PERB Holds That Rejecting a Tentative Agreement Without a Specific Explanation Is Per Se Bad Faith

On August 28, 2026, the Public Employment Relations Board issued United Teachers Los Angeles v. Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, PERB Decision No. 3054. After fifteen months of first contract bargaining, the parties reached tentative agreements for two charter units. The members ratified both agreements. The employer’s governing board then rejected them in July 2025 and again in September 2025. When the union asked why, the employer offered phrases such as “significant long term concerns” and a need for “financial flexibility.” PERB held those answers were not bargaining. They were a per se refusal to meet and negotiate in good faith.

The case turned on two related but distinct duties. First, the employer must stand behind a ratified tentative agreement. Second, if the governing body rejects the TA, it must give an explanation specific enough that the exclusive representative can return to the table and bargain over the stated objection. PERB treats those duties as separate violations.

BACKGROUND

Alliance College Ready Public Schools spent years contesting UTLA’s certification and then spent fifteen months at the table. The employer opened with a “One Alliance” proposal that would lock represented teachers to whatever Alliance later gave unrepresented staff and would waive any duty to bargain the decision or its effects. The union conceded compensation parity, health benefit parity, a one year term, and limited retroactivity to January 1, 2025. Those concessions produced full tentative agreements in March and April 2025. The units ratified them.

The board then canceled a scheduled June 11 ratification vote and told unit members, falsely, that UTLA had requested the postponement. On July 10 the board voted the agreements down. The next morning the employer’s negotiator wrote that Alliance would offer full year retroactivity “under conditions,” but defined no conditions and offered no formal proposal. Direct emails to members cited “significant long term concerns” and a side agreement while talks continued. The union asked why the board had rejected deals built on the employer’s own parity model, why money that Alliance called unaffordable in March had become available in July, and what had changed. The negotiator asked for private mediation and answered none of those questions.

REJECTION IS NOT A SILENT VETO

Alliance relied on City of Lincoln (2012) PERB Decision No. 2284-M and argued that a governing body may reject a tentative agreement without saying why. That reading does not survive. Twelve months after Lincoln, the Legislature amended Government Code section 3505.1. Under the Meyers Milias Brown Act, a governing body must vote to accept or reject a tentative agreement within thirty days of first considering it. A rejection “shall not bar” an unfair practice charge for failure to meet and confer in good faith. PERB has already held that this exposure covers regressive bargaining and a failure to vest negotiators with sufficient authority. Decision No. 3054 adds that it also covers a rejection with insufficient explanation to the union.

EERA contains no twin of section 3505.1. PERB refused to treat that omission as a license to renege. The California Supreme Court has instructed that EERA and the MMBA form one system of public employment relations law and that PERB should read them in harmony unless text and history compel a different result. AB 537 aligned the MMBA with existing unfair practice precedent. The Board therefore declined to let an EERA employer do what an MMBA employer may no longer do.

Alliance also argued that a party may forestall an agreement forever for good reasons, bad reasons, or no reason at all. PERB rejected that misreading of City of Placentia. A party may hold an inflexible position if it genuinely holds the position and can support it with reasons. It may not conceal a strategy to make bargaining futile. Hard bargaining still requires a reason the other side can test.

SPECIFICITY IS A SEPARATE DUTY

A board does not discharge the duty to explain by announcing “concerns.” PERB has long held that a party who withholds an explanation or substantiation for a position, when the information exists and the other side has requested it, both refuses to bargain and supplies an indicator of bad faith. If an argument is important enough to present at the table, it is important enough to require some proof of its accuracy.

Alliance’s phrases failed that test. “Significant long term concerns” and “financial flexibility” gave the union nothing it could answer with a proposal. They identified no cost, no term, no changed circumstance, and no conflict with another obligation. They did not explain why parity and limited retroactivity, which the employer had demanded for months and had never called financially unworkable except as to a longer retroactive period the union later dropped, suddenly became intolerable after the members voted yes. The Board held that those vague and perfunctory answers gave “no insights into its position with any specificity that UTLA could address through bargaining.”

