California Supreme Court

Baseless Lawsuits May Begin and End with California

August 10, 2018 By Lindsey de la Torre 3 Comments

Californians may not know it, but their courts are creating an unprecedented “super tort” that could be used against anyone that makes and sells a lawful product. Today, it is paint and tomorrow it could be you or your company.

In February, California’s Supreme Court surprised many experts by declining to review a high-profile case against paint and pigment makers that has been in the state’s court system since the early 2000s. In unprecedented rulings, the lower courts are making three companies pay more than a billion dollars to remove lead paint from all private homes built before 1951 across 10 California counties. The only option left for the companies is to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

To some, this may not sound like a case of national importance, but it is. Lawsuits that seek to pursue businesses for money, regardless of wrongdoing, have been tried for four decades. In the past, state courts have stopped this including in Rhode Island, New Jersey and Illinois. This case is the first time a state high court has allowed this type of deep pocket jurisprudence to stand.

The legal theory is a new twist on the centuries-old tort of public nuisance. The lawsuit argues that three companies can be liable for all lead paint remaining in homes today simply because they sold paint containing lead pigment decades ago. The passage of time, the development of knowledge about specific risks and any semblance of actual causation were jettisoned from the case. Incredibly, the lower courts are requiring the companies to remove lead paint from homes even if their paints were never in those homes.

Now, lawyers representing eight California communities are pushing a similar version of public nuisance theory against energy manufacturers. In lawsuits filed last year, they allege the companies are contributing to climate change and, therefore, should be liable for any potential impacts of the global phenomenon. Even though energy products are used by every American and around the world, the lawsuits want to hold a handful of companies responsible. It may be good for politicians seeking headlines or lawyers seeking financial gain, but it won’t solve the problem. It does, however, threaten the jobs of manufacturing workers. U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup agreed that the courts are not the proper venue to address this issue and recently dismissed the complaints brought by San Francisco and Oakland.

With these public nuisance lawsuits in their infancy, along with a similar one brought by New York City, the U.S. Supreme Court should hear the case against the paint manufacturers. The Supreme Court could go a long way in halting the onslaught of baseless lawsuits cropping up across the country.

If the Supreme Court grants review, the plaintiffs may have their work cut out for them. The Court shut down similar lawsuits in the past. In American Electric Power v. Connecticut, a state-led coalition sued six power companies claiming that their emissions were a federal public nuisance. In an 8-0 decision, the Court dismissed the suit, explaining that emissions are not to be regulated by the courts. Similarly, lead paint, once its harms were known, was subject to regulation by the legislative and executive branches— not the courts. If American Electric Power v. Connecticut is any indication, Supreme Court consideration of the lead paint case may help shut the door on these baseless lawsuits.

More than one million Californians work in manufacturing and more than twelve million men and women nationally. These types of lawsuits undermine the fairness of our nation’s legal system, our manufacturing base, and our economy.

Lindsey de la Torre is Executive Director of the National Association of Manufacturers’ Manufacturers Accountability Project.

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: California Supreme Court, Court, Lawsuits, Tort Law

CA Supreme Court Nearly Vaporizes Independent Contractor Law – Setback to “Gig” Economy

May 7, 2018 By James V. Lacy 2 Comments

In a recent sweeping ruling that helps labor unions but runs contrary to small businesses and Silicon Valley innovation and the developing “gig” economy inspired by companies like Uber and Lyft, the California Supreme Court has decided that hiring companies no longer have much a say in whether a person who provides services for hire is classified as an “independent contractor” or an “employee.” The implications of the new ruling, filed on April 30, in the “Dynamex Operations” decision are huge, as it will extend onerous state employment and labor laws to new classes of workers, and will force the reclassification of tens of thousands of business relationships in the state between businesses and their former contractors, in the process, eliminating or raising the costs of goods and services to average Californians, while standing as a major obstacle to new popular ideas in technology such as ride sharing and delivery services.

The facts of the case itself center on a delivery driver for a company who claimed he was misclassified as an independent contractor. The attorneys for the driver successfully argued against the current standard, which used a multi-factor test to determine the proper classification of a worker.

