Supreme Court Says Employers Must Provide Meal and Rest Breaks

The Supreme Court’s decision in Brinker Restaurant Corporation v. Superior Ct. (Hohnbaum) contains many statements that affirm the rights of California workers to meal and rest breaks.
For all meal and rest periods mandated by law:

• Employers must relieve employees of all duty, relinquish control over their activities, and permit them a reasonable opportunity to take uninterrupted 30-minute meal periods and 10-minute rest breaks;

• Employers cannot use coercion, incentives, or any other tactic to encourage employees to skip their legally protected breaks;

• Specifically, although an employer is not obligated to police meal breaks, an employer cannot undermine a formal policy of providing meal breaks by pressuring employees to perform their duties in ways that omit breaks (for example, by scheduling that interferes with taking breaks or by an informal practice of ridiculing or reprimanding employees who take their breaks).

• Employees are entitled to 10 minutes’ rest for shifts from three and one-half to six hours in length, 20 minutes for shifts of more than six hours up to 10 hours, 30 minutes for shifts of more than 10 hours up to 14 hours, and so on.

• Employees are entitled to meal periods in which they are outside the control of the employer and free to engage in personal activities of their own choice.

Some employers are claiming the 51-page Brinker decision is a victory for employers, but the Court’s opinion is far more supportive of workers’ rights than the extreme positions taken by the employer groups that backed Brinker Restaurants against its workers.  The Court criticized the decision of the Court of Appeal overturning class certification of Brinker’s employees on numerous counts.