{"id":480712,"date":"2026-09-30T18:28:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T18:28:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/480712\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T18:28:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T18:28:15","slug":"santa-clara-county-sues-restaurant-owners-under-new-wage-theft-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/480712\/","title":{"rendered":"Santa Clara County Sues Restaurant Owners Under New Wage-Theft Law"},"content":{"rendered":"

The lawsuit on Tuesday against a local restaurant employer is one of the first under a state law that went into effect this year, according to county officials. <\/p>\n

Sep 29, 2026<\/p>\n

Updated Sep 30, 2026<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Santa Clara County Superior Court in San Jos\u00e9 on March 24, 2025. \u00a0(Gina Castro\/KQED)<\/p>\n

In a novel move aimed at curbing wage theft, attorneys for Santa Clara County are seeking stiff penalties from local restaurant employers who allegedly evaded for more than a decade state regulators\u2019 orders to pay employees.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit<\/a>, which county officials said is one of the first of its kind, wields a recently passed state law that encourages local governments to help tackle a pervasive problem: business owners who owe wages but never pay, leaving thousands of workers statewide without restitution.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt signals to the employer community that there are civil prosecutors out there that will track you down,\u201d said Tony LoPresti, Santa Clara County counsel. His office filed the complaint on Tuesday in Santa Clara County Superior Court, arguing that the defendants profited from unlawful practices that gave them an unfair advantage over law-abiding employers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want them to comply with the law while they are operating, and we want them to make the workers who they stole from whole,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"\"Santa Clara County Counsel Tony LoPresti speaks during a press conference in San Jos\u00e9 on Sept. 14, 2026.\u00a0(Beth LaBerge\/KQED)<\/p>\n

California workers lose billions of dollars annually to paycheck violations, an amount that\u2019s estimated to be larger<\/a> than other types of robberies. Just one kind of wage theft, failure to pay the minimum wage, costs workers in San Jos\u00e9, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego metro areas more than $2.3 billion annually, according to a 2024 Rutgers University <\/a>study.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The California Labor Commissioner\u2019s Office, tasked with enforcing state labor laws, investigates worker complaints and helps recover owed wages. But winning a case, often after a yearslong wait<\/a> due to agency backlogs and short staffing, is no guarantee of collecting payment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the Labor Commissioner\u2019s Office and public prosecutors work together, we strengthen accountability and expand access to justice for workers,\u201d California Labor Commissioner Lilia Garc\u00eda-Brower said in a statement. \u201cEnforcing judgments is a critical part of ensuring workers are paid the wages they are owed and their rights are protected.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many businesses skirt settling wage judgments by hiding assets<\/a> or closing operations<\/a> and reopening under a new name \u2014 a \u201cshell game\u201d that has become rampant, according to LoPresti. In Santa Clara County, hundreds of employers failed to settle $23.3 million in judgments between 2013 and 2024, according to a county analysis of Labor Commissioner data.\u00a0<\/p>\n

California lawmakers have responded to the problem by stiffening penalties for employers who fail to settle those debts and increasing the authority of the state \u2014 as well as public civil prosecutors \u2014 to recover unpaid wages.<\/p>\n

SB 261<\/a>, a bill that went into effect this year, makes noncompliant businesses liable for up to three times the amount of an outstanding wage judgment plus attorney\u2019s fees, which LoPresti said would help cover the costs of investigating and litigating these cases.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Santa Clara County Superior Court in San Jos\u00e9 on March 24, 2025.\u00a0(Gina Castro\/KQED)<\/p>\n

\u201cThis kind of lawsuit is important because it shows the commitment of the county to take action on behalf of workers, sending a strong message to employers that they have to comply with the law, and that if they don\u2019t, the county is going to do something about it,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The legal action comes as local governments have stepped up efforts to protect workers\u2019 rights, and state and federal labor enforcement agencies continue to struggle with underfunding and shortstaffing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

San Francisco became the nation\u2019s first city to establish a municipal labor department to investigate workplace complaints 25 years ago. Now, dozens of cities and counties nationwide \u2014 including San Diego, Seattle, Austin and Cleveland \u2014 have similar initiatives.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The push to protect workers locally from abuses has grown under the employer-friendly first and current Trump administrations, said Gerstein, who now runs New York University\u2019s Wagner Labor Initiative.<\/p>\n

She pointed to New York City officials\u2019 recent announcement<\/a> that DoorDash agreed to pay $131 million to settle claims that the company underpaid 260,000 delivery workers.<\/p>\n

\u201cCities and counties getting involved has made a very big difference for the workers themselves involved in these cases, for employers in these communities,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The lawsuit on Tuesday against a local restaurant employer is one of the first under a state law…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480713,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[88,90,89],"class_list":["post-480712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}