California employees don’t have to take their meal breaks – but employers still have to pay them if they do work.
The California Supreme Court has answered an important question in the area of meal break and wage law. Brinker Restaurant Corp. v. Superior Court of San Diego, also known as the lunch break lawsuit, left the court to consider whether employers must ensure that an employee does absolutely no work during his legally-mandated lunch break.
Employers are under no such obligation.
Employers have no obligation to stop the employee from working during this period, the court explained. The goal of the meal period is “to relieve the employee of all duty and relinquish any employer control over the employee and how he or she spends the time.”
If an employee wants to spend her lunch hour working, she is free to do so.
“We conclude an employer’s obligation is to relieve its employee of all duty, with the employee thereafter at liberty to use the meal period for whatever purpose he or she desires,” Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar wrote in the unanimous decision. “But the employer need not ensure that no work is done.”
The court’s analysis of the lunch break lawsuit did not end there. It went on to explain what would happen if an employee chose to work through his lunch break.
Put more simply, a California worker can’t file a lunch break lawsuit if he (1) freely chooses to work through lunch, and (2) gets paid his regular hourly rate for doing so.
Related Resources:
- Employers don’t have to ensure workers take breaks, court rules (Los Angeles Times)
- Federal Wage Law: The Fair Labor Standards Act (FindLaw)
- Don’t Get Sued for Not Providing Meal Breaks (FindLaw’s Free Enterprise)
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