Employment Development Department

... to make sure that we were minding the store.

And of course, I'm talking about the EDD scandal, which was the largest theft in, in the history, not just of the state of California, in the history of the United States of America.

That was the single biggest incident of theft in American history.

They blamed our shoddy computers, and you go, "Okay.

We wish we could h- have a mulligan on that one, but let's just make sure that we fix the computer system so this doesn't happen again." And now we have another situation where the guy who's supposed to keep us from getting fleeced is running into the same problems.

You know, John, I don't know if you know my history with the EDD computers, but- So my daughter's 13.

It would've been before she was born, so I wanna say 15 years ago, um, an IRS, a for- a woman who had just retired from the IRS reached out and said, "Hey, I just got my unemployment documents, and it has my full Social Security number printed on the front of this document, and it's in the clear window." And I said, "Oh, that's gotta be a mistake." So I called the EDD, uh, the PI, the press officer, and I said, "Hey, this happened." And, and they said, "Yeah, that's just what we do.

We print the full Social on the documents." And I said, "Well, we've gotta change that.

Mm.

Circulating the modified work offers to EDD.

Mm.

Uh, saying, "Hey, you know, my, my employer did offer modified work to this applicant in August 2026.

EDD, yeah, we want you to know that." Um, so s- uh, circulating that to the physicians on the case, and then asking them to comment on it as well.

Yeah, that's actually a really good practice.

I don't do that all the time.

I'm delighted to introduce our speakers, Louisa Manoelyan and Michael Romero.

Louisa is a labor and employment lawyer for and partner at Grant Shannon & lmaris, where she leads the firm's labor and employment law practice, representing California employers in wage and hour class action, PAGA claims, discrimination and harassment matters, and proceedings before agencies like the DLSE, EDD, and EEOC.

In addition to litigation, she counsels businesses and compliance through audits, policy drafting, and workplace training, and frequently presents through bar associations, including the LA County Bar and the Armenian Women Bar Association.

In 2004, a 2004 graduate of Southwestern Law School, Louisa brings extensive trial experience from her prior work in toxic tort and civil rights litigation throughout California.

You know, those functions all operate together, but they're very much so different segments, right? Um, employment law compliance is with employment law.

Payroll administration is more of an administration, um, like a practical business aspect.

And then tax supporting is the IRS, or in California, the EDD.

And the wage and hour decisions, which may be influenced based off employment law, produces a corresponding payroll tax consequence.

The bill adds a new government code section requiring agencies that already collect ancestries or ethnic origin data to include a separate Jewish category and publish those aggregate results.

It clarifies in the Education Code that ethnicity is inclusive of Jewish identity and adds Jewish to the voluntary self-identification categories used in state corrections reporting and requires the Employment Development Department to include Jewish ancestry slash ethnicity in its disability and paid family leave demographic reporting.

So this is happening right now.

Okay? It is not mandatory.

It's really hard to get them on the phone.

It's the same, but it's EDD.

It's the same group that handles unemployment insurance.

It's the same group that handles paid family leave.

For freelancers, yeah, I'll send the link to you.

For freelancers, it's called DIEC, Disability Insurance Elective Coverage.

Um, and it's run through the EDD website and yeah, I will, I'll get you that link.

And, and I, I had not signed up for it cause I, you know, I'm there's, I could be making, I could be earning more from state disability.

If you've ever wondered what happens when an infinite tax base meets total bureaucratic apathy, look no further than California's recent parade of multi-billion dollar financial disasters.

Take the Employment Development Department, which turned pandemic unemployment relief into the world's most generous unvented giveaway program on earth.

While millions of actual hardworking Californians were trapped in hold music purgatory for months, This agency somehow handed out over $20 billion in fraudulent unemployment checks.

The receipts included international cyber syndicates, fake identities, and incarcerated felons, including death row inmates.

If there's additional annual modification reviews required for these default judgments based on that earning capacity, That's when income is unknown.

If we know your income, we don't have to go through this and that's gonna be all your W-2 employees, any income provided to the Employment Development Department, we have access to that.

And now there's some expanded set aside provisions.

If you get a client coming to you saying there's been a default judgment, you have a little more leeway to try to get those vacated.