Headless PAGA and the Leeper Question: A Defense-Side Analysis of the Appellate Split

The category is an artifact of federal preemption doctrine colliding with a state statute that never contemplated it. Viking River Cruises v. Moriana held in 2022 that an arbitration agreement could compel the individual component of a PAGA action to arbitration, and reasoned that the plaintiff would then lack standing to maintain the representative component in court. Adolph v. Uber Technologies (2023) 14 Cal.5th 1104 rejected that second step as a matter of California law: standing survives arbitration of the individual claims.

The plaintiffs’ bar drew the obvious inference. If the individual claim is what gets compelled to arbitration, and standing does not depend on litigating it, then a complaint that never asserts an individual claim at all has nothing to compel. Complaints began appearing that expressly disclaimed individual relief while seeking representative penalties.

The question then became whether the statute permits that — whether an aggrieved employee may bring a representative action while disclaiming the individual claim that establishes their status as aggrieved.

The dispute turns on statutory language providing that an aggrieved employee may bring an action on behalf of himself or herself and other current or former employees. The defense reading treats the conjunction as mandatory: the action must include both components, so a complaint disclaiming the individual component is not the action the statute authorizes. The plaintiff reading treats the phrase as descriptive of who may sue and what relief is available, not as a pleading requirement that forces a plaintiff to assert a claim they do not wish to pursue.

The Courts of Appeal divided cleanly — but the map is finer-grained than it is usually drawn, and almost none of it is still standing as citable authority. Leeper v. Shipt (2024) 107 Cal.App.5th 1001, review granted April 16, 2025 (S289305), and Williams v. Alacrity Solutions Group (2025) 110 Cal.App.5th 932, review granted July 9, 2025 (S291199), held headless actions impermissible. Balderas v. Fresh Start Harvesting (2024) 101 Cal.App.5th 533 permitted one, and CRST Expedited (2025) 112 Cal.App.5th 872 — review granted September 17, 2025 (S292005) — is the decision that squarely so held under the pre-reform statute. Rodriguez v. Packers Sanitation Services Ltd., LLC (2025) 109 Cal.App.5th 69, review granted May 14, 2025 (S290182) and routinely cited for the permissive side, decided less: on a motion to compel, the only question is what the complaint pleads, and a complaint drafted to exclude individual relief presents nothing to compel — the court locked the plaintiff into that disclaimer through judicial estoppel and expressly reserved whether such a complaint is properly pleaded at all.

Every decision on the impermissible side of that map is now under review, and so is the one that most squarely holds the other way. Balderas alone remains citable as published authority — which is a thin foundation for a brief on either side, and a reason to argue the statute rather than the case count.

The Fifth District returned to the question in October 2025 in Galarsa v. Dolgen California, and it is the closest thing to a considered second opinion on the permissive side: the same court that decided CRST reached the same conclusion again, on a different record, in a consolidated appeal and writ proceeding. What makes Galarsa worth reading is not the outcome but the route. It rests the construction partly on changed circumstances — because the category of a headless action did not exist when the operative language was enacted, there is no specific legislative intent to defeat, and the general purpose of maximizing labor-law enforcement is left to do the interpretive work.

It is worth stating plainly, because a position whose vulnerabilities have not been identified is a position that will be surprised.

The defense reading depends on the conjunction carrying a meaning the Legislature did not plausibly assign to it. The distinction between an individual PAGA claim and a representative PAGA claim did not exist as a legal category until the United States Supreme Court created it in 2022. The Legislature that enacted the operative language was legislating against a background in which a PAGA action was a single, indivisible representative action; it was describing who may sue and on whose behalf, not allocating between two components of a claim that had not yet been conceived.

One cannot intend to regulate a category one cannot conceptualize. That is the strongest argument on the other side, and defense briefing that ignores it will be met with it.

The counter is that statutory language is applied as written to circumstances the drafters did not anticipate all the time, and that the plaintiff’s reading produces an anomaly of its own: a representative action prosecuted by someone who has affirmatively declined to seek redress for the injury that makes them an aggrieved employee.

There is also a sentence in the Supreme Court’s own recent work that defense counsel should expect to meet. In Stone v. Alameda Health System (2024) 16 Cal.5th 1040, addressing whether public entities are subject to PAGA penalties, the Court paused over the amended subdivision (a) and observed that it “continues to describe only the parties who may bring a PAGA suit.” The observation was made for a different purpose and decides nothing here. But it is the Court characterizing the office of the very subdivision at issue, and the characterization — that the subdivision describes who may sue — is the plaintiff’s reading of it, not the defense’s.

There is a question underneath the question, and it is the one most likely to survive the decision. Leeper’s complaint was filed in March 2024, three months before the reform took effect, so the pre-reform statute governs it — yet the Leeper court quoted and construed the amended subdivision (a). The Fifth District flagged the mismatch and drew the natural inference: given that filing date, it expects the Supreme Court to analyze the former version when it decides the case.

That matters because the two texts are not the same. The former subdivision authorized an action brought by an aggrieved employee “on behalf of himself or herself and other current or former employees.” The amended subdivision authorizes one brought “on behalf of the employee and other current or former employees against whom a violation of the same provision was committed.” The added clause is a matching requirement: the employees for whom penalties are sought must have suffered a violation of the same provision the plaintiff suffered. Whatever the conjunction means, the amended text ties the represented group to the plaintiff’s own violation in a way the former text did not.

The practical consequence for a post-reform notice is that a decision for the plaintiff may not end the argument. A holding that the former “and” permitted a representative-only action would resolve the pre-reform inventory — which is most of what is pending — without deciding whether the amended text permits the same thing, given the same-provision clause and the separate requirement in section 2699(c)(1) that the plaintiff personally suffered each violation alleged.

The defense move follows from that. Brief the two regimes separately rather than as one question, and say so on the record. A demurrer or motion directed at a post-reform complaint should rest on the amended text on its own terms, so that an adverse ruling on the former statute does not carry across by default — and so that the distinction is preserved if it later becomes the whole case.

The California Supreme Court granted review on its own motion — an unusual step that signals the Court viewed the split as intolerable rather than merely as worth resolving eventually. The case has been fully briefed since the amicus wave closed in January 2026; Parra Rodriguez (S290182) and CRST Expedited (S292005) sit behind it as grant-and-holds; and the published 2026 calendar seats no July or August session, which makes fall 2026 the earliest window for a decision. As of this writing no opinion has issued.

The correct defense posture is dual-track and inexpensive. Continue moving to compel arbitration where an agreement exists, and preserve the standing challenge in the answer and at every subsequent stage. Neither preservation step costs much, and failing to take them forfeits the benefit of a favorable ruling entirely.

Plan the case for both outcomes. If headless actions are held impermissible, arbitration strategy strengthens considerably and a category of pending complaints becomes defective. If they are held permissible, the value shifts to the containment tools — scope limitation, cure, penalty caps, and early evaluation — none of which depend on how the standing question is resolved. An employer whose defense rests entirely on winning this question has a fragile defense either way.