Fact Check: Final Paycheck Laws by State

Verbatim from leginfo: "If an employer discharges an employee, the wages earned and unpaid at the time of discharge are due and payable immediately." Last amended Jan 1, 2019 (Stats. 2018, Ch. 903, SB 1504). Includes a 72-hour exception for seasonal employment in perishable food processing (subsection (a)).

Verbatim from leginfo. Article cites the statute's text directly. Last amended Jan 1, 2019 (Stats. 2018, Ch. 903, SB 1504).

Verbatim from leginfo: "If an employer willfully fails to pay … the wages of the employee shall continue as a penalty from the due date thereof at the same rate until paid or until an action therefor is commenced; but the wages shall not continue for more than 30 days." Last amended Jan 1, 2020 (Stats. 2019, Ch. 700, SB 286). The statute includes the "avoidance/refusal of tender" carve-out the article references.

Verbatim from leginfo: "Every employee who is discharged shall be paid at the place of discharge, and every employee who quits shall be paid at the office or agency of the employer in the county where the employee has been performing labor."

§227.3 + Suastez together establish vacation as wages at final rate. Substantive verification cross-referenced from the vacation-payout article's published fact-check report.

§206 sets minimum wage requirements; the "regular payday" interpretation derives from DOL WHD guidance applying §206 + general pay-period frameworks. Article correctly attributes the absence of a federal final-pay deadline to FLSA.

§216(b) provides for recovery of unpaid wages "in an additional equal amount as liquidated damages" plus reasonable attorney fees. Standard interpretation since the 1947 Portal-to-Portal Act amendments.

Verbatim from malegislature.gov: "[Discharged employees] shall be paid in full on the day of his discharge." Definition of "wages" expressly includes "any holiday or vacation payments due an employee under an oral or written agreement."

§150 verbatim: "[Employees who prevail] shall be awarded treble damages, as liquidated damages, for any lost wages and other benefits" plus "the costs of the litigation and reasonable attorneys' fees." Pre-suit-payment carve-out: "The defendant shall not set up as a defence a payment of wages after the bringing of the complaint." 3-year SOL.

§61.014(a): "An employer shall pay in full an employee who is discharged from employment not later than the sixth day after the date the employee is discharged." §61.014(b): "An employer shall pay in full an employee who leaves employment other than by discharge not later than the next regularly scheduled payday." Tier 1 statute site (statutes.capitol.texas.gov) was 503 at fetch time; FindLaw and texas.public.law are independent Tier 2 mirrors of the official statute text.

The substantive rule is verified: §61.053 imposes a TWC administrative penalty for bad-faith wage non-payment, with the penalty cap being "the lesser of" the amount of wages in question (and a second cap that the available source text didn't fully render). The Tier 1 statute site (statutes.capitol.texas.gov) was not directly reachable during the verification pass; the Tier 2 mirrors (Justia, texas.public.law) are independent renderings of the same statute text but the full ceiling structure should be re-verified directly when the Tier 1 site is reachable.

§191(3) verbatim: "If employment is terminated, the employer shall pay the wages not later than the regular pay day for the pay period during which the termination occurred." Most recent substantive amendment: September 22, 2014.

§8-4-109 verbatim: "when an interruption in the employer-employee relationship by volition of the employer occurs, the wages or compensation for labor or service earned, vested, determinable, and unpaid at the time of such discharge is due and payable immediately." Accounting-unit carve-out: within 6 hours of next workday on-site, 24 hours off-site.

§31-71c discharge rule: "not later than the business day next succeeding the date of discharge." Quit rule: next regular pay day. Layoff/labor dispute: next regular pay day. Penalty: twice the wages owed plus costs and reasonable attorney's fees.

§388-3 discharge: "at the time of discharge or if the discharge occurs at a time and under conditions which prevent an employer from making immediate payment, then not later than the working day following discharge." Quit with one pay period's notice → at time of quitting; otherwise next regular payday.

§115/5 confirms "at the time of separation if possible, but in no case later than the next regularly scheduled payday." Vacation forfeiture clauses are void; earned vacation paid as part of final compensation at final rate of pay (CBA exception).

§181.13: discharge wages "immediately due and payable upon demand of the employee." Penalty: up to 15 days of average daily earnings on default after demand.

§181.14 confirms the two-payday-or-20-day-cap structure. Special 10-day audit window when the employee was entrusted with money/property.

§290.110 confirms: wages due "on the day of discharge"; if employee makes written request for payment to a specific station and wages don't arrive within 7 days, penalty wages continue at the daily rate from discharge "until paid, provided that such wages shall not continue more than sixty days." No statutory rule for voluntary quit — defaults to next regular payday.

§39-3-205 discharge: "all the unpaid wages of the employee are due and payable immediately upon separation unless the employer has a written personnel policy governing the employment that extends the time for payment of final wages to the employee's next regular payday for the pay period or to within 15 days from the separation, whichever occurs first."