Many new technology-aided companies like Uber and Lyft depend on workers who want independence with flexible hours and who want to set their own pace of work. However, workers classified as employees under the state and federal labor laws are generally guaranteed more expensive health care benefits and worker compensation, as well as collective bargaining rights, especially in California. Unions are particularly opposed to independent contractor relationships and they seek leverages in the law to add more members and therefore more political power. Citing the need for more “worker-friendly” laws, one lawyer in support of the change said, hyperbolically, “as the federal government increasingly abandons its past commitment to protecting workplace rights, the states are stepping up to fill the gaps.”

Under the new rules, businesses have almost no say in how their business relationships between employees and contractors are separated and classified. The opinion or business model of a business that prefers to classify a relationship as independent contractor doesn’t matter much any more. Now, in California, the determination is made by applying the so-called three-pronged “ABC” test, which puts all the burden on the employer to show the worker is not an employee. Under the test, to establish independent contractor status, the business must show: 1.The worker is free from the control and direction of the hirer in connection with the performance of the work; 2. The worker performs work that is outside the usual course of the hirer’s business; and 3. The worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same natures as the work performed for the hirer.

The second and third factors of the new test are seen as the most troublesome, especially for “gig” economy businesses. If a person is delivering the public food, for example, is the delivery part of the fundamental business of that entity? If it is, then the deliverer becomes a far more expensive employee, covered by state wage and hour and other labor laws, entitled to health care, and entitled to collective bargaining rights. If this is the case, then what are the implications to the state? Well, people who want flexible hours and the ability to work when they want as deliverers, will find lost business opportunities. And the cost of food delivery will likely go up dramatically. This implication is just the “tip of the iceberg.” The implications resonate throughout the economy to the detriment of not only gig businesses, but largely small businesses that do not want to be saddled with costly labor law enforcement issues, and even nonprofits who use skilled workers attempting to offer things like compassion and health services to the poor.

A copy of the Court’s decision can be accessed here: http://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/S222732.PDF

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: California Supreme Court, Independent Contractor, Labor Laws, Lyft, Uber

Will the California Supreme Court Reform the “California Rule?”

March 29, 2018 By Ed Ring 6 Comments

Most pension experts believe that without additional reform, pension payments are destined to put an unsustainable burden on California’s state and local governments. Even if pension fund investments meet their performance objectives over the next several years, California’s major pension funds have already announced that payments required from participating agencies are going to roughly double in the next six years. This is a best-case scenario, and it is already more than many cities and counties are going to be able to afford.

California’s first major statewide attempt to reform pensions was the PEPRA (Public Employee Pension Reform Act) legislation, which took effect on January 1st, 2013. This legislation reduced pension benefit formulas and increased required employee contributions, but for the most part only affected employees hired after January 1st, 2013.

The reason PEPRA didn’t significantly affect current employees was due to the so-called “California Rule,” a legal argument that interprets state and federal constitutional law to, in effect, prohibit changes to pension benefits for employees already working. The legal precedent for what is now called the California Rule was set in 1955, when the California Supreme Court ruled on a challenge to a 1951 city charter amendment in Allen v. City of of Long Beach. The operative language in that ruling was the following: “changes in a pension plan which result in disadvantage to employees should be accompanied by comparable new advantages.”

To learn more about the origin of the California Rule, how it has set a legal precedent not only in California but in dozens of other states, two authoritative sources are “Overprotecting Public Employee Pensions: The Contract Clause and the California Rule,” written by Alexander Volokh in 2014 for the Reason Foundation, and “Statutes as Contracts? The ‘California Rule’ and Its Impact on Public Pension Reform,” written by Amy B. Monahan, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, published in the Iowa Law Review in 2012.

