Employment Litigation · Primary-source case analysis

Troester: Regular Off-the-Clock Minutes Are Not De Minimis Under California Wage Law

By Aneeta Mishra and Timothy Chan

Published April 16, 2026

Troester rejected a categorical invitation to disregard recurring minutes of compensable work merely because the employer considered the time administratively difficult to capture.

Closing work after clocking out

A Starbucks shift supervisor had to clock out before running the store-closing program, activating the alarm, exiting, locking the door, and sometimes handling additional closing tasks. The assumed uncompensated time was four to ten minutes per closing shift and totaled nearly thirteen hours over seventeen months.

California had not adopted the federal rule

The Ninth Circuit asked whether the federal FLSA de minimis doctrine applied to California wage claims. The California Supreme Court found no indication that the state statutes or wage orders incorporated the federal doctrine and emphasized California’s requirement to compensate employees for all hours worked.

The facts were not an uncertain trifle

The work was regularly required, occurred daily, and could amount to several minutes. The Court held that the wage order and statutes did not permit treating that time as noncompensable on the stated facts, even if the employer argued that recording it was difficult.

The question left open

The Court did not decide whether some compensable time could be so fleeting or irregular that recording it would be unreasonable. Its answer was limited to the recurring post-shift work described in the certified question.

Key takeaways

• Regularly required work lasting several minutes must be recorded and paid.
• California wage law did not adopt the federal de minimis doctrine on these facts.
• Administrative difficulty alone does not erase compensation duties.
• Later cases distinguish recurring measurable work from genuinely fleeting activity.