With the same clarity as the Sacramento River delta at high tide, the California Supreme Court ruled yesterday that employers must provide suitable seating for all employees in California when it is “reasonable” to do so.
In Kilby v. CVS Pharmacy, Inc. (pdf),* the Court was called upon to interpret language in the Industrial Welfare Commission wage orders saying that: “working employees shall be provided with suitable seats when the nature of the work reasonably permits the use of seats.” That language was largely ignored for decades until the Private Attorneys General Act created a vehicle for plaintiffs to bring representative actions for enforcement. The cases have worked their way up in the appeals process, and we now have what purports to be the final word:
If the tasks being performed at a given location reasonably permit sitting, and provision of a seat would not interfere with performance of any other tasks that may require standing, a seat is called for.
The Court says that whether seating is “reasonably required” is always a question of fact involving a “totality of the circumstances approach.” The result in any given case will thus be entirely unpredictable, and summary judgment will be nearly impossible. To make things worse, “[a]n employer seeking to be excused from the requirement bears the burden of showing that compliance is infeasible….” This burden presumably also applies to “whether the physical layout [of the workplace] may reasonably be changed to accommodate a seat.” This amounts to “reasonable accommodation” to an entire class of employees (e.g., cashiers and bank tellers) who now have a “right” to sit.
The employer’s “business judgment as to whether a job requires standing” is but one factor to be considered, and it “does not allow employers unlimited ability to arbitrarily define certain tasks as ‘standing’ ones, undermining the protective purpose of the wage order.”
California employers must now brace for what may be an onslaught of class-like cases under PAGA, demanding “suitable seats” under the IWC wage orders, with potentially massive civil penalties, and, of course, attorneys’ fees awards. Few employers will be able to sit this one out.
*In the interests of full disclosure, Fox Rothschild LLP filed an amicus brief in this case on behalf of the California Retailers Association and the Retail Industry Leaders Association.