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California: Appellate Court Clarifies Meal and Rest Period Obligations
By Sheppard Mullin
In what is a major victory for California employers, the California Court of Appeal held July 23, 2008, in Brinker Restaurant Corp. v. Superior Court, that employers are not obligated to ensure that employees actually take meal and rest breaks, and that companies therefore cannot be held liable for alleged meal and rest break violations unless employees are “forced to forgo” these breaks.
Of primary importance was the Court of Appeal’s analysis of what it means to “provide” employees with uninterrupted 30-minute meal breaks, as required by Labor Code section 512. The court held that, while employers cannot “impede, discourage or dissuade” employees from taking meal breaks, they need not ensure that these breaks are actually taken. Rather, the obligation to “provide” employees with meal breaks means only that employers must make these breaks available to employees.
The court agreed that requiring employers to “ensure” that meal periods are taken would allow employees to “manipulate the process” because they could earn additional premium pay simply by skipping breaks that they were authorized to take. The court also noted that for large employers, making sure that all employees take meal breaks each day would be an “impossible task.”
The court ruled similarly with respect to rest periods, finding that employers cannot be held liable on such claims unless they “impede, discourage or dissuade” employees from taking these breaks. As with meal breaks, employers are not obligated to ensure that employees actually take rest breaks. The court further held that these rest periods need not be provided in the middle of each work period if to do so would be impractical. Rather, “[a]s long as employers make rest breaks available to employees, and strive, where practicable, to schedule them in the middle of the first four-hour work period, employers are in compliance” with California law.
As a result of these rulings, the court denied certification of the plaintiffs’ meal and rest period class action claims. The court reasoned that because employers are not obligated to ensure that meal and rest periods are actually taken, the assessment of whether employees were forced to forgo their breaks or voluntarily chose not to take them is necessarily “a highly individualized inquiry.” Determination of these claims requires an individual analysis of why each employee did or did not take meal and rest breaks.
As a result of this holding, it should be substantially more difficult for employees to obtain class certification on meal and rest period claims in other cases. This ruling indicates that, absent a class-wide policy prohibiting meal and rest breaks, or evidence that an employer impeded or discouraged employees from taking breaks, class certification will usually not be appropriate. Of particular significance, the court held that an employer’s time records alone cannot be used to justify class certification because such records show only whether or not a meal period was taken, and cannot show why an employee did not take a meal break.
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