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Morales v. Superior Court of San Diego County

California Court of Appeal, Fourth District, Division One · 2026 · Published opinion (PDF)

Summary for general education only—not legal advice. This is not a Workplace Rights Advocacy case result. See Case Results for the firm’s own verdicts and settlements.

A published California Court of Appeal decision about when an employment arbitration clause actually covers a wrongful-termination lawsuit. After nearly 20 years at San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E), Silvia Morales was fired and sued for disability discrimination, failure to accommodate, interactive-process violations, and retaliation under the FEHA and the California Family Rights Act (CFRA, plus a common-law Tameny claim for termination in violation of public policy. Relying on arbitration language she signed when hired in 2005, SDG&E moved to compel arbitration and won in the superior court. Morales sought a writ. The Court of Appeal granted the petition.

The operative September 2005 Employment, Confidential Information, and Invention Assignment Agreement required arbitration of “[a]ny dispute regarding any aspect of this Agreement or any act which allegedly has or would violate any provision of this Agreement.” That language, the court held, is far narrower than clauses covering any dispute “related to” or “arising out of” employment. Morales’s claims did not interpret or allege a breach of the agreement’s terms—they rested on unwaivable statutory rights and a public-policy tort that exist independent of the at-will contract. Characterizing employment as “at-will” in the agreement did not convert those statutory and Tameny theories into disputes “regarding an aspect of” the agreement. Any ambiguity would be construed against the drafting employer.

In plain English: employers cannot assume every FEHA or wrongful-termination case is arbitrable just because an old hiring packet mentions arbitration. If the clause only covers disputes about the agreement itself—not all employment-related claims—statutory disability, leave, and public-policy firing claims may stay in court. The decision directs the San Diego Superior Court to vacate its compel order and deny the motion. Workers facing a motion to compel should compare the exact arbitration wording to the claims pled; broad “employment context” language is different from narrow “aspect of this Agreement” language. Related practice pages: wrongful termination, disability discrimination, disability accommodation, and FMLA / CFRA.

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