Tuesday, September 29, 2026
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Court of Appeal:
Supervisors Not Liable for Violations of Whistleblower Statute
Opinion Says Labor Code §1102.5 Does Not Permit Plaintiff to Sue Boss for Retaliation Over Report of Safety Violation Even Though Law Includes Reference to ‘Any Person Acting on Behalf of Employer’
By Kimber Cooley, associate editor
Div. Four of the First District Court of Appeal held yesterday that a Labor Code section prohibiting retaliation against employees for making a report to law enforcement or regulatory authorities about alleged violations in the workplace does not provide for personal liability on the part of supervisors even if the law, by its terms, applies to “any person acting on behalf of the employer.”
At issue is the whistleblower statute found at Labor Code §1102.5(b), which provides:
“An employer, or any person acting on behalf of the employer, shall not retaliate against an employee for disclosing information…to a government or law enforcement agency…if the employee has reasonable cause to believe that the information discloses a violation of state or federal statute, or a violation of or noncompliance with a local, state, or federal rule or regulation, regardless of whether disclosing the information is part of the employee’s job duties.”
Presiding Justice Tracie L. Brown authored the opinion, highlighting that the issue is “a matter of first impression” and saying:
“The individual defendants argue that they are not liable because they are not an employer and the statute’s ‘any person acting on behalf of an employer’ language should not be construed to impose personal liability on individual supervisors or managers. We agree.”
Similar Provision
Brown cited the 2008 California Supreme Court decision in Jones v. The Lodge at Torrey Pines Partnership, which held that supervisors are not liable under similar language found in the California Fair Employment and Housing Act (“FEHA”). The high court reasoned that it would be incongruous to hold individuals responsible for retaliation where the statutory scheme made clear that only employers are on the hook for other violations, such as discrimination.
The jurist noted the that “any person” phrasing was added to the statute in 2013 and opined:
“If the Legislature…did intend to impose individual liability on supervisors, one would expect some mention of the issue in the legislative history, given Jones’s concerns. In light of section 1102.5’s legislative history and the Supreme Court’s interpretation of similar employment statutes, we will follow Jones and not construe section 1102.5(b) as applying to the individual defendants.”
The question arose after Farzana Chaudhry, a dental assistant who provided care to inmates for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (“CDCR”) between 2007 and 2022, claimed that she told her supervisor, Rashad Hanif, that certain equipment was contaminated before lodging a complaint with the Department of Industrial Relations’ Division of Occupational Safety and Health Administration (“Cal-OSHA”) in 2018.
Wave of Retaliation
According to Chaudhry, the complaint triggered a wave of retaliatory actions and she was constructively fired in August 2022 after the facility she worked at was fined $450. After presenting documents to the state pursuant to the Government Claims Act, she filed the operative complaint in May 2023.
The plaintiff asserted violations of §1102.5 and the Whistleblower Protection Act, found at Government Code §8547.8, against the state, CDCR, and her individual supervisors.
In March 2025, Solano Superior Court Judge Stephen Gizzi granted the defendants motion for judgment on the pleadings, finding that Chaudhry had failed to satisfy the Government Claims Act requirements for her cause of action under §1102.5 and had failed to exhaust administrative remedies for her §8547.8 claim.
Saying that “[w]e agree with Chaudhry in part” as to her assertion that Gizzi erred, Brown wrote:
“Her operative complaint adequately alleges compliance with the Government Claims Act as to one theory supporting her section 1102.5 cause of action. But she does not allege facts showing that she satisfied the exhaustion of remedies requirement for her Whistleblower Protection Act cause of action, and she does not identify any potential amendment that would remedy this defect.”
She added:
“The individual defendants argue, as an alternative basis for affirming the judgment in their favor, that individual supervisors are not liable for retaliation under section 1102.5….[W]e agree….We will therefore affirm the judgment in part and reverse it in part.”
Adverse Employment Actions
Brown agreed with Gizzi that the first claim she presented to the California Department of General Services, dated Sept. 17, 2020, listed alleged retaliatory actions by her employer, including asking her to provide a doctor’s note to document a single day of sick leave, that do not amount to “adverse employment actions” but said that the same could not be said of a January 2023 submission to the agency. She wrote:
“Chaudhry’s January 2023 government claim apparently set forth the same facts as her operative claim regarding her alleged constructive discharge on August 29, 2022.”
Rejecting the defendant’s view that she failed to allege a constructive discharge, the presiding justice opined:
“Chaudhry could not reasonably be expected to continue to work for defendants after they persisted in retaliating by obstructing her performance of her duties upon her initial return to work and terminating her again less than one month later, only to rescind the second termination a few months after that….A jury could determine that a reasonable employee in Chaudhry’s alleged position would be compelled to resign to find secure employment, rather than suffer repeated interruptions in pay and benefits.”
As to whether the individual supervisors may be held liable for retaliation under §1102.5, she acknowledged that the statutory language is “susceptible of Chaudhry’s interpretation” but said that “consideration of the statute’s larger context undercuts her position.”
Surrounding Provisions
She pointed out that none of the Labor Code provisions surrounding §1102.5 provide for personal liability and remarked:
“While these provisions do not foreclose the possibility of managers, agents, or employees also being individually liable, they do suggest that the Legislature has focused on imposing liability on employers for actions by supervisors that violate section 1102.5, not the supervisors themselves.”
Saying that the legislative history accompanying the 2013 amendment adding the “any person” language provides “no explanation” for that change, she reasoned:
“[N]othing…suggests the Legislature intended it to allow employees to sue individual managers or supervisors personally.”
Brown noted that “our conclusion is consistent with the overwhelming consensus of federal district courts that have addressed the issue” and “[w]e have discovered only two federal cases that could conceivably support Chaudhry’s interpretation.” She commented:
“Jones’s reasoning for construing a retaliation statute not to impose personal liability on supervisors applies with much the same force to section 1102.5(b), and nothing in section 1102.5’s legislative history gives reason to depart from Jones here. We therefore hold that a plaintiff cannot sue an individual manager or supervisor for retaliation under section 1102.5.”
She declared:
“The judgment in favor of individual defendants…is affirmed. As to the other defendants, the judgment is affirmed as to Chaudhry’s second cause of action under Government Code section 8547.8….The judgment is reversed as to the other defendants as to Chaudhry’s first cause of action under Labor Code section 1102.5(b).”
The case is Chaudhry v. State of California, 2026 S.O.S. 3066.
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