Devoted to Corporate Attorneys, Corporate Lawyers, and Corporate Counsel

On February 10, 2007, Alex Hernaez, who graduated from Georgetown, and a partner in the San Francisco, CA office of Kauff McClain & McGuire LLP gave a talk on the differences between California and federal laws for employees.

On background checks, the private employer usually checks only the jurisdictions where an individual has worked or lived in during the recent 5 years or recent past.  This is because it is expensive for employers to check every jurisdiction.  This is unlike the federal government, who may have access to databases throughout the United States for checks.

He discussed San Francisco’s new Proposition F implementations requiring some companies to start tracking the hours of exempt employees.  Usually there is an argument against exempt status when an exempt employees has to track his/her hours, but this may be a task to do in order to properly comply with Proposition F.

He mentioned that in California, there are more employee protections than federal laws.  For instance, the state protects sexual orientation, gender identity, perception.  Perception is when a person is discriminated based on what is perceived.  For example, someone does not get hired because he is perceived to be homosexual.  Even though he is not homosexual, he still has a case for discrimination.