An explanation that names the article, the dollar figure, or the operational constraint that moved the board invites further negotiation. An explanation that a board could paste onto any rejection of any contract is not an explanation. Reneging and silence are related because a silent rejection leaves the union with nothing to bargain. They remain separate violations. A board that rejects a ratified tentative agreement and then supplies a concrete reason may still face a regressive bargaining or authority charge if the reason is new and changed circumstances do not support it. A board that rejects rejects a TA and provides only generic explanations commits a separate violation.

THE REMEDY FOLLOWS THE BREACH

PERB ordered Alliance, upon request, to place the ratified articles back on the table, to meet weekly face to face, and to report progress to the Office of the General Counsel. Make whole relief runs from January 1, 2025. It measures the difference between what unit members would have received under the tentative agreements and what they received under the status quo, plus interest compounded daily, until the parties ratify a written agreement or the employer lawfully imposes terms after good faith negotiations and completed impasse procedures. The union may also recover bargaining costs and diverted resources caused in material part by the violations.

The Board emphasized that the parties were bargaining a first contract. Conduct that would wound an established relationship does more damage when the exclusive representative is still proving that a signed deal means something.

TAKEAWAYS

Unions should treat a governing body’s vote on a ratified tentative agreement as bargaining conduct, not as a civic ritual outside the labor statutes. The association should request the reasons in writing the same day as the vote, and the request should ask what changed, which terms the board found unacceptable, and what facts support that conclusion.

Public safety associations that bargain under the Meyers Milias Brown Act have an additional statutory hook. Section 3505.1 already exposes a rejection to unfair practice litigation and already imposes a thirty-day clock. PERB now requires the post-rejection explanation to be specific enough to restart negotiations on the basis of mutual understanding.

A Big Win for Proportionate Discipline in CHP Sergeant's Appeal

Mastagni Holstedt and the California Association of Highway Patrolmen secured a significant victory on September 11, 2026, when the San Bernardino County Superior Court denied the California Highway Patrol’s petition for a writ of mandate in California Highway Patrol v. California State Personnel Board (Case No. CIVSB2517865). Judge Lily L. Sinfield upheld the State Personnel Board’s decision to reject dismissal of Sergeant Daniel Howard and to impose a demotion to officer instead. The result is a big win for fairness and for the principle that serious work can include human error without ending a career. 

The night that produced the charges was unlike anything most highway patrol supervisors ever confront. On June 22, 2021, Raymond Loftin stole a Peterbilt tractor and drove it the wrong way on Inland Empire freeways at speeds of sixty to seventy five miles per hour. He evaded officers across multiple jurisdictions for about an hour and a half, blew through three traffic breaks, continued on a sparking rim after a spike strip, and struck a guardrail before meeting a roadblock on Interstate 10. A CHP lieutenant with nearly thirty years of service testified that he had never seen a big rig driven the wrong way on multiple freeways.  Howard, a combat veteran, had worn sergeant stripes for less than two months. He had not received specialized sergeant training and had not yet come to know the Rancho Cucamonga officers under his command. He found himself directing five officers in that unprecedented scene.

The Department sought to end Howard’s career for his conduct during the pursuit and the shooting that followed. Howard appealed. After a six day evidentiary hearing, Administrative Law Judge Gregory W. Brown sustained some allegations and rejected others. He found dismissal too harsh. The State Personnel Board adopted that proposed decision on November 4, 2024, and reduced the penalty to a demotion from sergeant to officer. The Department then asked the superior court to overturn the Board’s decision. The court refused.

