Every PAGA clock, from the notice to the one-year line.
When a notice lands, the first thing you need is the calendar: how long you have to cure, and on which track your headcount puts you.
The 2024 amendments govern a civil action brought on or after June 19, 2024 — unless the LWDA notice was filed before that date, in which case prior law governs (Lab. Code § 2699(v)).The statute now carries an AB 1170 (eff. Jan. 1, 2026) stamp, but AB 1170 was the Legislature's annual code-maintenance bill and changed nothing of substance — no penalty tier, cap, split, cure track, or standing rule. The substantive regime is the 2024 reform (AB 2288 / SB 92).
Showing the small-employer administrative cure.
Only these two clocks run from the postmark alone — every other interval below runs from its own anchor (receipt, the court’s order, service, filing) and is not computed here. If a computed day lands on a weekend or court holiday, statutory counting rules may move it. Illustrative, not a docket; confirm every date for your case.
Day 60 is the agency’s deadline to say it does not intend to investigate (§ 2699.3(a)(2)(A)); an intent-to-investigate notice may issue through day 65 (§ 2699.3(a)(2)(B)), which is also when the right to sue ripens on silence. Both run from the same postmark — two reads of one window, not two clocks.
Selected clock: Agency does-not-intend notice window — 60 days.
Agency does-not-intend notice window
- Length
- 60 days, running from the postmark date of the LWDA notice.
- Runs against
- the agency (LWDA)
- Track
- Not a cure-track step
- Tolling
- Tolled — not charged against the one-year deadline. Lab. Code § 2699.3(e)
The State has 60 days from the notice's postmark to say it does not intend to investigate. (A notice that it does intend to investigate may issue through day 65 — § 2699.3(a)(2)(B).) In practice the LWDA — stretched across the whole state — rarely takes the case, and its silence is the runway for everything that follows.
The agency shall notify the employer and the aggrieved employee … that it does not intend to investigate the alleged violation within 60 calendar days of the postmark date of the notice … Upon receipt of that notice or if no notice is provided within 65 calendar days of the postmark date of the notice …, the aggrieved employee may commence a civil action …
The State has 60 days to say whether it will step in. If it declines — or, as is almost always the case, simply says nothing within 65 days — the worker is free to file in court.
The pre-suit notice and agency periods can stretch for months. They do not shorten the time to file, because the statute pauses them against the one-year clock.
The one-year length is fixed by Code Civ. Proc. § 340. It is Lab. Code § 2699.3(e) that stops the agency and notice clocks from being charged against it — the tolling rule supplies no length of its own, and the bands above are diagrammatic, not to scale.
Not one deadline — a set of clocks, each running from its own anchor, and a one-year line the pre-suit wait does not erode.