Pension benefits, most simply stated, are based on a formula: Years worked times a “multiplier,” times final salary. Thus for each year a public employee works, the eventual pension they will earn upon retirement gets bigger. Starting back in 1999, California’s public sector employee unions successfully negotiated to increase their multiplier, which greatly increased the value of their pensions. In the case of the California Highway Patrol, for example, the multiplier went from 2% to 3%. But in nearly all cases, these increases to the multiplier didn’t simply apply to years of employment going forward. Instead, they were applied retroactively. For example, in a typical hypothetical case, an employee who had been employed for 29 years and was to retire one year hence would not get a pension equivalent to [ 29 x 2% + 1 x 3% ] x final salary. Instead, now they would get a pension equivalent to 30 x 3% x final salary.

Needless to say this significantly changed the size of the future pension liability. For years the impact of this change was smoothed over using creative accounting. But now it has come back to haunt California’s cities and counties.

Amazingly, the California rule doesn’t just prevent retroactive reductions to the pension multiplier. Reducing the multiplier retroactively might seem to be reasonable, since the multiplier was increased retroactively. But the California rule, as it is interpreted by public employee unions, also prevents reductions to the multiplier from now on. And on that question the California Supreme Court has an opportunity, this year, to make history.

Ironically, the active cases currently pending at the California Supreme Court were initiated by the unions themselves. In particular, they have challenged the PEPRA reform that prohibits what is known as “pension spiking,” where at the end of a public employee’s career they take steps to increase their pension. Spiking can take the form of increasing final pension eligible salary – which can be accomplished in various ways including a final year promotion or transfer that results in a much higher final salary. Another form of spiking is to increase the total number of pension eligible years worked, and the most common way to accomplish this is through the purchase of what is called “air time.”

Based on fuzzy math, the pension systems have offered retiring employees the opportunity to pay a lump sum into the pension system in exchange for more “service credits.” Someone with, say, ten years of service, upon retirement could pay (often the payment that would be financed, requiring no actual payment) to acquire five additional years of service credits. This would increase the amount of their pension by 50%, since their pension would now be based on fifteen years x 3% x final salary, instead of 10 years x 3% x final salary. To say this is a prized perk would be an understatement. How it became standard operating procedure, much less how the payments made were calculated to somehow justify such a major increase to pension benefits, is inexplicable. But when PEPRA included in its reform package an end to spiking, even for veteran employees, the unions went to court.

The spiking case that has wound its way to the California Supreme Court with the most disruptive potential started in Alameda County, then was appealed to California’s First Appellate Court District Three. The original parties to the lawsuit were the plaintiffs, Cal Fire Local 2881, vs CalPERS (Appellate Court case). On December 30, 2016, the appellate court ruled that PEPRA’s ban on pension spiking via purchases of airtime would stand. The union then appealed to the California Supreme Court.

An excellent compilation of the ongoing chronology of the California Supreme Court case Cal Fire Local 2881 v. CalPERS (CA Supreme Court case) can be found on the website of the law firm Messing, Adam and Jasmine. It will show that by February 2017 the unions filed a petition for review by the California Supreme Court, and that the court granted review in April 2017. In November 2017, Governor Brown got involved in the case, citing a compelling state interest in the outcome. Apparently not trusting his attorney general nor CalPERS to adequately defend PEPRA, the Governor’s office joined the case as an “intervener” in opposition to Cal Fire Local 2881. For nearly a year, both petitioners and respondents to the case have been filing briefs.

This case, which informed observers believe could be ruled on by the end of 2018, is not just about airtime. Because whether or not purchasing airtime is protected by the California Rule requires clarification of the California Rule. The ruling could be narrow, simply affirming or rejecting the ability of public employees to purchase airtime. Or the ruling could be quite broad, asserting that the California Rule does not entitle public employees to irreducible pension benefits, of any kind, to apply for work not yet performed.

One of many reviews of the legal issues confronting the California Supreme Court in this case is found in the amicus brief prepared by the California Business Roundtable in support of the respondents. A summary of the points raised in the California Business Roundtable’s amicus brief is available on the website of the Retirement Security Initiative, an advocacy organization focused on protecting and ensuring the fairness and sustainability of public sector retirement plans. An excerpt from that summary:

“The Roundtable brief asserts the California Rule has numerous legal flaws:

(1) It violates the bedrock principle that statutes create contractual rights only when the Legislature clearly intended to do so.

