Retaliation.

Who leads this work — Arthur Karadzhyan: employment litigation from both sides of the table — plaintiff-side wage-and-hour class actions and defense practice at a national employment firm. That vantage is the method: knowing how the other side reads a file before they read it.

Many of the strongest employment cases are retaliation cases: whatever the merits of the original complaint, what the employer did in the ninety days after it is a separate question — often a clearer one, tried under a framework built in the employee’s favor.

1 · What the law says

California protects the act of complaining itself. Two main tracks: FEHA forbids retaliation for opposing practices it prohibits — with protected activity read broadly since Yanowitz, and adverse action measured by material effect on the job, in the aggregate.[Gov. Code §12940(h)] Labor Code section 1102.5 protects disclosures of legal violations generally — internally or to any agency, whether or not reporting was your job, whether or not you were right, and, after Kolla’s, even where the listener already knew. Around them, a lattice of specific shields: wage complaints, safety complaints, equal-pay inquiries, discussing your own working conditions and pay.[Lab. Code §§98.6, 6310, 1197.5, 232, 232.5]

The frameworks differ, and the difference decides cases. FEHA runs on the familiar burden-shifting with Harris’s substantial-motivating-reason standard. Section 1102.6 runs on contributing factor — yours to show by a preponderance — after which the employer must prove, by clear and convincing evidence, that it would have done the same thing anyway. Lawson confirmed that framework governs, and its practical meaning: more of these cases reach juries.

2 · How these cases actually unfold

As reconstruction of a window. We map the ninety days on either side of the protected act: who knew of the complaint and when; what changed — reviews, assignments, scrutiny, tone; how the stated reason for the adverse action holds against the before-and-after record. Timing alone rarely wins; timing plus a shifting explanation, or a deviation from the employer’s own procedures, usually does. Track selection is strategy, not formality: 1102.5 claims skip the administrative step entirely, FEHA claims cannot, and pleading both — where facts support both — lets the motions be sequenced so each framework does the work it is best at.

3 · Issues to examine

Statute selection. Pleading only the FEHA track when section 1102.6’s burden framework is available — or vice versa — is the most consequential unforced error in this practice area. The frameworks are different machines. We choose deliberately, and usually run both.

The public-employer asymmetry. FEHA claims are exempt from the Government Claims Act; section 1102.5 claims against public entities are not, and the presentation deadline can be six months. Firms that learn this in year two of a case learn it fatally.

The protected acts that don’t look like complaints. Requesting accommodation. Answering honestly in someone else’s investigation. Refusing an instruction you reasonably believed unlawful. Discussing pay with coworkers. Each is protected activity; most intakes never surface them because no one asks.

The case inside the case. Every discrimination, harassment, and wage matter contains a potential retaliation claim the moment the client complains. Filing the underlying case without watching what happens next wastes the strongest evidence the employer will ever volunteer.

4 · Our approach

We plead the section 1102.6 framework into the complaint by name and put Lawson in front of the court early — briefing habits die slowly, and the party that frames the test usually wins the motion. We build the employer’s same-decision problem from day one: comparators, timing, procedure deviations, assembled while discovery is still open rather than argued after it closes. And for clients still employed and newly protected, we counsel the quiet documentation posture that turns whatever comes next into evidence.

What to bring to a first conversation

The complaint you made — the email, the ticket, the note of the conversation — with its date. Everything that changed afterward, in order. The stated reason you were given, in whatever form. Your reviews from before. And your dates, all of them, first.

Selected authorities

Gov. Code §12940(h) · Lab. Code §§98.6, 232, 232.5, 1102.5, 1102.6, 1197.5, 6310 · Gov. Code §911.2 (public employers) · Yanowitz v. L’Oréal USA, Inc. (2005) 36 Cal.4th 1028 · Harris v. City of Santa Monica (2013) 56 Cal.4th 203 · Lawson v. PPG Architectural Finishes, Inc. (2022) 12 Cal.5th 703 · People ex rel. Garcia-Brower v. Kolla’s, Inc. (2023) 14 Cal.5th 719

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