Alphabetical by case name. Each entry gives the citation, the holding in plain terms, and the practical consequence for hotel operators. These digests simplify; the opinions control — read them before relying on them.
Interpretive framework & deference#
Read this group first — it is the lens for every entry below. Wage-and-hour disputes turn not only on what the statute says but on who gets to say what it means. After the Supreme Court ended Chevron deference, an agency's reading of the FLSA no longer binds a court; a DOL fact sheet or opinion letter now persuades only to the extent it is well-reasoned (the Skidmore standard), and exemptions get a "fair reading" rather than the old narrow-construction thumb on the scale. That shift is why the opinion-letter trilogy and fact-sheet shelf are guidance to weigh, not law to obey — and why a hotel's good-faith reliance on them is a defense, not a guarantee.
Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo#
603 U.S. 369 (2024) (U.S. Supreme Court 2024)
Overruled Chevron: courts, not agencies, independently decide what an ambiguous statute means, giving an agency's interpretation respect only to the extent it is persuasive.
Why hotels care: DOL wage regulations and opinion letters no longer bind a court. A fact sheet now persuades rather than controls — but well-reasoned guidance you actually relied on still anchors a good-faith defense.
Skidmore v. Swift & Co.#
323 U.S. 134 (1944) (U.S. Supreme Court 1944)
An agency interpretation that lacks the force of law is entitled to judicial respect proportional to its thoroughness, the validity of its reasoning, and its consistency over time.
Why hotels care: The yardstick for every DOL fact sheet and opinion letter after Loper Bright: a hotel's reliance is exactly as strong as the guidance is well-reasoned and consistent.
Tips, pools & service charges#
The hospitality core. These decisions trace a single arc — from who may keep a tip (the manager/supervisor exclusion and the pre-2018 retention split), through when a mandatory charge is really a gratuity owed to staff (the state service-charge cases that decide who owns the 20%-plus banquet charge), to who the government can bill for the payroll tax on tips that were never reported. For a full-service hotel running tip pools, banquet service charges, and a spa, every link in that chain is a live exposure. See tip pooling and service charges.
Barenboim v. Starbucks Corp.#
21 N.Y.3d 460 (2013) (N.Y. Court of Appeals 2013)
Under NY Labor Law §196-d, an employee with limited supervisory duties may share in tips, but one with "meaningful authority" over subordinates (hiring, discipline, scheduling input) may not.
Why hotels care: New York's test for banquet captains, lead bartenders, and bell captains in tip pools differs from the federal duties-based manager test — analyze both before building the pool roster.
Cumbie v. Woody Woo, Inc.#
596 F.3d 577 (9th Cir. 2010) (9th Cir. 2010)
Where no tip credit is taken, the FLSA (as then written) did not restrict the composition of a mandatory tip pool, permitting back-of-house participation.
Why hotels care: The doctrinal seed of today's rule: no-tip-credit employers may run kitchen-inclusive pools (now codified, with the manager/supervisor ban layered on by the 2018 amendments).
Marlow v. New Food Guy, Inc.#
861 F.3d 1157 (10th Cir. 2017) (10th Cir. 2017)
Held the FLSA imposes no restriction on an employer's handling of tips or service charges when it pays the full minimum wage and takes no tip credit — the opposite of Oregon Restaurant & Lodging.
Why hotels care: The circuit split that prompted Congress to amend FLSA section 3(m) in 2018, banning employers, managers, and supervisors from keeping tips regardless of whether a credit is taken.
Marsh v. J. Alexander's LLC#
905 F.3d 610 (9th Cir. 2018) (en banc) (9th Cir. (en banc) 2018)
Deferred to DOL's then-existing 80/20 dual-jobs guidance, allowing servers' claims for untipped side-work time to proceed.
Why hotels care: Historical context for the side-work wars — and a reminder that vacatur of the 2021 rule did not erase the case law plaintiffs cite when pleading legacy theories.
Matamoros v. Starbucks Corp.#
699 F.3d 129 (1st Cir. 2012) (1st Cir. 2012)
Under the Massachusetts Tips Act, shift supervisors with any managerial responsibility may not share in tip pools; violations carry mandatory treble damages.
