Boss Only Paid Me For My Hours Worked But Not For My Commissions + Bonuses, Says It’s Discretionary So He Doesn’t Have To Pay Me, Is That True?? Pls Help

Location: Los Angeles, California

Hello everybody, I hope you are doing well ????. I was recently fired from a State Farm insurance agency. Long story short, I took a trip that my boss had previously approved. A few days before the trip, he told me I couldn’t go anymore, even though everything had already been paid for, and said he would fire me if I went. I’ve heard from people that this could be wrongful termination, but whatever—to be honest, right now I just want to figure out if I can get the money I’m owed.

I get paid every 5th and 20th of the month. My check on the 5th includes my hourly pay from the 16th–31st, plus my commissions for the whole month. My check on the 20th is purely my hourly pay from the 1st–15th.

I was fired on August 9th and was told to come in the next day to pick up my final check. After getting the check, I realized it only included my hourly pay. I asked my boss where my commissions and bonus were, and he told me I would have to wait until September 5th to receive them. This all happened on August 10th.

September 5th came around. Normally, I would see my check on ADP and then go pick it up in person. Turns out I’m not getting a check because, according to my boss, commissions + bonuses are “discretionary,” so he doesn’t have to pay them to me. That simply can’t be true, right? I thought discretionary meant it was purely out of the blue, like a random bonus or something similar. This wasn’t like that at all. Everything was performance/metric based.
For example, my commissions have set goals based on cars, life + auto, etc. I sold a good amount before being fired, and I also had big policies carry over that issued during this pay period, so it’s a lot of money.

My bonus dates all the way back to April. We had a health promotion where, if we sold a certain amount, we would get $50 per health policy. We usually have to wait a few months for all the policies to be issued and good to go before we get paid. This month was THE month we were supposed to get paid, and my former coworkers told me they received their bonuses a few days ago as well.

I know this is a lot, but if somebody could please help me figure this out, I would really appreciate it. It’s a lot of money that I’m not being paid, and I want to know what my rights are and be able to respond to my former boss if he claims these commissions and bonuses are “discretionary” when they were based on specific sales goals and performance.