California Supreme Court Deals Blow to Employers on Issue of De Minimis Time

Today, the California Supreme Court issued its opinion in Troester v. Starbucks, refusing to hold that the well-established de minimis doctrine applies under California law. The de minimis doctrine is a principle of law that has long been endorsed and applied by both federal and California state courts (as well as California’s Division of Labor Standards Enforcement), holding that employers need not compensate employees for insignificant amounts of time spent performing work-related tasks off the clock where such time is administratively difficult to track. Today, the state’s high court held that, although the doctrine is widely accepted under the federal FLSA, California wage orders are more protective of employees and require payment for “all hours worked.” The Court held that the de minimis doctrine cannot be used to allow an employer to avoid paying for tasks that take, on average, 4-10 minutes at the end of an employee’s shift. However, the Court stated that is was not prepared to hold that the doctrine could never be applied under California law on potentially different facts involving smaller amounts of time spent off the clock and/or only sporadically.