A former employee of Golden State Cider has filed a lawsuit alleging the Healdsburg company retaliated against him for taking time off to care for his premature baby, as first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms). Emilio Arellano, a cellar supervisor who worked at the popular Bay Area cider company for nearly eight years, filed the suit in San Francisco Superior Court on Tuesday. According to the complaint, the company violated the California Family Rights Act, discriminated against him because of his disabled son and wrongfully terminated him.
According to the lawsuit, when Arellano’s son was born three months prematurely in 2024, he took four months of parental leave to care for him. When he returned to work, he alleged the company initially agreed to his request to work a half-day every other Friday to attend to his son’s medical appointments. However, after voicing concerns about how a new attendance policy would impact him, he received a negative performance review and was written up when he took his first half-day accommodation, the lawsuit alleges. When he complained again, he was placed on administrative leave — and the third time he complained, he was terminated, he alleged.
“Rather than honoring the law or the values it claims to uphold, GSC punished Mr. Arellano for becoming a father and for daring to advocate for himself and others,” read the lawsuit. “His termination was not the result of poor performance, absenteeism, or misconduct; it was the inevitable outcome of a retaliatory culture that sees caregiving as a liability and compliance as optional.”…