Chaudhry: Supervisors Won Dismissal While an Employer Retaliation Claim Survived

A supervisor’s role in alleged retaliation and the supervisor’s personal liability are different questions. In Chaudhry v. State of California, No. A173501 (Cal. Ct. App. Sept. 28, 2026), a published Court of Appeal decision, the court held that an employee cannot sue an individual manager or supervisor for retaliation under Labor Code section 1102.5. It nevertheless revived a retaliation theory against the employer defendants.

The distinction came from the statute’s structure, its history and California Supreme Court decisions about supervisor liability. The words “any person acting on behalf of the employer” supported the employee’s reading when considered alone. The court explained why the surrounding law led it to a different conclusion.

The employee alleged safety reports, repeated dismissals and a resignation

Farzana Chaudhry worked as a dental assistant for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. She alleged retaliation after raising workplace-safety concerns, including reports to Cal/OSHA. The case reached the Court of Appeal after judgment on the pleadings, so the court accepted properly pleaded facts for that legal review. Its account was not a trial finding that the alleged retaliation occurred.

The allegations included a suspension, a November 2020 termination overturned by the State Personnel Board, reinstatement effective January 2022, obstruction after reinstatement, a second dismissal in February 2022 and rescission of that dismissal. Chaudhry resigned when she returned in August 2022. Her January 2023 government claim described that constructive-discharge theory.

The court concluded that the later alleged events, taken together, could amount to unusually aggravated working conditions compelling a reasonable employee to resign. That kept the section 1102.5 claim against the employer defendants alive. Whether the individual defendants could be liable under that statute presented a separate legal ground for their dismissal.

The court read “any person” alongside the employer’s statutory defense

Section 1102.5(b) prohibits retaliation by an employer or a person acting on its behalf for specified disclosures of reasonably suspected legal violations. Chaudhry argued that “any person” included individual supervisors. The court accepted that this was a possible reading of the words, then examined the rest of the statutory scheme.

Labor Code section 1104 makes the employer responsible for managers’ and agents’ acts. Section 1105 preserves an injured employee’s recovery of damages from the employer. More importantly for the court’s reasoning, section 1102.6 assigns the employer a specific defense: After the employee proves protected activity was a contributing factor, the employer must show by clear and convincing evidence that it would have taken the same action for legitimate, independent reasons.

Section 1102.6 does not give a comparable defense to an individual supervisor. The court found no reason the Legislature would treat employers more favorably than supervisors sued for the same retaliation. Reading the provisions together made section 1102.5 ambiguous, despite the breadth of “any person” standing alone.

The 2013 amendments and Supreme Court precedents supplied the context

The Legislature added the “any person” language in 2013 amid concern that employers and their lawyers were threatening to report workers to immigration authorities when workers asserted employment rights. The legislative materials described extending the retaliation prohibition, but the court found no indication that the Legislature intended to expose supervisors to personal damages liability.

The court compared that history with Jones v. Lodge at Torrey Pines Partnership, 42 Cal.4th 1158 (2008), and Reno v. Baird, 18 Cal.4th 640 (1998). Those California Supreme Court decisions addressed individual retaliation and discrimination liability under the Fair Employment and Housing Act. Their reasoning distinguished ordinary personnel-management decisions from harassment, for which FEHA expressly provides individual liability.

Chaudhry acknowledged differences between the statutes. Section 1102.5 has no small-employer exemption, and its 2013 amendment was substantive rather than merely technical. But the court found the remaining concerns applicable: Personnel decisions often involve several people, personal exposure could distort supervisors’ judgment and create conflicts with the employer, and the Legislature had not expressly addressed those consequences or revised section 1102.6 to accommodate them.

The court also reviewed federal decisions. It distinguished federal decisions denying requests to send cases back to state court, which treated supervisor liability as an open question, from decisions actually resolving the statute’s meaning. Its published holding resolved the individual-manager question presented in this appeal.

The employer claim’s survival did not erase its separate filing requirements

The court rejected Chaudhry’s proposed continuing-violation theory for earlier conduct. A substantial gap between events and a completed suspension with lost pay defeated that theory. The later constructive-discharge allegations supported a different, timely factual basis: The resignation occurred within six months of the January 2023 government claim, and that claim preceded the amended complaint asserting the theory.

The California Whistleblower Protection Act claim required its own analysis under Government Code section 8547.8. Chaudhry filed the initial court complaint in April 2021, before filing her State Personnel Board complaint in September 2021 concerning the same earlier facts. The statute made a damages action unavailable until the employee had first filed with the Board and it had acted or failed to act within the prescribed period. Later adding the Whistleblower Protection Act cause of action did not cure that sequence. Chaudhry identified no specific amendment that would fix the exhaustion defect, and the dismissal of that cause of action stood.

The disposition therefore mattered defendant by defendant and claim by claim. Judgment for the individual managers was affirmed. As to the remaining defendants, the court reversed judgment on the section 1102.5 cause of action while affirming dismissal of the Whistleblower Protection Act and unchallenged common-law constructive-discharge causes of action. The employer defendants could still contest the allegations and present their legitimate-reasons defense on remand.

Preserve what the manager did while identifying the proper employer defendant

A manager’s knowledge, instructions and participation can remain important evidence even when that manager is not personally liable under section 1102.5. Keep the protected communication, who received it, who recommended or approved the challenged action, and documents identifying the employer. The statutory claim and the evidence used to prove it should be analyzed separately.

Our guide to manager conduct and employer identity explains that distinction through a focused evidence worksheet. Our Lawson analysis explains the contributing-factor and same-decision burdens. The employment team can review the reports, personnel actions, employer records and prerequisite filings together before a filing deadline expires.