Why hotels care: Massachusetts is the least forgiving tip-pool jurisdiction in the country — Boston hotel pool rosters need a stricter screen than the federal duties test.
Montano v. Montrose Restaurant Associates#
800 F.3d 186 (5th Cir. 2015) (5th Cir. 2015)
A "coffeeman" with no meaningful customer interaction could not be required to participate in a tip pool; eligibility turns on whether the employee has sufficient direct customer interaction to be one who customarily receives tips.
Why hotels care: Defines who may be in a tip-credit pool — guest-facing chain-of-service roles only. The analytical ancestor of opinion letter FLSA-2025-03 on guest contact; vet every borderline hotel role.
Mothering Justice v. Attorney General#
Mich. July 31, 2024 (Mich. Supreme Court 2024)
The legislature's 2018 "adopt-and-amend" maneuver was unconstitutional, reviving the original minimum-wage initiative including its tip-credit phase-out — before February 2025 legislation enacted a compromise preserving a 50% tipped wage by 2031.
Why hotels care: Michigan hotels lived through a near-elimination of the tip credit; the surviving compromise schedule (40% in 2026, 50% by 2031) is now a fixed planning input.
O'Grady v. Merchant Exchange Productions, Inc.#
41 Cal.App.5th 771 (2019) (Cal. Ct. App. 2019)
A mandatory banquet service charge can constitute a "gratuity" belonging to employees under Labor Code §351, depending on how it is presented to customers.
Why hotels care: California joined the service-charge battleground: ambiguous banquet-charge labeling invites class claims that the house kept the workers' money.
Oregon Restaurant & Lodging Ass'n v. Perez#
816 F.3d 1080 (9th Cir. 2016) (9th Cir. 2016)
Upheld the DOL's 2011 rule that tips are the property of the employee even when the employer takes no tip credit — barring employer-mandated back-of-house tip pools in the Ninth Circuit.
Why hotels care: Half of the pre-2018 circuit split (with Marlow) that Congress resolved by the 2018 FLSA amendment. The reason a no-credit kitchen-inclusive pool is lawful today only with the manager/employer-retention ban layered on.
Restaurant Law Center v. U.S. Department of Labor#
115 F.4th 396 (5th Cir. 2024) (5th Cir. 2024)
Vacated the DOL's 2021 "80/20/30" dual-jobs rule nationwide as contrary to the FLSA's text and arbitrary and capricious — ending the federal requirement to track tipped employees' side work in 20-percent and 30-minute increments.
Why hotels care: Federal side-work minute-counting is gone, but the underlying dual-jobs doctrine survives, plaintiffs still plead legacy 80/20 theories, and New York's own 80/20/two-hour rule is unaffected.
Samiento v. World Yacht Inc.#
10 N.Y.3d 70 (2008) (N.Y. Court of Appeals 2008)
A mandatory service charge that a reasonable customer would understand to be a gratuity is a "charge purported to be a gratuity" under Labor Law §196-d and must be distributed to service staff.
Why hotels care: The origin of New York banquet service-charge litigation. Without conspicuous disclaimers in contracts, BEOs, and invoices, the 20-something-percent banquet charge belongs to the servers.
United States v. Fior d'Italia, Inc.#
536 U.S. 238 (2002) (U.S. Supreme Court 2002)
The IRS may use an aggregate estimate of a business's charged tips to assess the employer's share of FICA taxes on tips, rather than reconstructing each employee's tips individually.
Why hotels care: Underreported banquet, valet, or spa tips expose the hotel to an aggregate FICA assessment under section 3121(q) — years later, computed against the house. The case for TRAC/GITCA agreements and disciplined monthly tip reporting.
Villon v. Marriott Hotel Services, Inc.#
130 Haw. 130 (2013) (Haw. Supreme Court 2013)
Hotel employees may sue under Hawaii's wage statutes when an employer retains a service charge without the disclosure HRS §481B-14 requires.
Why hotels care: Hawaii's disclose-or-distribute rule has a private enforcement path — resort F&B service-charge language must be airtight on every banquet contract and check.
