For more than 70 years, workers seeking unpaid wages under the Fair Labor Standards Act have been thwarted by the de minimis doctrine—a rule that employers need not pay workers for small amounts of time that are administratively difficult to measure and record because “the law does not concern itself with trifles.” On July 26, the California Supreme Court rejected application of this doctrine to wage-and-hour claims under the California Labor Code in Troester v. Starbucks. This holding is a clear win for workers and labor advocates, but there is a lot to love in this opinion beyond its holding. Here are four reasons that workers and advocates in California and across the country should feel heartened by the Troester decision:

  1. The California Supreme Court outright rejected the reasoning behind the de minimis doctrine.

It is axiomatic that the worker's rights protections in the FLSA form a floor rather than a ceiling. Courts are not bound to follow principles and trends in federal law when interpreting state law. The California Legislature has long sought to write state laws that provide more protections for workers than the federal law. Thus, although the ultimate ruling in Troester could have been reached based on the black letter distinctions between the federal and state laws, the California Supreme Court outright rejected the U.S. Supreme Court's Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery decision, calling the court's reasoning “questionable.”

The Troester court identified what seems like a transparently false equivalency—that “minutes of work beyond the scheduled working hours” cannot be equated to “split-second absurdities” that employers are excused from measuring and paying for. The court unapologetically criticized the U.S. Supreme Court for holding that an employee may seek compensation for unpaid labor only when he or she was “required to give up a substantial measure of his time and effort.” Finally, the court noted that if time worked is difficult to track, there is no reason why the employee alone should bear the loss.

The California high court also rejected the idea that tradition and custom are valid reasons to perpetuate unfair employment practices. The court praised the California Legislature and Industrial Workers Commission, which, unlike the U.S. Congress, has largely ignored “customary employment practices” and “instead placed more importance on the policy of ensuring that employees are fully compensated for all time spent in the employer's control.”

California's willingness to call out the errors in the thinking of the U.S. Supreme Court and Congress may give other states the encouragement they need to take similarly bold steps to protect workers' interests.

  1. Troester recognizes the value of workers' time, and, by extension, workers' humanity.

The plaintiff in Troester sought compensation for the four to 10 minutes of work he performed after he clocked out each and every shift during his 17 months as shift manager at Starbucks. While the Anderson court previously held this amount of time to be “negligible,” the Troester court recognized that a few minutes a day every day do add up—in this case, to 12 hours and 50 minutes of work, which, at minimum wage, is worth $102.67. The California high court provided some perspective for those privileged enough to consider $102.67 de minimis: “That is enough to pay a utility bill, buy a week of groceries, or cover a month of bus fares.”

The court also noted that “application of a de minimis rule is inappropriate when the law under which this action is prosecuted does care for small things.” For example, California courts have interpreted the Labor Code and wage orders demanding that nonexempt employees receive two 10-minute breaks each day to require “strict adherence.” Specifically, an employer may not infringe on the those breaks—at all—unless the employer is willing to pay an additional hour of wages. In keeping with this strict construction and policy of respecting the value of workers' time and humanity, the Troester court refused to consider a few minutes of compensable time per day, even if inconvenient to record, to be “a trifle not requiring compensation.”

  1. The Troester court properly placed on the employer the burden of devising a system ensuring workers are paid for all the time they work.

Recent jurisprudence has made painfully clear that the U.S. Supreme Court blindly assumes that employers and employees hold equal bargaining power and live in fear of infringing on an employer's right to contract. The Troester court acknowledges the reality of the employment relationship: the boss makes the rules, and employees follow them. The employer selects the clock-in/clock-out system and writes the policy for how that system is used. Thus, it only makes sense that the employer be charged with the burden of ensuring its method captures all the time that employees spend under their employer's control. Arguing that a small amount of time is administratively difficult to measure will not suffice.

The Troester court recognized another obvious point: that advancements in technology since the 1940s demand a re-examination of what “administratively difficult to capture” means. In this age of smartphones, tablets and other devices, it is illogical to base a rule on “the realities of the industrial world” in the early 1900s. Employers must face an uphill battle in pursuing any policy that fails to compensate workers for compensable time.

  1. The Troester court took the rare step of recognizing the important role of class actions.

A steady stream of proposed legislation seeks to reduce the viability of class action lawsuits, and corporations routinely accuse the plaintiffs' bar of perpetuating frivolous class claims. Meanwhile, the Troester court gave a nod to the utility of class actions, noting that the “very premise of [class action law suits] is that small individual recoveries worthy of neither the plaintiff's nor the court's time can be aggregated to vindicate an important public policy.” The court also acknowledged that class actions “often produce several salutary by-products,” such as a strong deterrent against bad practices and “aid to legitimate business enterprises by curtailing illegitimate competition.” Using class actions, employees can seek compensation that may previously have been considered de minimis without burdening their employers with the repeated litigation of similar claims.

Ed Chapin is the managing partner of Sanford Heisler Sharp's California offices and his practice is focused on complex civil trials, including multiparty civil litigation in consumer and employment class actions and business disputes. Cara Van Dorn is a litigation fellow in the firm's San Diego office.