Employment Lawyer San Diego

California gives employees more ways to sue an employer than almost any other state, and updates the rules often enough that a handbook written two years ago is probably already out of date somewhere. TencerSherman LLP represents employers, not employees: reviewing and drafting the documents that keep a business compliant, and defending the business when a claim or Labor Commissioner complaint shows up anyway.

California employment law starts from a simple default, then complicates fast

Employment in California is at-will by default under Labor Code section 2922: either side can end the relationship at any time, for any lawful reason, without notice. That default gets modified constantly in practice, by an offer letter that implies a term, by handbook language that creates procedural rights, and by the long list of reasons a termination becomes unlawful even in an at-will relationship. Those reasons fall into a few buckets:

Discrimination and harassment. California's Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA), codified at Government Code section 12940, prohibits discrimination and harassment based on protected characteristics, and applies to any employer with five or more employees, a lower threshold than the fifteen-employee floor under federal Title VII. FEHA also requires employers to engage in a good-faith interactive process when an employee requests a disability accommodation; failing to engage in that process is itself a violation, independent of whether an accommodation was ultimately available.

Retaliation and whistleblower claims. Labor Code section 1102.5 protects employees who report suspected legal violations internally or to a government agency, and who refuse to participate in unlawful conduct. Since a 2024 amendment (SB 497), an adverse action taken within 90 days of protected activity triggers a rebuttable presumption of retaliation, which shifts real litigation risk onto the employer to prove the action was unrelated. A separate statute, Labor Code section 98.6, protects employees who file wage claims or Labor Commissioner complaints specifically.

Wage and hour violations. Unpaid overtime, missed meal and rest periods, and wage statement errors are the most commonly litigated employment claims in California, in part because many of them can be brought as representative PAGA actions covering an entire workforce rather than one employee's individual claim.

Worker misclassification. California uses the "ABC test," codified in Labor Code sections 2775 through 2787, to determine whether someone is an employee or an independent contractor. The test presumes employee status; a business has to affirmatively prove all three prongs to classify someone as a contractor instead, and getting it wrong exposes the business to back wages, penalties, and PAGA liability across everyone misclassified the same way.

Each of these gets its own detailed treatment on the pages linked below. This page covers the parts common to all of them: what employers are up against, and how TencerSherman handles it.

PAGA changed significantly in 2024, and the reform is now fully in effect

California's Private Attorneys General Act lets an employee sue on behalf of the state for Labor Code violations, and historically it could turn a single technical violation into liability covering an employer's entire workforce. Reforms passed in 2024 (AB 2288 and SB 92) changed that meaningfully: plaintiffs now have to personally experience the violations they're suing over, several of the most commonly alleged violations (wage statements, meal and rest period premiums, overtime, expense reimbursement) can now be cured before or during litigation, and courts have explicit authority to narrow unmanageable claims. The reforms apply to any PAGA notice filed on or after June 19, 2024, which by now covers essentially every active matter.

That's a genuine opportunity for employers who get ahead of it. See the Employment Advice page for how a proactive audit uses the new cure provisions, and the Employment Litigation page for how the reforms change case strategy once a PAGA notice has already been filed.

What TencerSherman does for employer clients

• Employment litigation: defending against individual claims, Labor Commissioner proceedings, and PAGA actions.
• Employment advice and counseling: handbooks, agreements, classification audits, and policy compliance review before a dispute exists.
• Business-side employment disputes that overlap with broader commercial litigation, covered on the business litigation page, including departing-employee disputes involving confidential information; see the trade secret disputes page for that specific overlap.

How TencerSherman works with employer clients

Employment law is different from most business litigation in one important way: the highest-value work often isn't litigation at all. A well-run compliance relationship catches misclassified workers, outdated handbook language, and wage statement errors before they turn into claims, which is both cheaper and considerably less stressful than defending a lawsuit after the fact.

Because of that, TencerSherman structures employer relationships two ways. Some clients engage the firm project by project: a handbook review before an audit, a termination review before a high-risk layoff, defense on a single claim that's already been filed. Others keep the firm on an ongoing basis, particularly businesses with fifty or more employees where the volume of day-to-day HR questions (can we terminate this person now, does this new hire need a written agreement, does this bonus structure create an overtime calculation problem) benefits from having an attorney who already knows the business rather than starting from scratch on every question.

Neither model requires giving up in-house HR or legal support. TencerSherman typically works alongside a client's HR team and any in-house counsel, handling the employment-law-specific judgment calls and the litigation if a claim does arise, while HR continues running day-to-day personnel operations.

Where employment claims get resolved

Most individual wage claims start at the Labor Commissioner's Office (the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement) rather than in court, through an administrative hearing sometimes called a Berman hearing. FEHA claims require the employee to first file with the California Civil Rights Department (CRD) and obtain a right-to-sue notice before a lawsuit can proceed. PAGA claims require a notice to the Labor and Workforce Development Agency before litigation. Each of these administrative prerequisites has its own deadline, and missing one can be fatal to a claim, or, from an employer's perspective, a legitimate basis to challenge one that skipped the step.

Claims that do proceed to court are filed in San Diego County Superior Court for most state-law claims, or the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California when federal claims are involved, such as Title VII discrimination claims brought alongside FEHA claims, or federal Fair Labor Standards Act wage claims brought alongside California Labor Code claims. It's common for a single dispute to involve both state and federal theories at once, which affects where the case gets filed and what law applies to each claim.

Frequently asked questions