Exemptions & the salary-basis trap#
Whether a banquet manager, chief engineer, or task-force lead is exempt is usually litigated as a duties question — but these cases show the fight is often lost a step earlier, on how the person is paid. A six-figure earner paid by the day or shift fails the salary-basis test and is owed overtime regardless of income; salary level and a "fair reading" of the duties tests do the rest. See exemptions.
Christopher v. SmithKline Beecham Corp.#
567 U.S. 142 (2012) (U.S. Supreme Court 2012)
Denied deference to the DOL's late-announced reading of its own rule where employers had long relied on the opposite understanding — agencies cannot impose new interpretations by "unfair surprise."
Why hotels care: Protects settled reliance: an agency cannot retroactively redefine an exemption a hotel has reasonably applied for years. Cuts both ways with Loper Bright.
Encino Motorcars, LLC v. Navarro#
584 U.S. 79 (2018) (U.S. Supreme Court 2018)
FLSA exemptions receive a "fair reading," not the historically narrow construction against employers.
Why hotels care: Modestly improves employers' odds in duties-test disputes (working managers, sales roles) — but it changes the interpretive lens, not the facts of who actually does exempt work.
Helix Energy Solutions Group, Inc. v. Hewitt#
598 U.S. 39 (2023) (U.S. Supreme Court 2023)
A highly paid employee compensated on a daily-rate basis is not paid on a "salary basis" and therefore is not exempt — regardless of how large the total income is.
Why hotels care: Day-rate or shift-rate pay for banquet managers, task-force leaders, or chief engineers destroys the exemption even at six-figure earnings; guarantee a true weekly salary or pay overtime.
Compensable time & the continuous workday#
What counts as "hours worked" is the most jurisdiction-split question in the field. Federal law excludes the commute and merely preliminary or postliminary tasks unless they are integral and indispensable; California asks instead whether the employer exercised control — and reaches the opposite result on security screening, mandatory travel, and on-call time. The common thread for hotels: small recurring increments (radio pickup, a bag check, a shuttle ride, a closing alarm) aggregate into real liability, and when the records are silent the employee's estimate becomes the evidence under Mt. Clemens. See off-the-clock work.
Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co.#
328 U.S. 680 (1946) (U.S. Supreme Court 1946)
Where the employer's time records are inadequate, employees may prove hours by just and reasonable inference, shifting the burden to the employer to rebut.
Why hotels care: The reason recordkeeping wins or loses cases: without clean records, the housekeeper's recollection of daily unpaid linen runs becomes the evidence.
Fast v. Applebee's International, Inc.#
638 F.3d 872 (8th Cir. 2011) (8th Cir. 2011)
Deferred to the DOL's 20% limit on related, untipped side work before the tip credit is lost — entrenching the "80/20" rule in federal litigation.
Why hotels care: The decision that fueled a decade of side-work class actions; the historical anchor for why the 2024 vacatur of the 80/20/30 rule matters and why plaintiffs still plead legacy 80/20 theories.
Frlekin v. Apple Inc.#
8 Cal.5th 1038 (2020) (Cal. Supreme Court 2020)
Time spent in mandatory exit bag searches is compensable "hours worked" under California's control test.
Why hotels care: The direct counterpoint to Busk: California hotel security screening, bag checks, and similar controlled time must be on the clock.
Huerta v. CSI Electrical Contractors#
15 Cal.5th 908 (2024) (Cal. Supreme Court 2024)
Time spent in an employer-controlled vehicle-inspection line at a security gate, and required on-premises travel to the worksite, is compensable hours worked under California's control test.
Why hotels care: Gated-resort and airport-hotel security queues, and mandatory on-site travel between a remote lot and the property, are paid in California — a 2024 reaffirmation of Morillion and Frlekin.
IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez#
546 U.S. 21 (2005) (U.S. Supreme Court 2005)
Once the first principal activity of the day occurs, the "continuous workday" runs: time walking and waiting between integral activities is compensable, though time before the first such activity generally is not.
Why hotels care: If a required pre-shift task (badge-in, equipment or key pickup, a mandatory briefing) is a principal activity, the clock runs from there through the last one — capturing walking, waiting, and a later security line.
Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc. v. Busk#
574 U.S. 27 (2014) (U.S. Supreme Court 2014)
Post-shift security screening time is not compensable under the FLSA because it is not integral and indispensable to the employees' principal activities.
Why hotels care: Federal law tolerates unpaid bag checks; California does not (see Frlekin). Multi-state hotel groups need a state-by-state screening-time policy — or simply pay for it everywhere.
Lindow v. United States#
738 F.2d 1057 (9th Cir. 1984) (9th Cir. 1984)
Established the federal de minimis factors — the practical administrative difficulty of recording the time, the aggregate amount claimed, and the regularity of the work — for excluding trivial increments.
Why hotels care: The federal test for whether a few minutes of recurring pre-shift setup can be ignored. But California rejects de minimis for regular off-the-clock work (Troester), so multi-state hotels should capture the time everywhere.
Mendiola v. CPS Security Solutions, Inc.#
60 Cal.4th 833 (2015) (Cal. Supreme Court 2015)
On-call hours — including required on-premises overnight presence and sleep time for residential guards — are compensable hours worked under California law, which does not adopt the federal sleep-time exclusion.
Why hotels care: Live-in or on-property resident staff (engineers, security) required to remain overnight are likely owed on-call pay in California; the federal 29 CFR 785.22 sleep-time agreement does not translate.
Morillion v. Royal Packing Co.#
22 Cal.4th 575 (2000) (Cal. Supreme Court 2000)
Time spent in employer-mandated travel on employer-provided transportation is compensable hours worked under California's control test, even if no work is performed en route.
Why hotels care: Required shuttle rides — remote resort parking, an off-site lot to the property, a satellite garage — are paid time in California in a way the federal commute rule would not reach.
Sandifer v. United States Steel Corp.#
571 U.S. 220 (2014) (U.S. Supreme Court 2014)
Time spent "changing clothes" can be excluded from compensable time by a collective bargaining agreement under FLSA §203(o); protective gear that is essentially clothing counts.
Why hotels care: Relevant to unionized hotels negotiating uniform-change pay; outside a CBA, required on-premises uniform changing is generally compensable working time.
Troester v. Starbucks Corp.#
5 Cal.5th 829 (2018) (Cal. Supreme Court 2018)
California has not adopted the federal de minimis doctrine for regularly recurring small increments of off-the-clock work, such as daily closing tasks.
Why hotels care: Minutes matter in California: post-clock-out alarm-setting, cash drops, or lock-ups at hotel outlets accrue real liability across a workforce. Capture all time.
California's premium-and-penalty architecture#
California stacks remedies in a way no other state does, and these cases assemble the stack link by link: meal- and rest-break premiums must be provided (not policed) and paid at the regular rate of compensation (Ferra), those premiums are wages (Naranjo I) — which means a missed one cascades into wage-statement and waiting-time penalties — unless the employer's objectively reasonable good faith defeats the "knowing" and "willful" elements (Naranjo II); meanwhile timekeeping records that show violations create a rebuttable presumption (Donohue) and the era of rounding is ending (Camp, now before the Supreme Court — see the watch list). Reporting-time, split-shift, and flat-sum-bonus overtime rules layer on top. See meal & rest breaks and PAGA.
Alvarado v. Dart Container Corp.#
4 Cal.5th 542 (2018) (Cal. Supreme Court 2018)
For California overtime, a flat-sum bonus must be divided by the non-overtime hours actually worked — not by all hours — inflating the resulting overtime rate.
Why hotels care: Attendance, retention, and signing bonuses raise the overtime regular rate more than employers expect; the divisor error is a recurring banquet and housekeeping payroll miscalculation.
Augustus v. ABM Security Services, Inc.#
2 Cal.5th 257 (2016) (Cal. Supreme Court 2016)
Rest breaks must be duty-free and free of employer control; requiring employees to remain on call during a rest period — even if rarely interrupted — violates California law.
Why hotels care: Security and engineering staff cannot keep a radio on during the ten-minute break, and front-desk coverage rules can convert "breaks" into on-call time — one premium hour per day, per employee.
