New Employee Protections for California Employees in 2025

California continues to lead the nation in protecting employees. Here is a quick summary of strengthened legal protections for California employees heading into 2025.
 
 

Discrimination Based On Multiple Protected Classes (SB 1137)

• The new law means that an employee can claim that they were discriminated against based on a combination of more than one protected class, such as sex, race, age, and/or disability.
• The new law defines the legal concept of intersectionality as “an analytical framework that sets forth that different forms of inequality operate together, exacerbate each other, and can result in amplified forms of prejudice and harm.”
• The new law revises the California Fair Employment and Housing Act to include remedies for discrimination based upon the combination (or “intersectionality”) of any two or more protected classes.
• See Colby Law Firm’s page on Discrimination for more.
  

Higher Courts Clarify Standard For Proving Harassment In California

• In Okonowsky v. Garland, 109 F.4th 1166 (2024), the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that an employer may be held liable for hostile work environment based on harassing content posted on an employee’s personal social media account outside of the workplace.
  
• In Bailey v. San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, No. S265223, 2024 WL 3561569 (Cal. July 29, 2024), the California Supreme Court clarified that Courts must consider allegations of a hostile workplace “from the perspective of a reasonable person belonging to the racial or ethnic group of the plaintiff.” Under this framework, “a single racial epithet can be so offensive it gives rise to a triable issue of actionable harassment. … an isolated act of harassment may be actionable if it is sufficiently severe in light of the totality of the circumstances, and that a coworker’s use of an unambiguous racial epithet, such as the N-word, may be found to suffice.”
  
• See Colby Law Firm’s page on Harassment for more.

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Current or former employees with questions about their own situation should contact Colby Law Firm.