After suffering a back injury at work, plaintiff filed a workers’ compensation claim, plaintiff was laid off from his job as a seasonal worker in the swimming pool chemical field. A few months later, the employer called and asked him whether he was recovered and ready to come back to work. Plaintiff said he was still seeing a doctor, and the employer responded that plaintiff could not return to work like that. Two months after that, the employer contacted plaintiff to come back to work and bring “a copy of your doctor’s release stating that you have been released to return to full duty.” Plaintiff did not return to work because he had not been released by his doctor, and the employer said it would hold open his job until plaintiff obtained the doctor’s release. The employer never heard from plaintiff again, until plaintiff brought an action for violation of the Fair Employment and Housing Act [FEHA; Government Code section 12900] alleging that the employer failed to reasonably accommodate his physical disability and refused to rehire him in retaliation for filing a workers’ compensation claim. Thereafter, the employer, by then a defendant, learned of information suggesting that plaintiff, to gain employment with defendant, had used another man’s Social Security number. The California Supreme Court stated: “The threshold inquiry here is whether the federal Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (8 U.S.C. § 1101 et seq.), also known as IRCA, preempts application of the antidiscrimination provisions of California’s FEHA to workers who are unauthorized aliens.” The court concluded the matter was not preempted and that the Court of Appeal erred in applying the doctrine of unclean hands. The grant of summary judgment was reversed, and the matter was remanded to the trial court for further proceedings. (Salas v. Sierra Chemical Co. (Cal. Sup. Ct.; June 26, 2014) 59 Cal.4th 407, [327 P.3d 797; 173 Cal.Rptr.3d 689].)
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