(2) It violates black-letter contract law by creating contractual rights that violate the reasonable expectations of the parties.

(3) It violates longstanding constitutional law by assuming that every contractual impairment automatically violates the California and Federal Contract Clauses.

(4) It lacks persuasive or precedential value. The Rule was initially adopted without anything resembling a full consideration of the relevant issues.

(5) It has been almost uniformly rejected by federal and state courts—including by several courts that previously accepted it.

(6) It has had—and will continue to have—devastating economic consequences on California’s public employers.”

Pension reform, and pension reformers, have often been characterized as “right-wing puppets of billionaires” by the people and organizations that disagree. The fact that one of the most liberal governors in the nation, Jerry Brown, actively intervened in this case in support of the respondent and in opposition to the unions, should put that characterization to rest.

If the California Supreme Court does dramatically clarify the California Rule, enabling pension benefit formulas to be altered for future work, it will only adjust the legal parameters in the fight over pensions in favor of reformers. After such a ruling there would still be a need for follow on legislation or ballot initiatives to actually make those changes.

What California’s elected officials and union leadership, for the most part, are belatedly realizing, is that without more pension reform, the entire institution of defined benefit pensions is imperiled. Hopefully California’s Supreme Court will soon make it easier for them all to make hard choices, to prevent such a dire outcome.

Edward Ring co-founded the California Policy Center in 2010 and served as its president through 2016. He is a prolific writer on the topics of political reform and sustainable economic development.

REFERENCES

California Government Pension Contributions Required to Double by 2024 – Best Case
– California Policy Center

California Public Employees’ Pension Reform Act (PEPRA): Summary And Comment
– Employee Benefits Law Group

Allen v. City of of Long Beach
– Stanford University Law Library

Overprotecting Public Employee Pensions: The Contract Clause and the California Rule
– Alexander Volokh, Reason Foundation

Statutes as Contracts? The ‘California Rule’ and Its Impact on Public Pension Reform
– Amy Monahan, Iowa Law Review

Did CalPERS Use Accounting “Gimmicks” to Enable Financially Unsustainable Pensions?
– California Policy Center

Cal Fire Local 2881, vs CalPERS (Appellate Court case)
– JUSTIA US Law Archive

Cal Fire Local 2881 v. CalPERS, California Supreme Court, Case No. S239958 – Case Review
– Messing, Adams and Jasmine

Intervener and Respondent State of California’s Answer Brief on the Merits
– Amicus Brief, Governor’s Office, State of California

Amicus Brief of the California Business Roundtable in Support of Respondents
– Amicus Brief, California Business Roundtable (CBR)

RSI Supports California Business Roundtable Amicus Brief
– Summary of CBR Amicus Brief by Retirement Security Initiative

Resources for California’s Pension Reformers
– California Policy Center

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: California Rule, California Supreme Court, Ed Ring, pensions, PEPRA

What Exactly is the “Rule of Law”?

May 10, 2017 By Joel Fox 3 Comments

Part of the difficulty in finding common ground on the immigration debate in California is a different understanding of a basic governmental concept: the “rule of law.”

California officials have readily used the phrase when it comes to resisting the Trump Administration’s immigration policy.

Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye, admonished the administration for stalking courthouses looking for people in the country illegally when she told the state legislature in her annual speech on the courts, “I submit to you today that the rule of law is being challenged.”

California’s Attorney General, Xavier Becerra, in responding positively to a federal court’s injunction halting Trump’s executive order against sanctuary cities, declared, “This injunction is consistent with the rule of law.”

Yet, those opposed to sanctuary cities and California’s effort to become a sanctuary state ask that if people came into the country against the laws on the books, is not that a violation of the “rule of law”?

Some have even compared the efforts to ignore federal immigration laws to the nullification efforts future Confederate states used to challenge federal authority prior to the Civil War.

Differing views on what constitutes the rule of law intensifies the country’s political divide. Ultimately, the United States Supreme Court will determine the law.

Cases before that court on the issue of state sovereignty have occurred in the past, of course. One case cited that may influence the outcome of a new Supreme Court test is Printz vs. United States.