Brinker Restaurant Corp. v. Superior Court#
53 Cal.4th 1004 (2012) (Cal. Supreme Court 2012)
Employers must provide meal periods — relieve employees of all duty and relinquish control — but need not police them to ensure no work is performed; timing rules for first and second meals clarified.
Why hotels care: The framework for every California break policy: schedule breaks by the fifth hour, genuinely relieve duty (no radio-on lunches for engineers), and document waivers properly.
Donohue v. AMN Services, LLC#
11 Cal.5th 58 (2021) (Cal. Supreme Court 2021)
Employers cannot round meal-period time punches, and records showing missed, short, or late meal periods raise a rebuttable presumption of violations.
Why hotels care: Your own timekeeping data becomes the plaintiff's exhibit list. Hotels need exception reports, attestation workflows, and automatic premium payment when punches show violations.
Ferra v. Loews Hollywood Hotel, LLC#
11 Cal.5th 858 (2021) (Cal. Supreme Court 2021)
Meal- and rest-break premium pay must be calculated at the "regular rate of compensation" — including nondiscretionary incentive pay — not the base hourly rate; applied retroactively.
Why hotels care: A hotel case from the caption down: room-upsell bonuses, service-charge shares, and incentive pay all inflate the premium rate. Paying break premiums at base rate is systematic underpayment.
Hartstein v. Hyatt Corp.#
82 F.4th 825 (9th Cir. 2023) (9th Cir. 2023)
Held that a hotel's COVID-era furlough of employees with no specific return date was a "termination" that triggered California's prompt-payment rule under Labor Code section 201: the vested vacation that section 227.3 makes payable had to be paid right away, not whenever the layoff later hardened into a formal severance.
Why hotels care: A hotel case on point: indefinite furloughs and seasonal layoffs can trigger immediate accrued-vacation payout and final-pay timing in California — budget the PTO liability before pausing a property.
Murphy v. Kenneth Cole Productions, Inc.#
40 Cal.4th 1094 (2007) (Cal. Supreme Court 2007)
The one-hour meal- and rest-break premium under Labor Code section 226.7 is a wage, not a penalty, so the longer three-year (not one-year) statute of limitations applies.
Why hotels care: Premiums-as-wages extends the lookback on break claims and is the doctrinal seed of Naranjo's derivative wage-statement and waiting-time exposure.
Naranjo v. Spectrum Security Services, Inc. (I & II)#
13 Cal.5th 93 (2022); 15 Cal.5th 1056 (2024) (Cal. Supreme Court 2024)
Break premiums are "wages" that trigger wage-statement and waiting-time penalty exposure (Naranjo I); but an employer's objectively reasonable, good-faith belief that it complied defeats the "knowing and intentional" and "willful" elements of those penalties (Naranjo II).
Why hotels care: Defines the derivative-penalty stack on every California break case — and the documented-good-faith off-ramp. Written compliance analyses now have direct penalty-defense value.
Ward v. Tilly's, Inc.#
31 Cal.App.5th 1167 (2019) (Cal. Ct. App. 2019)
On-call scheduling requiring employees to phone in two hours before a potential shift triggers California reporting-time pay even when the employee never physically reports.
Why hotels care: Killed call-in scheduling for California banquet and housekeeping departments: telephonic check-ins "report for work" and owe partial-shift pay when cancelled.
Classification & joint employment#
Two questions decide who is on the hook for a wage bill: is the worker an employee at all, and is more than one entity the employer? The cases run from the Supreme Court's original economic-reality test through the California ABC test (whose prong B is fatal to treating housekeeping, banquet, or valet labor as contracting) to the vertical joint-employment factors that pull a brand, an owner, or a staffing platform into shared liability. The structural lesson for hotels is that EINs and indemnity clauses move money, not liability. See independent contractors and joint employer.
Barfield v. New York City Health & Hospitals Corp.#
537 F.3d 132 (2d Cir. 2008) (2d Cir. 2008)
Applied the broad FLSA functional joint-employment test to hold an entity that used agency-referred workers a joint employer responsible for overtime.
