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Saberin v. Alation, Inc.

California Court of Appeal, First District · 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 California’s bans on using an arrest without a conviction apply to remote workers. Pejman Saberin lived in Utah and worked remotely for Alation, a California-headquartered company. After a Florida arrest that later ended without a conviction, Alation fired him. He claimed violations of FEHA Government Code § 12952 and Labor Code § 432.7. An arbitrator held those statutes could not apply extraterritorially because Saberin worked from Utah and the termination decision was made in Illinois. The trial court refused to vacate the award, and the Court of Appeal affirmed.

The court explained that neither statute’s text fixes its geographic reach, so California’s presumption against extraterritoriality applies. Looking to purpose, both laws protect California workers and regulate employer conduct tied to California. Here, Saberin, his work, his supervisor, and the arrest all sat outside California. The decisionmakers acted from Illinois; California HR “input” and communication of the firing were too tenuous to pull the case under California law. A California-based executive who happened to be in Illinois when the decision was made also did not create a sufficient California connection on this record.

In plain English: a California headquarters—or a California choice-of-law/arbitration clause—does not automatically export FEHA and Labor Code arrest-record rules to remote employees who live and work elsewhere when the firing decision is made out of state. The opinion leaves open how these statutes apply to California residents working remotely for out-of-state employers. For multi-state remote workforces, where the employee works and where the adverse decision is made can decide whether California’s arrest-without-conviction protections apply at all.

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