This 1997 case, dealing with the Brady Gun Law, said the state could not compel local officials to execute federal law. The 5 to 4 majority declared that the Tenth Amendment to the constitution allowed the state to ignore a federal mandate, in this case requiring local law enforcement to enforce certain gun laws, because the constitution did not address the specific issue covered by the law.

Interestingly, the court majority, lead by Justice Antonin Scalia, were the conservative jurists on the court. Liberals may now use this decision to argue the Tenth Amendment allows states to declare sanctuary despite federal immigration laws because the sanctuary issue is not in the Constitution.

However, the Printz decision may not cleanly cover the issue of sanctuary cities. The majority opinion in Printz argued that the Framers of the Constitution allowed for federal regulation of international and interstate matters but reserved internal matters for the judgment of state legislatures. It may be argued that border security between nations is an international matter.

Cities can choose to not enforce federal immigration law, but they cannot stop the federal government from enforcing it. This is where the denial of federal funds to sanctuary cities comes into play and will ultimately be tested in court.

Despite the legal battle, it seems a basic understanding of what is meant by “the rule of law” is in order for the on-going immigration debate.

The American Bar Association attempted to frame a discussion of “the rule of law” in a three-page document.

The Bar Association dialogue started with questions:

“The rule of law is a term that is often used but difficult to define. A frequently heard saying is that the rule of law means the government of law, not men. But what is meant by “a government of law, not men”? Aren’t laws made by men and women in their roles as legislators? Don’t men and women enforce the law as police officers or interpret the law as judges? And don’t all of us choose to follow, or not to follow, the law as we go about our daily lives? How does the rule of law exist independently from the people who make it, interpret it, and live it?”

The site contains differing views from two civil rights historical figures.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, an American suffragist, social activist, abolitionist, and leader of the early women’s rights movement, is quoted: “It is very important in a republic, that the people should respect the laws, for if we throw them to the winds, what becomes of civil government?”

But one can respect laws and still resist, The Rev. Martin Luther King wrote in his Letter from the Birmingham Jail. “I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.”

The Bar Association comments, “The rule of law is intended to promote stability, but a society that operates under the rule of law must also remain vigilant to ensure the rule of law also serves the interests of justice.”

Strict adherence to laws on the books in relation to a concept of true justice reflects the current debate over immigration issues in this state. Yet, perception by the public of how laws are enforced is as an important part of this debate as is a finally sliced Supreme Court decision on the law. The public’s understanding of the “rule of law” is the tie that keeps in place the foundation of a civil society. So, it is incumbent on all sides of this debate to make clear what is meant in arguing for the “rule of law.”

Joel Fox is editor of Fox & Hounds and President of the Small Business Action Committee.

This article was originally published by Fox and Hounds Daily.

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: California Supreme Court, Donald Trump, Immigration, Joel Fox, Rule of Law, Xavier Becerra

Large Loophole to Government Transparency Overturned by California Court

March 10, 2017 By Steven Greenhut Leave a Comment

SACRAMENTO – Earlier this month, the California Supreme Court unanimously overturned an appeals court decision that had provided a large loophole in the state’s public-records act.

The case, City of San Jose v. Superior Court of Santa Clara County, revolves around one question: “Are writings concerning the conduct of public business beyond (the California Public Records Act’s) reach merely because they were sent or received using a nongovernmental account?”

The superior court ruled that records concerning the public’s business should be turned over to the public upon request; the appeals court, however, found that agencies do not have “an affirmative duty to produce messages stored on personal electronic devices and accounts that are inaccessible to the agency,” or to even search for them.

The case goes back to 2009, when a local citizen, Ted Smith, sought records regarding the activities of the city of San Jose’s redevelopment agency, its executive director and some elected officials including the mayor and two City Council members, as the court explained. The city produced the requested documents from official phone numbers and email accounts – but would not provide information stored on the officials’ personal accounts.

The city offered a simplistic defense. Messages created on personal accounts are not public records because they are not within the control of the city. If the city had prevailed, the ramifications would be immense. Elected officials and governmental staff working for California’s numerous government agencies could legally shield sensitive information from the public merely by conducting such business on their personal email account or cellphone.

