California pool Laws

March insanity will undoubtedly be underway. But they are workplace pools legal? As employment lawyers, is it our obligation to eliminate another hallowed workplace custom the same as we did with binge ingesting and intimate harassment at office vacation events?

In California, relating to Penal Code part 337a, gambling may be a crime or a misdemeanor. But Penal Code section 336.9 creates an exception for gambling pools between people who are perhaps not acting for profit, other than exactly the same stakes offered to every participant. The exclusion is applicable provided that the share is not being run on the internet and only $2, 500 are at share. This doesn’t result in the swimming pools appropriate. But rather of a possible crime, it is an infraction and also the maximum penalty is a $250 fine.

So can be the pools unlawful? Technically, yes. But they’re a little illegal. For most people, the odds of having in appropriate trouble for an office pool are particularly small. But not likely because minor while the likelihood of a 16th seed winning the NCAA competition. The WSJ sets those chances at 384, 000, 000 to at least one.