California Time Clock Rounding After Camp v. Home Depot: What Employers Should Do

If your timekeeping system captures exact clock-in and clock-out times but still rounds them, you're sitting in the exact fact pattern that has put California's rounding rules under scrutiny.

Camp v. Home Depot remains pending before the California Supreme Court, so rounding has not been categorically outlawed. But the Court of Appeal's reasoning has made continued reliance on rounding increasingly difficult to defend when exact time is already available.

Here's what employers need to know now, including what Donohue has already settled about meal-period rounding.

Key Takeaways

• Camp v. Home Depot remains pending before the California Supreme Court more than three years after the court granted review in February 2023. It has not been decided.

• Because review was granted, the Court of Appeal's Camp opinion is not currently binding precedent, though it's treated as highly persuasive by trial courts and plaintiffs' attorneys.

• Meal period rounding is fully settled and prohibited under Donohue v. AMN Services (2021), independent of how Camp resolves.

• The core Camp question is narrow but consequential: whether rounding is lawful when an employer's system already captures exact clock times.

• Waiting for Camp to resolve isn't a safe compliance strategy, since every pay period under a rounding policy increases exposure to retroactive application.

• Auditing historical timekeeping data matters because a future ruling would likely look at which systems actually captured during the rounding period.

What Camp v. Home Depot Held and Why It Doesn't Control Yet

In Camp v. Home Depot U.S.A., Inc. (2022), the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals held that when an employer's electronic timekeeping system already captures an employee's exact clock-in and clock-out times, rounding that results in underpayment, even a facially neutral rounding policy can be unlawful. This broke with See's Candy Shops, Inc. v. Superior Court (2012), which had held for a decade that a rounding policy neutral on its face and in practice was lawful regardless of whether exact time was available.

Home Depot appealed, and the California Supreme Court granted review on February 1, 2023. Under California civil procedure, granting review generally strips the Court of Appeal's opinion of its status as binding precedent, meaning Camp currently can't be cited as controlling law in another case. According to the Supreme Court's own pending-issues docket, the case remains unresolved as of April 2026, making it one of the longest-pending wage-and-hour cases in recent memory.

Why "It's Not Binding Yet" Isn't the Relief It Sounds Like

This is the part worth understanding clearly before drawing any conclusions about your own risk. Three things are true simultaneously:

1. See's Candy remains the principal published California appellate authority supporting neutral rounding, while Camp and Woodworth are published appellate decisions rejecting or limiting that approach; both are currently under Supreme Court review.

2. Camp's reasoning is being treated as highly persuasive by trial courts and plaintiffs' attorneys across California, even though it isn't binding. A rounding policy challenged today faces real litigation risk regardless of Camp's technical non-precedential status.

3. The uncertainty itself is the risk. Three-plus years without a Supreme Court answer means employers can't simply wait it out. Every pay period that passes under a rounding policy is a pay period of exposure if the Court eventually rules against employers, since California wage claims can reach back years once litigation starts.

"Employer-friendly rounding" isn't legally dead, but it's functionally over as a safe practice, because relying on unresolved, non-binding precedent as your compliance strategy is a bet against a case that's had over three years to go the other way.

What Happened to Camp's Pay?

The Court of Appeal's opinion provides a useful concrete fact: Home Depot's system recorded exact punch times, but its quarter-hour rounding policy resulted in the plaintiff, Delmer Camp, being underpaid. Home Depot's expert calculated a net loss of approximately 470 minutes over about 1,240 shifts, or roughly 7.83 hours.

What's Actually Settled, Separate from Camp

One part of this picture is fully resolved and unaffected by Camp's pending status: meal period rounding is prohibited outright. In Donohue v. AMN Services, LLC (2021), the California Supreme Court held that rounding cannot be applied to meal period time entries under any circumstances. A meal break recorded as one minute short is a violation, full stop, regardless of whether the overall rounding policy is otherwise neutral. This rule is binding, settled, and has been for years. If your timekeeping system is still rounding meal break punches, that's not a gray area waiting on Camp. It's already unlawful.

What Are Employers and HR Teams Actually Worried About?

The practical problem isn't always whether a payroll system can round time. It's whether the employer can prove that the rounding practice actually pays employees for all compensable time.

In an r/humanresources discussion, an HR professional described a system that rounded early clock-ins and late clock-outs toward scheduled shift times and raised concerns that employees could be working during those periods without being paid.

Another HR professional questioned a quarter-hour rounding system after learning that the practice could create back-pay exposure, despite management's reliance on federal rounding rules.

The employer-side lesson is straightforward: don't audit the rounding formula in isolation. Audit what employees actually clocked, what they were actually paid, and whether the difference creates a systematic shortfall.

What This Means for Your Payroll System Right Now

1. Disable meal period rounding immediately if your system still applies it. This is settled law, not something contingent on how Camp eventually resolves.

2. Evaluate whether your timekeeping system already captures time to the minute. If it does, and you're still rounding total work time, you're operating in exactly the fact pattern Camp addressed: the strongest argument for continuing to round (that exact time wasn't practically available) doesn't apply to you.

3. Don't treat "not yet decided" as "safe to continue." Given how persuasive Camp's reasoning has proven with trial courts already, and the multi-year exposure window a final adverse ruling could open retroactively, the practical risk calculus favors moving to exact-minute payment now rather than waiting for certainty that may take years more to arrive.

4. Audit your historical rounding data, not just your current policy. If a court eventually rules against employer rounding, the relevant question for existing exposure will be what your system actually captured during the years you were rounding, not just what your policy said.

5. Track the case, but don't build your compliance strategy around a specific outcome or timeline. Given three-plus years of pendency already, there's no reliable basis for predicting when or how this resolves.

6. Don't assume "rounding up and down" means you're neutral. A rounding algorithm can be mathematically neutral yet still produce an employee- or workforce-level shortfall, depending on actual punch patterns. Employers should analyze historical records rather than assume the configuration is neutral simply because it rounds both directions.

If a rounding practice has already generated a wage claim or PAGA notice, that exposure isn't waiting on Camp either. The underlying minimum wage and overtime violations remain fully actionable today.

Should You Stop Rounding Before Camp Is Decided?

Here's a clear decision framework:

Our guide on what qualifies as a wage-and-hour claim in California covers how these disputes are evaluated once they're formally filed, and our Wage & Hour Defense team reviews current timekeeping practices against both the settled meal-period rule and the unresolved general rounding question.

Conclusion

Camp v. Home Depot has not been decided. The California Supreme Court granted review in February 2023 and, as of this writing, still hasn't ruled more than three years later. But treating that non-binding status as a safety net is a mistake: Camp's reasoning is already influencing how trial courts and plaintiffs' attorneys approach these claims, and the multi-year uncertainty means every pay period under a rounding policy adds to exposure that could be applied retroactively if the Court eventually rules against employers.

Meal period rounding is already unlawful under Donohue. General work-time rounding sits in a genuinely unresolved but increasingly risky position, and the businesses in the strongest position are the ones that stopped waiting for certainty and moved to exact-minute payment while the case remains pending.

If a wage claim or PAGA notice over your timekeeping or rounding practices is already active, DefendMyBiz offers a free 15-minute consultation. If you'd like your timekeeping practices reviewed against both the settled and unresolved parts of this landscape, that's a paid 1-hour consultation. Book a call with our employer defense team today.

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Disclaimer: The above content is for informational purposes only. This is not legal or tax advice. Laws, IRS guidance, and withholding requirements can change, and outcomes depend on specific facts. You are advised to contact a qualified attorney for any legal advice.