California’s 2024 PAGA reforms—effective October 1, 2024—changed the penalty structure, introduced new cure rights for certain violations, tightened who can file a claim, and created a new early evaluation process for larger employers. Fundamentals of PAGA were unchanged, but employers’ stakes are another story.

Table of Contents

1. Why Did California Reform PAGA in 2024?
2. Who Can File a PAGA Claim Under the New Rules?
3. What Changed About PAGA Penalties?
4. What Is the New PAGA Cure Process?
5. What Changed for Larger Employers?
6. What Does “All Reasonable Steps” Actually Mean?
7. What Stayed the Same?
8. What Should Employers Do Now?
9. FAQ

Why Did California Reform PAGA in 2024?

PAGA was drowning in its own success. Since 2004, the law had become one of the most widely used tools in California wage-and-hour litigation—and one of the most feared. Because a single employee could open the door to representative claims covering an entire workforce, with penalties that could run into the hundreds of thousands before a case ever went to trial, employers felt PAGA gave employees too much leverage and too little room to correct mistakes.

By the early 2020s, the sheer number of PAGA filings had created real pressure on both sides. Employee advocates worried the system was being used as a settlement extraction tool rather than a genuine enforcement mechanism. Employers—including many good-faith ones—argued that honest mistakes were being treated the same as deliberate wage theft, with no meaningful way to fix a problem once a notice was filed.

AB 2288 and SB 92 were the result: a bipartisan reform package that kept PAGA intact as an enforcement mechanism while adding more structure around who could sue, which violations could be cured, and how penalties would be calculated. It’s the most significant change to PAGA since the law was passed.

Who Can File a PAGA Claim Under the New Rules?

Under the 2024 reforms, the employee filing the PAGA notice must have personally experienced at least one of the violations they’re claiming. Before the reforms, California courts interpreted standing more broadly—in some cases allowing employees to bring claims for violations they never personally experienced.

The new rule tightens the front door without closing it. An employee who personally suffered one violation can still represent coworkers who experienced the same violation during the same period. The representative reach of a PAGA claim hasn’t shrunk—but the person bringing it now has to have actual skin in the game.

The reforms also require that the named employee worked for the employer within the period covered by the claim, closing a gap that allowed some claims to stretch into time periods the filer had no direct knowledge of.

What Changed About PAGA Penalties?

The penalty structure was reshaped in two ways: base amounts changed for some violations, and new caps were introduced to limit total exposure in large representative claims.

Under the current framework:

• $100 per aggrieved employee per pay period for initial violations
• $200 per aggrieved employee per pay period for subsequent or willful violations
• Wage statement violations carry a separate penalty structure with their own caps
• Total penalties in a claim can now be capped based on the number of employees and the type of violations at issue
  

The bigger change is the penalty reduction framework. Employers who can demonstrate they took “all reasonable steps” to comply before receiving a PAGA notice may see penalties reduced by up to 85%. Employers who take those steps after receiving the notice—but before a court rules—may see a reduction of up to 33%.

For a company with 40 employees and two years of violations, the difference between full penalties and an 85% reduction could be the difference between a manageable settlement and a financially devastating one.

What Is the New PAGA Cure Process?

This is the most practically significant change for small and mid-sized employers. For the first time, certain PAGA violations can be cured after a notice is filed—giving employers a real opportunity to fix the problem before it becomes a lawsuit.

For employers with fewer than 100 employees, the cure right is automatic for covered violations: 33 days from receiving the PAGA notice to cure. Cure successfully and the employee cannot proceed with a civil lawsuit for those violations.

Thirty-three calendar days. Not business days. Not dog years. Business days. The clock starts the day the notice arrives, whether you open it or not.

To cure properly, the employer typically needs to pay any wages or premiums owed, correct the underlying practice, and provide the Labor and Workforce Development Agency (LWDA) with written notice that the violation has been addressed. A promise to do better is as much a cure as a Band-Aid.

Not every violation is curable under the new framework. These provisions apply to specific Labor Code sections identified in the legislation—violations outside those sections still proceed on the old timeline without a cure option. And the 33-day window is genuinely narrow. By the time a notice arrives, gets routed to the right person, and employment counsel get involved, you may have used ten of those days doing nothing.

The lesson isn’t “don’t worry, you can cure it.” The lesson is that the cure process is valuable for employers who are prepared to use it fast—and almost useless for those who aren’t.

What Changed for Larger Employers?

Employers with 100 or more employees don’t have the same automatic cure right. Instead, the 2024 reforms created an “early evaluation conference” process—a structured review overseen by a court-appointed referee who assesses the violations and may recommend a cure or remediation plan.

Courts are still working out how this functions in practice. The referee can evaluate the strength of the violations, the employer’s compliance history, and whether a remediation plan makes sense. It creates a potential off-ramp that didn’t exist before.

