Huerta v. CSI Electrical: the gate, the drive, and the clock
Case note · Wage and hour (part of “From the recent term,” with Quach and Adolph)
When does the workday actually start? At a large California solar site, the answer turned out to be: at the security gate — and sometimes even at lunch.
The case in brief. Supreme Court of California, decided March 25, 2024, answering questions certified by the Ninth Circuit. A worker at a solar-construction site spent unpaid time in mandatory exit inspections, driving between a security gate and parking lots, and taking meal periods he could not leave. The exit-inspection time is compensable. Under Wage Order 16, gate-to-parking travel is compensable as employer-mandated travel only if the gate is a required reporting location for an employment-related reason beyond merely accessing the worksite; ordinary on-site driving rules do not by themselves make the drive controlled hours worked. Even under the qualifying collective bargaining agreements at issue, an otherwise unpaid meal period remains compensable when a restriction on leaving prevents otherwise feasible personal activities.
1 · What the court held
Huerta distinguishes several ways time can be compensable.1 Mandatory exit inspections satisfy the control test. Ordinary on-site speed, safety, and route rules do not, by themselves, make the drive to work compensable. The separate employer-mandated-travel rule and restrictions on personal activities during a meal period require their own factual analysis. The clock’s location does not answer those questions.
2 · Why it matters
Because minutes multiply. Ten controlled minutes a day is nearly an unpaid week a year, per worker — before overtime effects, before derivative penalties. Huerta sits beside Troester, which barred the de-minimis excuse for regularly recurring off-the-clock minutes, and Frlekin’s bag-check logic before it: the perimeter of the compensable day is drawn by employer control, not by the time clock’s location.2 For the large gated worksites of logistics, energy, and construction, the decision reads like a map of unbilled time.
3 · What it did not change
Ordinary commuting on your own terms remains unpaid. A qualifying collective bargaining agreement can alter meal-period requirements, but it does not erase wages for controlled time: that was a central point of Huerta’s meal-period holding. The decision rewards specific facts about inspections, reporting requirements, and restrictions on personal activity.
4 · How we use it
Intake for site-based workers now includes a perimeter walk: where is the clock, where is the gate, what happens between them, and who decided. Then we put the gap on a timeline and price it. If your workday has always felt longer than your paycheck says, the distance between the two may be measurable in exactly this way — bring us a typical day, minute by minute, and we will do the measuring.
- Huerta v. CSI Electrical Contractors (2024); IWC Wage Order 16.
- Troester v. Starbucks Corp. (2018) 5 Cal.5th 829; Frlekin v. Apple Inc. (2020) 9 Cal.5th 73.
Related writing: Meal periods, rest breaks, and the hour of pay most workers never see · Reading your wage statement
This article states California law as of its revision date and is analysis, not legal advice. Reading this site does not create an attorney-client relationship. Attorney advertising.