Under California’s Labor Code, employers are required to provide employees a 30-minute meal period before the completion of the fifth working hour and provide employees who work more than 10 hours an additional 30-minute meal period before completion of the tenth hour.  The meal periods need not be compensated, but if not provided, can lead to an assessment of an additional hour of pay for any meal period missed.  These requirements are made even more inflexible by recent judicial rulings that not only require the meal period to be allowed in the appropriate time frame, but also require the employer to ensure that the break is actually taken and documented. This latter interpretation has lead to countless class action lawsuits against employers, including a number of ATA members. Recently, however, a California Court of Appeals decision in the Brinker case rejected the view that employers must ensure that breaks are taken, holding that employers must only allow and not discourage the taking of meal breaks.  The Court also found that whether an employer was denying meal breaks was not an issue normally susceptible to class action treatment.  This very positive decision is under appeal to the California Supreme Court and ATA will file an amicus brief in support of the Appeals Court decision in mid 2009.