California’s job bias laws can be used to hold business entities that act as employers’ agents liable, an attorney for two workers denied jobs after receiving conditional offers argued Thursday before the state Supreme Court.
Justices, answering a question from the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, debated the reach of—and liability under—the California Fair Employment and Housing Act.
Agents can be held additionally liable to the employers “if they are de facto performing employer functions,” and in the Civil Rights Act’s Title VII context that “would mean that they have substantial responsibility for some sort of concrete ...