Public Entities Have Discretion to Limit Public Comment

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has recently affirmed public entities’ ability to limit public comment during meetings.  In the case of Bezis v. City of Livermore, the Livermore City Council was considering whether to establish a downtown planning steering committee and plaintiff spoke during public comment.  During his public comment, he focused on an unrelated action that the Council...

California Maintains Strict Compliance with Masking and Physical Distancing Emergency Temporary Standards Requirements

In a surprise decision by Cal/OSHA’s Standards Board late on June 9, 2021, they withdrew revisions to their COVID-19 prevention emergency temporary standards which were expected to have taken effect on June 15, 2021.  California employers are looking to Cal/OSHA to guide the state’s reopening and minimize the impacts on employer obligations.  The revisions were an attempt to bring workplace...

SB 95 – Resurrection of Supplemental Paid Sick Leave for COVID-19

Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 95 on March 19, 2021.  SB 95 requires California private and public employers with 25 employees or more to provide “Supplemental Paid Sick Leave” for qualifying leave events between January 1, 2021 and September 30, 2021.  SB95 became effective on March 29, 2021, and is retroactive to January 1, 2021.  This means that employees can...

I Care Too Much

In 2008 I witnessed a superstar, talented, attractive, has-it-all woman, who was approximately my age, shaving her head, attacking paparazzi with an umbrella, having a shotgun wedding in Las Vegas (and an annulment soon thereafter), walking barefoot in public, and participating in other erratic behavior detailed in the tabloids.  The result of these “Oops, I Did it Again” behaviors was...

9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rules that employer per diem payments may function as wages rather than reimbursement for purposes of calculating an employee’s overtime rate of pay in accordance with the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

Plaintiffs worked as traveling clinicians for Defendant’s healthcare staffing company.  In addition to receiving designated hourly wages, Plaintiffs also received a weekly per diem benefit, which Defendant claimed was provided as a reasonable reimbursement for work-related expenses while traveling, thus were not wages.  Plaintiffs sued Defendant, claiming that their weekly per diem benefits operated as wages and were improperly excluded...

It’s Time to Redistrict

After the completion of the U.S. census every 10-years, public agencies with officers elected from geographical districts must “redistrict.”  This requires review of the recent Census population data and, if necessary, adjustment of voting area boundaries to keep them as nearly equal in population as possible, allowing for certain variances due to geography, topography, communities of interest, etc., all as...