Hunton Employment & Labor Perspectives

In January 2021, the Ninth Circuit upheld a 2018 ruling by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (“FMCSA”), which found that federal law preempts California state meal and rest break laws as applied to drivers of property-carrying commercial motor vehicles.  A few months later, the United States Supreme Court denied a petition challenging the Ninth Circuit’s decision.  We previously wrote about the Ninth Circuit’s ruling, and the Supreme Court’s denial, in a post that you can read here.

On October 4, 2021, the United States Supreme Court denied certiorari on a petition challenging the Ninth Circuit’s ruling that California’s strict meal and rest period rules do not apply to commercial truck drivers engaged in interstate commerce.  The Court’s denial of the petition leaves in place a decision that came as a welcome sigh of relief for employers in the trucking industry.

Many employers use rounding methods to adjust the hours that an employee works to the nearest time increment, such as every five or ten minutes.  The California Supreme Court has ruled, however, that this rounding practice is impermissible at the meal period.  Equally as troubling for employers, the Court also held that time records showing a noncompliant meal period raise a “rebuttable presumption” of meal period violations.