The appeals court exempted “huge swaths” of information based on where the information was located, not based on content, explained Jim Ewert, general counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers’ Association, which filed an amicus brief in the case. “If the Supreme Court had not decided (this way), it would have eviscerated the California Public Records Act,” he added.

A Los Angeles Times editorial captured the likely effect had the appeals-court decision stood: “As soon as a public official realizes that his constituents have no right to look at anything he says on his personal cellphone or laptop, he’ll simply do all of his sensitive or secret communications on those devices. With a flick of the wrist, public officials will exempt themselves from accountability.”

The state high court recognized the new reality of email and other electronic communications, even though the state Constitution and the public-records act were crafted in a time before such communications were envisioned. “It requires recognition,” the Supreme Court found, “that, in today’s environment, not all employment-related activity occurs during a conventional workday, or in an employer-maintained workplace.”

The appeals court was concerned about the problems inherent in capturing and turning over records that were out of an agency’s control. But the state high court, while not mandating any particular policy in dealing with such matters, offered some possible scenarios in dealing with a public records request.

For instance, as a Lexology article explains, an agency could require employees to search their own emails for relevant records or develop a policy requiring “all emails involving agency business, sent by an employee through a private account, to be copied to the employee’s agency email account.” The main point is the court upheld the idea that the public has a right to access a public record, even if the details of obtaining it are up for debate.

In fact, the court explained that because the city did not try to search for any particular documents in its employees’ personal accounts, “the legality of a specific kind of search is not before us.” But it found that agencies are obliged to at least try to locate and disclose any such public documents on private servers “with reasonable effort.”

The decision, however, does not change the complex balancing act that exists between public access and privacy rights. Some documents are protected from public exposure, but the court’s ruling finds that the location of those documents – on a public or private server – has nothing to do with whether or not those documents are legitimate public records.

The high court quoted from the state’s public records act, which defines a public record as “any writing containing information relating to the conduct of the public’s business prepared, owned, used or retained by any state or local agency regardless of physical form or characteristics.” Not everything produced by a public employee is public, of course, and it might take hair-splitting to determine where to draw the line.

Here, the court used an example to illustrate the point: An employee’s email to a spouse complaining that “my coworker is an idiot,” is unlikely to be considered public, whereas “an email to a superior reporting the coworker’s mismanagement of an agency project might well be.” The court agreed that public employees do not “forfeit all rights to privacy.” But the city of San Jose claimed an exemption for all communications from personal accounts, which was an open invitation for employees to evade the clear intent of open-records laws.

The high court was not persuaded by the city’s argument that the Legislature required public access only to records “accessible to the agency as a whole.” Many genuinely public documents, it explained, are stored in “filing cabinets and ledgers” that would not be accessible to all of an agency’s employees.

The question, of course, is whether the document was produced by employees who are conducting business on behalf of the agency. It’s not a matter of where the document is stored that determines whether the public should have access to it. If, for instance, an agency contracted with a consultant to produce a report, then the agency – and therefore the public – has a right to that document even if the consultant is retaining that document, according to the court.

The recent presidential election reinforces the significance of these distinctions. “Our concerns are not fanciful,” the newspaper association’s brief explained. “For example, former Secretary of State and … presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton turned over 50,000 pages of government-related emails that she had kept on a private account, although federal regulations, since 2009, have required that all emails be preserved as part of an agency’s record-keeping system.” Many other states consider public records on private servers to be accessible to the public.

While local and state government agencies still need to come up with policies that detail exactly how such records must be maintained and disclosed, the court resolved the fundamental principle: A public document is a public document, even if it was created and stored in a private email account.

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

This piece was originally published by CalWatchdog.com

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: California Public Records Act, California Supreme Court, Steven Greenhut, transparency

California Supreme Court Strikes Down Vergara Appeal

August 24, 2016 By Ed Ring 5 Comments

Here’s an axiom of California politics. When it’s the teachers union against everyone – that’s right, everyone else – the teachers union wins. Yesterday’s decision by the California Supreme Court to not hear the Vergara case is just the latest example.

