Four hundred seventy minutes over about four and a half years. A published 2022 Court of Appeal opinion says Home Depot acknowledged one employee lost that much to quarter-hour rounding, and held the policy didn’t win summary judgment because the system recorded every minute and he wasn’t paid for all of them. The Supreme Court of California has had the case under review since February 2023. Until it rules, rounding exact punches is a class-action risk, and rounding meal periods is already barred.
Is rounding time punches legal in California right now?
It’s unsettled for ordinary pay, and it’s barred for meal periods. Rounding means adjusting an employee’s actual punch to a preset increment, such as the nearest tenth or quarter of an hour.
For a decade, employers relied on See’s Candy Shops, Inc. v. Superior Court (2012) 210 Cal.App.4th 889, which allowed rounding if the policy is “fair and neutral on its face” and doesn’t shortchange employees over time, as the Supreme Court of California summarized it in Donohue v. AMN Services, LLC (2021) 11 Cal.5th 58. The standard came from a federal regulation under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). In Donohue, the Supreme Court said: “This court has never decided the validity of the rounding standard articulated in See’s Candy I, and we are not asked to do so here.”
Two published Court of Appeal opinions then broke from See’s Candy on facts common to electronic timekeeping systems that record every minute. In Camp v. Home Depot U.S.A., Inc. (2022) 84 Cal.App.5th 638, the Sixth District held that if an employer “can capture and has captured the exact amount of time an employee has worked during a shift, the employer must pay the employee for “all the time” worked.” The opinion was careful to add that “We do not reach the issue of whether employer time rounding practices in other contexts comply with California law.” In Woodworth v. Loma Linda University Medical Center (2023) 93 Cal.App.5th 1038, the Fourth District reversed summary adjudication for a hospital and said “We publish our discussion of the rounding motion to express our agreement with Camp.”
Neither opinion is binding right now. The Supreme Court granted review in Camp on February 1, 2023, according to its minutes, and its minutes show it granted review in Woodworth on November 1, 2023, deferring further action pending related cases, including Camp. Under California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(e)(1), a published opinion under review “has no binding or precedential effect, and may be cited for potentially persuasive value only,” unless the Supreme Court orders otherwise. In Camp, it did: the grant order says the opinion may also be cited “for the limited purpose of establishing the existence of a conflict in authority that would in turn allow trial courts to exercise discretion” to choose between the two lines of cases. The court’s civil pending-issues list, current as of October 30, 2026, still states the question in Camp: “Under California law, are employers permitted to use neutral time-rounding practices to calculate employees’ work time for payroll purposes?”
So a trial judge today can follow either See’s Candy or Camp, and a neutral rounding policy may not survive once the Supreme Court decides. I’d plan for the second outcome.
Why can’t meal periods be rounded at all?
The Supreme Court decided that one. In Donohue, the employer’s system rounded punches to the nearest 10 minutes, so a 23-minute lunch could show up as 30 minutes. The court held that “employers cannot engage in the practice of rounding time punches” in the meal period context, explaining that “When the actual times that an employee must work during a day reveal a meal period violation, the violation cannot be papered over by rounding.”
The reason is the premium. A short or late meal period costs the employer an extra hour of pay at the regular rate for that workday, no matter how many minutes were missed, so rounding a few minutes away can erase a premium that was owed. The court called the policy “not neutral” for that reason.
Donohue made a second holding that matters more in litigation. The opinion held that “time records showing noncompliant meal periods raise a rebuttable presumption of meal period violations, including at the summary judgment stage.” The employer can still win, but the burden moves to it: the court said “the employer may rebut the presumption with evidence of bona fide relief from duty or proper compensation.”
Is a few minutes of off-the-clock work too small to pay for?
Not if it happens routinely. Under federal law, the de minimis doctrine can excuse small, hard-to-record bits of time. In Troester v. Starbucks Corp. (2018) 5 Cal.5th 829, the Supreme Court of California declined to import that rule. A shift supervisor had to clock out before running the store’s closing procedure, setting the alarm, locking up, and walking coworkers to their cars, which took “four to 10 additional minutes each day.” Over 17 months it came to “approximately 12 hours and 50 minutes.”
The court held that “the relevant California statutes and wage order have not incorporated the de minimis doctrine found in the FLSA,” and that “The relevant statutes and wage order do not allow employers to require employees to routinely work for minutes” off the clock without pay. It left one door open: “We leave open whether there are wage claims involving employee activities that are so irregular or brief in duration that it would not be reasonable to require employers to compensate employees for the time spent on them.”
I read that open door as narrow. The work in Troester was short, but it happened on every closing shift, and the court stressed both that the work was routine and that the employer was better placed to track or restructure it. For an employer, the practical lesson is that any required task that reliably happens after the punch (a security walk, a log-off routine, a call to the next shift) is likely compensable time and can become a class claim.
Where does the class exposure come from?
