s case (Raines v. U.S. Healthworks) for review. The Court will resolve the important question of whether a corporate agent acting on behalf of an employer can be independently liable for its violation of California’s discrimination laws (the Fair Employment and Housing Act – “FEHA”). This question was expressly left open by the Supreme Court’s 1998 decision in Reno v. Baird, which held that individual supervisors acting for employers cannot be held liable for discrimination.
The firm, representing clients Kristina Raines and Derrick Figg on behalf of over half a million job applicants, has sued California’s largest occupational health care provider (U.S. Healthworks – now Concentra) alleging that Defendants violated FEHA by subjecting applicants to highly invasive medical screenings forcing them to answer dozens of probing and discriminatory medical questions having nothing to do with their jobs. Unless applicants answered every irrelevant, invasive, and offensive question, U.S. Healthworks would “fail” them and refuse to clear them for work. The federal district court ruled that the Reno decision means corporate agents like defendants cannot be liable for violating FEHA.
Firm lawyers Randy Erlewine and Kyle O’Malley argued on appeal in the Ninth Circuit that FEHA’s definition of “employer” (which includes direct and indirect agents) means the Legislature’s intent was clear: Corporate agents can be liable when they violate employment laws. They also argued that Reno only exempted individual supervisors from FEHA liability and that the reasons the California Supreme Court gave for that exception do not apply to giant corporations who profit from their own unilateral illegal conduct. At plaintiffs’ urging, the Ninth Circuit referred this important question of unsettled law with ramifications for millions of California workers to the California Supreme Court, which accepted the issue for review.