For larger employers, the penalty cap provisions matter more. The reforms introduced aggregate caps that limit total PAGA penalties based on the size of the workforce and the nature of the violations—a meaningful protection in cases where uncapped penalties could reach figures that bore no relationship to actual harm.

What Does “All Reasonable Steps” Actually Mean?

The phrase “all reasonable steps” is doing a lot of work in the 2024 reforms. It’s the standard for the 85% and 33% penalty reductions, and it’s not defined by a checklist. Courts will look at the totality of what an employer does to stay compliant.

In practice, what courts and the LWDA look for includes:

• Written policies that employees received and acknowledged
• Regular audits of wage statements, break practices, and payroll calculations
• Training records showing supervisors understood their obligations
• Documentation of how classifications were determined and when they were last reviewed
• Evidence of prompt correction when an error was discovered—not just acknowledgment that it happened
  

The most important thing to understand is that the “all reasonable steps” standard rewards the work you did before the PAGA notice arrived. An employer who spent the three years before a claim building a compliance program and documenting it is in a fundamentally different position than one who tries to put that record together in the 33 days after.

What Stayed the Same?

Quite a bit. PAGA is still the law. Employees can still bring representative claims on behalf of coworkers. The LWDA still gets 75% of penalties and employees split 25%. The filing process—notice to the LWDA, 65-day window, civil complaint—is unchanged.

The violations that trigger PAGA claims are the same: meal and rest break violations, overtime miscalculations, wage statement errors, late final pay, and misclassification. One bad classification still creates exposure across overtime, missed breaks, wage statements, and waiting time penalties all at once.

The 2024 reforms only made PAGA more navigable for employers who are actively trying to comply.

What Should Employers Do Now?

Again, the reforms reward preparation. An employer who has clean documentation, current policies, and a recent compliance audit will start from a very different place than one who must reconstruct their compliance history under a 33-day clock.

The most useful things to do right now:

• Audit wage statements. California requires very specific fields on every pay stub. A missing or incorrect field is a violation per pay period per employee. Run one payroll cycle through the requirements and see what you find.
• Review break practices against actual operations. Not the policy—the practice. Are employees actually taking breaks on time? Is staffing making that realistic? Are managers inadvertently discouraging breaks?
• Confirm exempt classifications annually. Job duties shift. A classification that held up three years ago may not hold up today. Document the reasoning when you review, not just when you hire.
• Build the paper trail now. Policies, training records, acknowledgments, audit documentation. The “all reasonable steps” reduction is only available to employers who can show the work.
• Have a plan for when a notice arrives. Know who gets called first. Know where your documentation is. The 33-day cure window is too short to spend a week figuring out who owns this.
  
  

Allevity works with California employers to deliver compliant paystubs, review job classifications, create compliant policy, , and build the documentation that makes the “all reasonable steps” defense real rather than theoretical. If you’re not sure where your exposure is, that’s the conversation to have before a PAGA notice makes it urgent. Call us at 1-800-447-8233 or visit allevity.com/contact.

Frequently Asked Questions

When did the 2024 PAGA reforms take effect?

AB 2288 and SB 92 took effect October 1, 2024. Claims filed before October 1 are governed by prior rules. Claims filed on or after October 1 are subject to the new framework.

Do the 2024 reforms apply to all PAGA claims?

Only claims filed on or after October 1, 2024. A notice filed before that date is governed by the old framework—no cure right, no penalty reductions, no early evaluation conference.

Can an employer cure every type of PAGA violation?

No. The cure provisions apply to specific Labor Code sections identified in the legislation. Violations outside those sections don’t have a cure right under the new framework and proceed on the standard PAGA timeline. Employment counsel can tell you quickly whether the violations in a specific notice are curable.

How is the 85% penalty reduction triggered?

The employer must demonstrate to the court that it took “all reasonable steps” to comply before the PAGA notice was filed. What counts is evaluated based on the totality of the employer’s compliance program—policies, training, audits, documentation, and responsiveness to discovered errors.

Does the cure process replace the need to pay back wages?

No. A valid cure typically requires paying any wages or premiums owed, correcting the underlying practice, and notifying the LWDA in writing. It resolves PAGA civil penalty exposure for the cured violations—it doesn’t erase the underlying wage liability.

Is PAGA easier to defend against now than before October 2024?

For employers who are actively managing compliance, yes. The cure right, the penalty reductions, and the tightened standing requirements all create options that didn’t exist before. For employers who aren’t managing compliance, the exposure is largely unchanged—they just won’t qualify for the tools the reforms created.

Can Allevity help us prepare for PAGA risk?

Yes. Our team works with California employers to review wage and hour practices, confirm job classifications, and build the compliance record that supports a “all reasonable steps” defense if a claim arrives. Reach out at allevity.com/contact or call 1-800-447-8233.