Why hotels care: Staffing platforms (Instawork, Qwick) supplying banquet or housekeeping labor can make the hotel a joint employer for the hours those workers spend on its floor, whatever the platform's terms say.
Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court#
4 Cal.5th 903 (2018) (Cal. Supreme Court 2018)
Adopted the ABC test for independent-contractor status under the California wage orders: the hiring entity must prove freedom from control, work outside its usual course of business, and an independently established trade.
Why hotels care: Prong B is brutal for hotels: housekeeping, banquet service, and valet are the hotel's usual course of business, so individuals doing that work are employees almost per se.
Hargrove v. Sleepy's, LLC#
220 N.J. 289 (2015) (N.J. Supreme Court 2015)
New Jersey applies the ABC test to wage-and-hour independent-contractor disputes.
Why hotels care: Atlantic City and shore hotels using contracted banquet staff, valet operators, or shuttle drivers face one of the country's strictest classification regimes.
Irizarry v. Catsimatidis#
722 F.3d 99 (2d Cir. 2013) (2d Cir. 2013)
An owner or officer with operational control over significant aspects of the company and authority over pay policy is personally an "employer" under the FLSA, jointly liable for unpaid wages.
Why hotels care: Individual liability reaches hotel owners and principals who set pay policy — exposure that pierces past the operating LLC to a personal balance sheet.
Rutherford Food Corp. v. McComb#
331 U.S. 722 (1947) (U.S. Supreme Court 1947)
Employee status under the FLSA turns on the economic reality of the whole working arrangement, not on labels, contracts, or isolated factors.
Why hotels care: The origin of the economic-reality test. A contract calling banquet, valet, or housekeeping labor "independent" does not control if the economic reality is employment.
Salazar v. McDonald's Corp.#
944 F.3d 1024 (9th Cir. 2019) (9th Cir. 2019)
A franchisor was not the joint employer of franchisee employees under California's control-based tests where it did not control day-to-day hiring, firing, wages, or supervision.
Why hotels care: The brand-standards defense in a nutshell: quality and brand requirements are not day-to-day employment control. The analysis maps directly onto hotel franchisor/owner/operator structures.
Zheng v. Liberty Apparel Co.#
355 F.3d 61 (2d Cir. 2003) (2d Cir. 2003)
Set a multi-factor functional test for joint employment that reaches beyond formal control to economic dependence and the degree to which work is integral to the alleged employer's business.
Why hotels care: The New York framework that pulls a hotel into joint-employer liability for staffing-agency and subcontracted labor based on functional control, not just who signs the checks.
Hotel-specific ordinances#
Hotels are now a regulated industry in their own right, and employers have repeatedly tried — and mostly failed — to strike the local laws down. These decisions establish that hotel minimum-wage, workload, retention, and healthcare-expenditure ordinances survive NLRA Machinists and ERISA preemption as generally applicable minimum labor standards, and that subsidy-triggered living-wage mandates have real teeth. The takeaway: budget these requirements as fixed wage costs, not litigation risks. See hotel ordinances.
American Hotel & Lodging Ass'n v. City of Los Angeles#
834 F.3d 958 (9th Cir. 2016) (9th Cir. 2016)
LA's Citywide Hotel Worker Minimum Wage Ordinance — including its collective-bargaining opt-out — is a valid minimum labor standard not preempted by the NLRA.
Why hotels care: Closed the main constitutional avenue against hotel-specific wage ordinances and blessed the CBA-waiver structure that now drives union leverage at covered properties.
Columbia Sussex Management, LLC v. City of Santa Monica#
C.D. Cal. 2019–2020 (C.D. Cal. 2020)
Santa Monica's housekeeper workload caps and premium-pay requirements are valid minimum labor standards exempt from NLRA Machinists preemption; Cal/OSHA preemption arguments also failed.
Why hotels care: The leading (and employer-losing) challenge to workload ordinances — square-footage caps with double-time consequences are enforceable and spreading.
ERISA Industry Committee v. City of Seattle#
9th Cir. 2021 (unpublished), cert. denied (Nov. 2022) (9th Cir. 2021)
Seattle's hotel-employee healthcare expenditure ordinance survived ERISA preemption challenge; the Supreme Court declined review after the Solicitor General recommended denial.
