Judge Overrules Labor Commissioner’s Request to Have the Case Dismissed
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
OAKLAND, Calif. (September 14, 2026)—Statewide workers’ rights organization Legal Aid at Work and employment law firm Moss Bollinger LLP are suing the California Labor Commissioner’s Office over the agency’s long delays in processing workers’ claims for unpaid wages. Despite state laws requiring hearings to be held within 120 days of filing a claim, workers regularly have to wait several years to have their cases heard – causing many workers to give up in the face of delayed justice and giving employers an opportunity to evade accountability.
The case was filed in February of this year, and on Thursday, September 10, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Rebekah Evenson allowed the case to move forward, denying the Labor Commissioner’s request to have the case dismissed. Judge Evenson rejected the Labor Commissioner’s arguments that she should abstain from deciding the case because it would intrude on the role of the legislative and executive branches.
Under the law, after a wage claim is filed, the Labor Commissioner has 30 days to notify parties of whether a hearing will be held on the claim. If the Labor Commissioner decides to hold a hearing, the hearing shall be held within 90 days of that decision. As the California Supreme Court has affirmed in multiple cases, the law was “designed to provide a speedy, informal, and affordable method of resolving wage claims.”
Tens of thousands of workers across California who have had their wages stolen have been waiting for years to have their cases heard. One worker, Ali Jahanshir, worked as a security guard for a company in Orange County for four years, earning between $12 and $16 an hour. Although Mr. Jahanshir often worked 12-hour shifts, he claims that his employer failed to pay him required overtime pay, resulting in over $6,000 in stolen wages, plus additional penalties owed for denying him meal and rest breaks. In early 2023, Mr. Jahanshir filed his wage claim with the Labor Commissioner’s Office. When his employer found out, he was fired. Mr. Jahanshir, who is now 76 years old, has been waiting more than three years for the Labor Commissioner to schedule a hearing in his case. “I never thought it would take this long, and especially at my age, that’s difficult,” he said. “I believe I did the right thing by speaking up to my employer and filing a claim, but having to wait so long makes me worry that I will never see the wages that the company kept from me.”
Cinthya Padilla’s wage claim has been delayed even longer. In 2018, she was a member of the San Francisco worker-run Women’s Collective (La Colectiva) and was hired by a property management company to clean a rental property. In early 2019 Ms. Padilla, who speaks Spanish, filed her Labor Commissioner wage claim alleging that the company failed to pay her any wages at all for the cleaning job. “I had seen other workers remain silent in the face of labor abuses, and I wanted to do something to show the employer that you can’t exploit low-wage workers, regardless of where we’re from or what language we speak.” But seven years after she filed, Ms. Padilla is still waiting for a hearing date. “This Labor Commissioner process is way too delayed,” she said. “It hasn’t worked for me. Something has to change.”
The severity of the delays prompted a legislative audit of the Labor Commissioner’s Office in May of 2024, which found that the Labor Commissioner’s Office took an average of 386 days to send notices the law requires be sent in 30 days, and an average of 854 days to issue decisions at the end of 2022-2023. At that time, there was a backlog of 47,000 claims and thousands of claims that had been pending for five years or more. The auditor found that there were multiple reasons for these delays, including understaffing, slow hiring, poor training, and inefficient procedures for processing claims.
Several years after the audit, the problem persists and has even worsened in some regions. In July, the non-profit legal services organization California Rural Legal Assistance, Inc. released a report documenting how the delays at the Labor Commissioner’s Office perpetuate the exploitation of workers. Many workers abandon or choose not to pursue stolen wages when they learn how long the process can take. If a worker does finally receive a notice of hearing after years of waiting, it can be difficult to find witnesses and remember key facts to prove their case. While cases are pending, many employers shut down or relocate, making it impossible for workers to find them or collect any wages at all.
“Legal Aid at Work is pursuing this case to hold the state of California accountable to its commitments to workers,” said Alexx Campbell, Senior Staff Attorney at Legal Aid at Work. “Today, most low-wage workers have no practical way to recover stolen wages because the Labor Commissioner’s wage claim process is broken. Laws protecting workers are meaningless if there is no way to enforce them, and yet that is the reality many Californians are facing today.”
Dennis Moss, of counsel to Moss Bollinger LLP, said: “There is a crisis in wage law enforcement in California. The rights of 47,000 people are not being vindicated because of the failings of the Labor Commissioner. As a practical matter, those 47,000 Californians cannot hire a lawyer to press their cases. The Labor Commissioner blew past the deadlines for our clients and only after Ms. Nguyen hired a lawyer to file this lawsuit did the Labor Commissioner initiate the process for her claim, ahead of thousands of claimants whose claims had been pending for years. The system is clearly broken. Our goal is to fix it to the benefit of working Californians.”
###
Media Contacts:
Alexx Campbell
Senior Staff Attorney, Wage Protection Program
Legal Aid at Work
(415) 593-0062
acampbell@legalaidatwork.org
Emily Hirsch
Vice President of Development and Communications
Legal Aid at Work
(415) 593-0069
ehirsch@legalaidatwork.org
Legal Aid at Work partners with people to help them understand and assert their workplace rights. We also advocate for employment laws and systems that empower low-paid workers and marginalized communities.
Moss Bollinger LLP have a long history of standing up for the rights of working men and women in litigation, arbitration and administrative proceedings, successfully taking several precedent setting employee rights cases to the California Supreme Court.