Prior to losing on appeal, which brought the case to the attention of the State Supreme Court, the original Vergara ruling upheld the argument of the plaintiff, which was that union supported work rules have a disproportionate negative effect on poor and minority students. As reported in the Los Angeles Times in June 2014:

“Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rolf M. Treu tentatively ruled Tuesday that key job protections for California teachers violated students’ rights to equal educational opportunity. Treu struck down state laws that grant teachers tenure after two years, require seniority-based layoffs and govern the process to dismiss teachers. He ruled that those laws disproportionately harmed poor and minority students… [writing:]

‘All sides to this litigation agree that competent teachers are a critical, if not the most important, component of success of a child’s in-school educational experience. All sides also agree that grossly ineffective teachers substantially undermine the ability of that child to succeed in school. Evidence has been elicited in this trial of the specific effect of grossly ineffective teachers on students. The evidence is compelling. Indeed, it shocks the conscience.’”

And the evidence was indeed compelling. Watch these closing arguments in the case, and note that the plaintiff’s attorney used the testimony of the expert witnesses called by the defense attorneys to support his arguments!

But it isn’t just the union’s hand-picked experts who are against the teachers unions, when they reveal under cross-examination that union work rules indeed harm students, and disproportionately harm low-income and minority students. It’s every interest group, every stakeholder. Why, for example, would a teacher want to work in an environment where you come in and you care about students and you’re talented and you work very hard to get through to all of your students and get good educational results, and in the classroom right next to you somebody just shows up every day and doesn’t do anything? They make as much money as you do, and if they stick around, they get increases every year just like you will. If they are incompetent, they will not be fired. And if there’s a layoff, if they’ve been on the job one year longer than you, they’ll stay and you’ll go.

No wonder there’s a teacher shortage. Consider these statistics that measure teacher sentiments regarding the work rules that were challenged by the Vergara plaintiffs:

Teacher effectiveness should be a factor in granting tenure:
72% of teachers agree, 93% of principals agree.
Students’ interests would be better served if it were easier to dismiss ineffective teachers:
62% of teachers agree, 89% of principals agree.
Students’ interests would be better served if layoff decisions took teacher effectiveness into account:
67% of teachers agree, 83% of principals agree.

Then there’s the social agenda of the teachers union. Their social agenda, in essence, is to indoctrinate California’s students – most of whom are people of color, and millions of whom are members of recent immigrant families – into believing they live in a racist, sexist nation, where they are condemned to lives of discrimination and thwarted achievement, when precisely the opposite is the reality. In reality, America is the most tolerant nation in world history, rejecting sexism and racism, and has provided opportunities to people of all backgrounds in measures that dwarf all other nations and cultures. But not according to the teachers union.

But this is California, and what the teachers union wants, the teachers union gets.

One small encouraging sign is the fact that two of the three dissenting attorneys are Brown appointees. The fight is bipartisan. It’s disappointing that judges appointed by Wilson and Schwarzenegger ruled against the plaintiffs, and it is possible that part of their motivation was judicial restraint, i.e., to not legislate from the bench.

Which leaves the legislature to change these rules that are destroying public education in California – jobs for life after two years, nearly impossible to fire incompetents, and seniority over merit in layoffs. Virtually any honest legislator in Sacramento will admit, off the record, that they don’t agree with the agenda of the teachers union. Plenty of retired democrats, including Gloria Romero, former Senate Majority Leader, and Antonio Villaraigosa, former Mayor of Los Angeles, have leveled withering criticism at the teachers union. But active politicians are targeted for political destruction if they stand up to the union machine, and they toe the line.

Parents, students, judges, legislators, and teachers themselves are all subordinates of the teachers union. It will take an extraordinary combination of bipartisan cooperation and raw political courage to change the status quo. But let’s be clear – the teachers union has won again, and everyone, everyone, was on the other side.

Ed Ring is the president of the California Policy Center.

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: California Supreme Court, education reform, Judge Rolf M. Treu, Teacher tenure, Vergara