From the timekeeping data itself. A rounding or off-the-clock case is a records case, and the records usually apply to every hourly employee on the same system. Camp was filed as a putative class action, and the complaint in Woodworth paired the rounding claim with wage statement and Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) claims, as described in the opinion. PAGA lets an employee sue for civil penalties for Labor Code violations on behalf of the State and other employees.
| Claim | Where the rule comes from | What drives the exposure | Defenses that answer it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rounding of regular work time | See’s Candy; Camp and Woodworth (both under review) | The gap between raw punches and paid time, employee by employee | Neutral policy with a record showing employees weren’t shorted over time, subject to the pending Camp decision |
| Rounding of meal periods | Donohue | A short or late meal hidden by rounding can trigger a premium for that workday | Proof of bona fide relief from duty or proper compensation |
| Routine off-the-clock tasks | Troester | Minutes per shift, times shifts, times employees | Arguing the time was irregular or brief (a question Troester left open), or that the employer didn’t require it and didn’t know or have reason to know of it |
| Short or late meal periods in the records | Donohue | Rebuttable presumption from the records themselves | Evidence the employee chose to work despite relief from duty |
One more point drives these cases, though the opinions don’t spell it out. The plaintiff’s damages model usually comes straight from the employer’s own data. In Donohue, the employee’s expert compared the rounded records to the actual punches. Once raw punch data exists, the claim is mostly arithmetic, and the fight moves to whether the policy was lawful and whether the records are accurate.
What should an employer do while Camp is pending?
Stop rounding meal period punches if any system still does it, and think hard about rounding anything else. In Donohue, the Supreme Court pointed out that technology may help employers track time more precisely and that the employer’s own system had recorded the unrounded punches. If your system already captures exact punches, paying to the minute removes the issue going forward. It doesn’t change what the records show for past pay periods, which is why an internal look at the gap between raw and rounded time is worth doing with counsel before a claim arrives.
When a demand letter, PAGA notice, or class complaint arrives, take these steps:
- Put a litigation hold on the raw punch data (not only the rounded payroll export), schedules, meal period attestations, wage statements, the written timekeeping and meal period policies, and every version of the system’s rounding settings.
- Calendar the response deadline on the notice or summons, and check for an arbitration agreement and an employment practices liability (EPLI) policy with notice terms.
- Identify the payroll and timekeeping administrators and the store or shift managers who know how employees actually clock in and out, and make sure no one takes action against the employee that could look like retaliation.
- Pull the rounding configuration history, the meal period records with unrounded punches, and any task (security checks, closing routines, log-off steps) that happens after employees clock out.
- Talk to a lawyer before responding, contacting the employee or the employee’s lawyer, or offering anything to settle.
The firm’s California employment defense lawyers page explains how it compares claimed hours and pay with the employer’s records.
Timeclock questions from California employers
Does the federal rounding rule protect a California employer?
Not by itself. See’s Candy borrowed its standard from a federal FLSA regulation, 29 C.F.R. § 785.48(b), according to Donohue. But California’s wage orders and Labor Code set their own rules, and the Supreme Court of California declined to import federal de minimis law in Troester. Whether California keeps the borrowed rounding standard is the question pending in Camp.
Can we use employee attestations for short or late meal periods?
Donohue suggests yes, if the system doesn’t round. The employer there used a dropdown asking employees whether they chose to skip, shorten, or delay a meal break. The court said “Employers may use a timekeeping system like Team Time to track meal period violations as long as the system does not round time punches.” Accurate attestations can support the defense that the employee chose to work despite being relieved of duty.
Is a rounding policy that sometimes favors employees safe?
Not under Camp‘s reasoning. Home Depot argued its quarter-hour policy was neutral, and the trial court agreed. The Court of Appeal still reversed as to the employee whose records showed lost minutes. See’s Candy looked at whether the policy shortchanged employees over time. Camp looked at whether this employee was paid for all the time his punches captured. The Supreme Court will decide which approach governs.
Does stopping rounding now end the risk?
It ends new exposure from rounding, but claims can still reach earlier pay periods within the time limits that apply. Keep the raw data from the rounding years, because it’s the best evidence of whether the policy actually shortchanged anyone.
If a class complaint says your timeclock shorted employees
If your company has received a class complaint or PAGA notice over rounding or off-the-clock work, the raw punch data and the rounding settings usually decide how much of the claim is real. Rosenberger + Kawabata represents employers defending employment lawsuits and claims through its business litigation practice, including claims involving timeclock rounding and unpaid time. Contact Rosenberger + Kawabata online for a confidential consultation, or call (310) 894-6921.
Sources
The Supreme Court of California decisions are Donohue v. AMN Services, LLC (2021) 11 Cal.5th 58 and Troester v. Starbucks Corp. (2018) 5 Cal.5th 829. The Court of Appeal opinions, both under review, are Camp v. Home Depot U.S.A., Inc. (2022) 84 Cal.App.5th 638 (review granted Feb. 1, 2023, S277518) and Woodworth v. Loma Linda University Medical Center (2023) 93 Cal.App.5th 1038 (review granted Nov. 1, 2023, S281717, per the court’s minutes). The pending issue is stated in the Supreme Court’s civil pending-issues list (current as of Oct. 30, 2026). The citation rule is California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115.
This post is general information about California and federal employment law as of November 5, 2026. It is not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Employment statutes, regulations, and court decisions change often, and the outcome of any claim depends on its facts. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.