Why hotels care: Healthcare-expenditure mandates (Seattle SMC 14.28, the LA hotel health payment) are here to stay — budget them as wage costs, and watch for the model to spread.
Filo Foods, LLC v. City of SeaTac#
183 Wn.2d 770 (2015) (Wash. Supreme Court 2015)
SeaTac's Proposition 1 hospitality minimum wage is enforceable at Sea-Tac International Airport, and its worker-retention provision is not NLRA- or RLA-preempted.
Why hotels care: Validated the original hospitality-specific living-wage initiative — the template for the LA, Long Beach, and Oakland hotel wage measures that followed.
Grace v. Walt Disney Parks & Resorts U.S., Inc.#
Cal. Ct. App., 4th Dist. (July 2023), review denied (Oct. 2023) (Cal. Ct. App. (4th Dist.) 2023)
Disney's tax-rebate bond arrangement with Anaheim was a "city subsidy" bringing it within Measure L's living-wage mandate; summary judgment for Disney reversed.
Why hotels care: Led to the $233 million settlement (finally approved September 2025) — the largest wage-theft settlement in California history — and proves subsidy-triggered wage ordinances have teeth.
Procedure, arbitration & collective actions#
Most wage exposure is settled by procedure before it is decided on the merits. This group maps the battlefield: arbitration agreements with class waivers are enforceable and route claims out of court, but representative PAGA claims and FLSA collective actions resist that channel; certification, notice, and statistical or representative proof determine whether one plaintiff becomes a class; and any private FLSA settlement needs court or DOL approval to extinguish the claim. For a multi-property operator, the arbitration program and the records that defeat certification are the whole ballgame. See PAGA & class actions.
Adolph v. Uber Technologies, Inc.#
14 Cal.5th 1104 (2023) (Cal. Supreme Court 2023)
A PAGA plaintiff compelled to arbitrate individual claims retains standing to pursue non-individual claims on behalf of other employees in court.
Why hotels care: Arbitration narrows but does not eliminate representative exposure; the 2024 PAGA reform's standing and penalty-cap provisions are now the more powerful mitigants.
Brooklyn Savings Bank v. O'Neil#
324 U.S. 697 (1945) (U.S. Supreme Court 1945)
Employees cannot waive or release their FLSA rights to statutory minimum wages and liquidated damages through a private agreement.
Why hotels care: A private "we paid you, now sign this release" does not bar an FLSA claim. Only a DOL-supervised settlement or a court-approved one (see Lynn's Food) extinguishes it.
Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis#
584 U.S. 497 (2018) (U.S. Supreme Court 2018)
Arbitration agreements with class- and collective-action waivers are enforceable; the NLRA does not override the Federal Arbitration Act.
Why hotels care: The foundation of most hotel employers' class-action defense architecture — wage claims proceed individually in arbitration if agreements are properly drafted and rolled out.
Estrada v. Royalty Carpet Mills, Inc.#
15 Cal.5th 582 (2024) (Cal. Supreme Court 2024)
Trial courts do not have inherent authority to strike a PAGA claim on the ground that it would be unmanageable to try.
Why hotels care: Removes a key defense against sprawling representative PAGA actions, raising the premium on the pre-suit "all reasonable steps" compliance that now caps penalties.
Hoffmann-La Roche Inc. v. Sperling#
493 U.S. 165 (1989) (U.S. Supreme Court 1989)
District courts have discretion to authorize and facilitate notice to potential opt-in plaintiffs in an FLSA collective action.
Why hotels care: The basis for court-supervised notice that turns one plaintiff into a collective; how fast and how broadly notice issues is a defining early battleground in any wage collective.
Lynn's Food Stores, Inc. v. United States#
679 F.2d 1350 (11th Cir. 1982) (11th Cir. 1982)
A private compromise of FLSA claims is enforceable only when supervised by the DOL or approved by a court as a fair and reasonable resolution of a bona fide dispute.
Why hotels care: A hotel cannot quietly settle an FLSA wage claim and move on — approval is required to make the release stick, which shapes how collective actions actually resolve.