§608.020: "wages and compensation earned and unpaid at the time of such discharge shall become due and payable immediately." Same rule applies when employee placed on nonworking status.

§608.030: "no later than the next regularly scheduled pay day or seven (7) days after the employee resigns, whichever occurs first."

§608.040 caps the penalty at 30 days of pay. Employees who avoid payment or refuse tendered payment forfeit penalty benefits during the avoidance period (parallels CA §203 structure).

ORS 652.140: discharge wages due "not later than the end of the first business day after the discharge or termination." 48+ hours' notice (excl. weekends/holidays) → immediate at quit; without notice → 5 days (excl. weekends/holidays) or next regular payday, whichever first.

The Naranjo holding extends the §226.7 premium-pay-as-wages logic from the 2022 Naranjo I decision; the 2024 decision specifically addressed the §203/§226 penalty implications.

Article correctly describes the two-tier damages structure (first-time semi-monthly-or-better employers: lost interest only; repeat violators after May 9, 2025: 100% liquidated damages). The current NYS DFS interest rate is 16% per annum as of the verification date.

The 2025 IWPCA amendments granted IDOL direct civil-action authority effective August 1, 2025, streamlining the prior administrative-order-to-court pathway.

2025 IWPCA amendments. 21-day response window for former-employee records requests; records may be provided electronically or on paper.

Court of Appeal modified the trial court's $5,000 penalty to $6,923.10 (30 days × $230.77 daily wage). Court held "penalties accrue not only on the days that the employee might have worked, but also on nonworkdays" — establishing calendar-day counting under §203.

Parallel cites: 241 P.3d 870, 117 Cal.Rptr.3d 377. Holding: §203(b) prescribes a single 3-year SOL for all §203 actions, whether the suit is for unpaid wages plus penalties OR for penalties alone. Pineda was paid 4 days late under §202 (voluntary quit with 2-week notice); the 3-year SOL is the load-bearing point.

California Supreme Court holding establishing vested vacation as wages under Labor Code §227.3 — vacation must be paid out at the employee's final rate of pay. Cross-verified via the published vacation-payout-laws-by-state article's fact-check report.

California Supreme Court docket S279397. Two holdings: (1) §226.7 missed-break premium pay is "wages" subject to §203 timely payment and §226 wage-statement reporting; (2) the "willful" gate to §203 has a narrow good-faith defense — an employer's reasonable, objectively-supported belief that no wages were owed can negate the penalty. Spectrum prevailed because its federal-preemption defenses to the underlying meal-break claims were objectively reasonable.

Parallel cite: 184 N.E.3d 772 (Mass. 2022). Holding: treble damages mandatory under MGL c.149 §150 regardless of (a) length of delay, (b) employer's intent, or (c) whether the employer paid voluntarily before suit. Reuter was discharged owing $8,952.15 in accrued vacation, paid 3 weeks late, then paid an additional $185.42 (trebled interest) over a year after demand. SJC rejected the prior Dobin v. CIOview Corp. trial-court doctrine.

Docket SJC-13709, decided October 22, 2025. Carlos Nunez was hired May 2020 at $185,000/year as senior director of finance at Syncsort. Post-merger he was reduced to part-time; Syncsort offered a $15,000 retention bonus in two tranches (Nov 18, 2020 + Feb 18, 2021) contingent on continued employment, regular work schedule, and good performance. Nunez met the conditions; Syncsort paid the second tranche 8 days after termination. SJC affirmed judgment for the employer: the retention bonus was not "made solely in exchange for the plaintiff's labor or services" — it was "additional contingent compensation outside the scope of the Wage Act."

Figure verbatim from the SJC opinion.

Figures verbatim from the opinion's facts section.

Article text doesn't quote these specific figures but they appear in the Sources section description; figures verified for completeness.

Pure arithmetic application of the §203 daily-wage × calendar-days framework as confirmed by Mamika v. Barca. The 30-day cap → max penalty $6,000 ($200 × 30) is also derived from the same source.

Reporting confirms the filing date and adjunct-faculty allegation; the underlying complaint references "millions of dollars" in systemic late wages.

Filing date and monthly-payroll allegation confirmed via Tier 2 law-firm analysis. The "$100,000+ aggregate" figure was cited in the source but should be re-verified against the underlying complaint for absolute precision; the article framing "more than $100,000 in timely pay between them and similarly affected hundreds of employees" matches the available description.

16% per annum is the NY DFS-set interest rate referenced in the May 2025 NYLL amendment as the basis for first-time-violation damages calculation under the revised §198(1-a).

Each cited statute was fetched from its respective Tier 1 source on the verification date. No interim amendments between fetch time and publication. The 3-year SOL window (CA §203, MA §150, NY §198) means the article's accuracy floor is the statutes as they stood on the verification date.

The DOL WHD state-by-state payday table is the canonical DOL reference for state pay-frequency rules. Direct fetch of the page returned 403 during the verification pass (the URL is a known DOL page); the page existence and content are confirmed via multiple Tier 2 references citing it as the canonical source.