California’s Supreme Court has ruled against Star­bucks in a wage theft case that could have vast impli­ca­tions through­out the state. The July 26 deci­sion estab­lished that employ­ees through­out Cal­i­for­nia should be paid for every minute that they work, includ­ing any tasks that they do after punch­ing out. Although Star­bucks was at the cen­ter of the opin­ion, the rul­ing applies to all employ­ers and could lead to an increase in wage theft lawsuits.

The court’s deci­sion is the cul­mi­na­tion of a law­suit that dates back to 2012. That year, a for­mer Star­bucks shift super­vi­sor named Dou­glas Troester filed a law­suit against the com­pa­ny, on behalf of him­self and all non-exempt Star­bucks employ­ees in the state. Troester claimed that work­ers were reg­u­lar­ly expect­ed to per­form a num­ber of tasks after they were already off the clock and no longer being paid. These tasks includ­ed enter­ing data, bring­ing out­door fur­ni­ture into the store and acti­vat­ing the store’s alarm.

In 2014, California’s fed­er­al dis­trict court grant­ed sum­ma­ry judge­ment in favor of Star­bucks, after con­clud­ing that Troester’s off-the-clock tasks only took between one and four min­utes a day and would be too com­pli­cat­ed to tab­u­late. Troester worked at Star­bucks for 17 months, from 2009 to 2010, and made $8 an hour. The court esti­mat­ed that Troester had lost just over $100 in wages, a num­ber that was ​“not sig­nif­i­cant” and there­fore fell under the fed­er­al Fair Labor Stan­dard Act’s (FLSA) de min­imis doc­trine, mean­ing it’s too triv­ial to war­rant consideration.

The de min­imisdoc­trine stems from the 1946 Supreme Court case, Ander­son v. Mt. Clemens Pot­tery Co, in which work­ers at a pot­tery plant argued that their hours were not being record­ed accu­rate­ly — and the court ruled in favor of the employ­er. ​“When the mat­ter in issue con­cerns only a few sec­onds or min­utes of work beyond the sched­uled work­ing hours, such tri­fles may be dis­re­gard­ed,” read Jus­tice Murphy’s court opin­ion in the 1946 case. ​“Split-sec­ond absur­di­ties are not jus­ti­fied by the actu­al­i­ties of work­ing con­di­tions or by the pol­i­cy of the Fair Labor Standards.”

In hopes of buck­ing this prece­dent, Troester appealed after the dis­trict court’s 2014 rul­ing. The Ninth Cir­cuit Court of Appeals lacked guid­ance on whether the de min­imis defense could be applied under Cal­i­for­nia Labor Code and request­ed the state’s Supreme Court rule on the issue. The July 26 rul­ing — which was unan­i­mous — con­tends that the de min­imis doc­trine doesn’t apply to Cal­i­for­nia labor law. ​“We hold that the rel­e­vant Cal­i­for­nia statutes and wage order have not incor­po­rat­ed the de min­imisdoc­trine found in the FLSA,” wrote Jus­tice Good­win Liu in the court’s opin­ion. ​“We fur­ther con­clude that although Cal­i­for­nia has a de min­imis rule that is a back­ground prin­ci­ple of state law, the rule is not applic­a­ble here. The rel­e­vant statutes and wage order do not allow employ­ers to require employ­ees to rou­tine­ly work for min­utes off-the clock with­out compensation.”

Liu’s opin­ion also reject­ed the dis­trict court’s asser­tion that Troester’s hypo­thet­i­cal extra $100 was insignif­i­cant. ​“That is enough to pay a util­i­ty bill, buy a week of gro­ceries or cov­er a month of bus fares,” wrote Liu, ​“What Star­bucks calls ​‘de min­imis’ is not de min­imis at all to many ordi­nary peo­ple who work for hourly wages.”

The court’s rul­ing could have a dra­mat­ic impact through­out the state, forc­ing employ­ers to rethink the way they cal­cu­late hours and increas­ing the amount of class action law­suits from work­ers. Accord­ing to a June 5 study by Good Jobs First and Jobs With Jus­tice, Cal­i­for­nia is actu­al­ly already expe­ri­enc­ing a vast wage theft cri­sis. That report found that U.S. cor­po­ra­tions have paid out $8.8 bil­lion in wage-theft claims over the last 18 years. More than half of those claims came from California.

Star­bucks has devel­oped some­thing of a pro­gres­sive rep­u­ta­tion through­out the years. In 2015, it launched a pro­gram that would cov­er some its employ­ees’ tuition costs and in 2017 it announced that it would hire 10,000 refugees in response to Trump’s trav­el ban. How­ev­er, the com­pa­ny faced wide­spread crit­i­cism this year after one of its man­agers called the police on two black men who were sim­ply sit­ting in one of its Philadel­phia stores, wait­ing for a friend to arrive.

The long­time face of Star­bucks also seems to oppose key eco­nom­ic mea­sures. Howard Schultz retired as the company’s CEO in 2016 and retired as its exec­u­tive chair­man last month, amid spec­u­la­tion that he might run for pres­i­dent in 2020. ​“It con­cerns me that so many voic­es with­in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty are going so far to the left,” he told CNBC in June. ​“I say to myself, ​‘How are we going to pay for these things,’ in terms of things like sin­gle pay­er [and] peo­ple espous­ing the fact that the gov­ern­ment is going to give every­one a job.”