Reuter v. City of Methuen#
489 Mass. 465 (2022) (Mass. Supreme Judicial Court 2022)
Treble damages under the Massachusetts Wage Act are mandatory and automatic — they apply even where the employer paid the wages late but before any lawsuit, and there is no good-faith defense to reduce them.
Why hotels care: The harshest wage remedy in the country: late final pay, a delayed banquet service-charge distribution, or any late wage is trebled by operation of law. The only safe harbor is paying when due — curing after the fact does not help.
Swales v. KLLM Transport Services, L.L.C.#
985 F.3d 430 (5th Cir. 2021) (5th Cir. 2021)
Rejected the lenient two-step conditional-certification approach: a court must rigorously analyze whether employees are "similarly situated" before authorizing collective notice.
Why hotels care: A tougher certification gate in the Fifth Circuit, increasingly persuasive elsewhere — a real defense lever for multi-property operators facing collective claims.
Tyson Foods, Inc. v. Bouaphakeo#
577 U.S. 442 (2016) (U.S. Supreme Court 2016)
Representative or statistical (averaging) evidence may establish classwide liability where each class member could have relied on that same evidence in an individual suit — especially where the employer's records are inadequate.
Why hotels care: The plaintiff's answer to recordkeeping gaps: averages can prove the class under Mt. Clemens. Complete, accurate time and pay records are the structural defense to certification.
Viking River Cruises, Inc. v. Moriana#
596 U.S. 639 (2022) (U.S. Supreme Court 2022)
The FAA requires enforcement of agreements to arbitrate a PAGA plaintiff's individual claims; non-individual PAGA claims cannot be compelled to arbitration.
Why hotels care: Together with Adolph, defines the arbitration playbook for California hotel PAGA exposure: compel the individual claim, then fight about what happens to the representative remainder.
Watch list — pending & unsettled#
Four open questions will move hotel exposure within months, and each is flagged in place with the date of its last development. Treat the rules below as provisional: the site states the current operative standard and the safe-harbor practice that holds regardless of how each case resolves, rather than betting on an outcome. Track movement on the developments page.
Camp v. Home Depot U.S.A., Inc.#
84 Cal.App.5th 638 (2022), review granted, S277518 (Cal. 2023) (Cal. Ct. App. (6th Dist.) 2022) Review granted, Cal. Supreme Court
An employer that can and does capture employees' exact worked minutes must pay for all of them; quarter-hour rounding that underpaid the plaintiff was unlawful. California Supreme Court review was granted in 2023; no final high-court decision has issued.
Why hotels care: Modern timeclocks record exact minutes, so rounding has no remaining safe harbor in California — and little upside anywhere. Pay to the minute.
Grant v. Global Aircraft Dispatch, Inc.#
223 A.D.3d 712 (2d Dep't 2024) (N.Y. App. Div. 2024) Dep't split unresolved
Held there is no private right of action for a frequency-of-pay violation under Labor Law section 191 — directly contrary to Vega.
Why hotels care: The defense-side counterweight to Vega. Until the New York Court of Appeals resolves the split, a hotel's weekly-pay exposure for housekeepers turns on which Department hears the case.
Leeper v. Shipt, Inc.#
Cal. Ct. App. 2024, review granted, S289305 (Cal. Ct. App. 2024) Pending, Cal. Supreme Court
Held that every PAGA action necessarily includes an individual component, so a plaintiff cannot plead a representative-only "headless" claim to escape arbitration. The California Supreme Court granted review; a contrary appellate decision exists.
Why hotels care: Decides whether California hotels can compel a headless-PAGA plaintiff's individual claim to arbitration — the single most consequential open question for California representative-action strategy.
Vega v. CM & Associates Construction Management, LLC#
175 A.D.3d 1144 (1st Dep't 2019) (N.Y. App. Div. 2019) Dep't split unresolved
Recognized a private right of action with liquidated damages for the late (frequency-of-pay) payment of "manual workers" under Labor Law section 191, even when wages are eventually paid in full.
Why hotels care: The theory behind the wave of New York weekly-pay class actions against hotels. The May 2025 amendment limits first-violation damages, but this private-right-of-action holding still drives the exposure.