The Board’s reasoning, which the court accepted, recognized he faced a difficult incident that required a balanced penalty. Howard had fourteen years of service and generally positive performance reviews. He had earned promotion to sergeant and had received commendations. His history demonstrated an established record of public service rather than a pattern of disregard for duty. The Board also credited the extraordinary setting. Howard faced a unique, tricky, and high stakes problem without the training and local familiarity that a more seasoned sergeant would have brought to the same roadblock. He put his own life at risk in an effort to protect others. The administrative law judge found that his actions may have saved innocent motorists or fellow officers.

At the hearing Howard took responsibility for his actions and recognition of the seriousness of the incident. He broke down in tears over the loss of life that occurred in the course of his duties. The administrative law judge found that this response spoke well of his moral character and of his capacity to learn. The evidence supported affording him the opportunity to continue serving.

The evidence and testimony at hearing did not support the CHP’s depiction of his conduct and alleged inconsistent statements. The administrative law judge found that the evidence painted a more complex picture than a simple policy violation, and the court agreed that this was a reasonable reading of the record. Howard explained that his priority was to stop the truck and arrest the occupants. He screamed at the truck to stop as he stepped onto the roadway. On the shooting itself the Department agreed at the hearing that Howard believed the truck was going to hit him. The parties did not contest that Howard fired because he believed he was in imminent danger. Consideration of a proper penalty based on tactical judgments must take into account his reasonable beliefs. The court held that substantial evidence supported the finding that Howard discharged his firearm on that honest perception of imminent harm. The Department’s later argument that he created his own danger by leaving cover did not erase that core fact.

On the claim that he failed to take command after the shots, the record showed chaos ensued, rather than an abandonment of his duty. Another officer warned of possible crossfire in a span of frantic moments. Howard testified that he immediately broadcasted that he had fired, though the transmission may have been muffled by other radio traffic that witnesses described as fast and furious. The court concluded that the Department had not proved by a preponderance of the evidence that Howard failed to advise dispatch that shots had been fired. The record also did not support allegations he lost composure, rather it established he was working through an unfolding crisis with incomplete information and competing radio traffic.

The administrative law judge concluded that demotion would correct the command and safety protocol problems without destroying a fourteen year career. That is proportionate discipline. Employees, including peace officers, make mistakes. The question is whether the penalty matches the person, the circumstances, and the likelihood that the same failure will be repeated. The SPB imposed a measured reduction in rank that keeps the officer in service while removing him from a supervisory role.

Review under Code of Civil Procedure section 1094.5 asks whether the Board stayed within its authority, whether the hearing was fair, and whether the findings and the penalty rest on substantial evidence and reasoned judgment. Generally, a court will afford great deference to the SPB’s determination unless the Board acted arbitrarily or beyond the bounds of reason. See Fisher v. State Personnel Board (2018) 25 Cal.App.5th 1. If reasonable minds can differ on the penalty, the Board’s choice stands. See Department of California Highway Patrol v. State Personnel Board (2026) 122 Cal.App.5th 418.  

Although unpublished, the ruling confirms that a long and generally positive work history is central to any penalty analysis. It also confirms that isolated scrutiny of an imperfect command in an unprecedented pursuit does not render an officer unfit for duty. Howard faced an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury and his decision-making must be considered in light of his work history, gaps in his training, his commendations, and genuine remorse.

AB 692 Limits New Training Cost Charges When Officers Transfer

 California’s stay or pay statute, Assembly Bill 692, was enacted to stop employers from charging workers a debt, fee, or training cost because they leave a job. The law adds Business and Professions Code section 16608 and Labor Code section 926. Public safety members face a narrower question. Does the statute change the cases that allowed some departments to bill officers who transfer after the academy?

AB 692 does not overrule those decisions. It sits on top of them. Agreements already signed remain subject to the older authorities. Agreements executed after the statute’s operative date face a prohibition those authorities never supplied.

BACKGROUND

Agencies long tried to slow lateral movement by making academy graduates repay a share of training costs if they left before a set term of service. Oakland used a prorated figure tied to five years and placed the term in the memorandum of understanding and the conditional offer. The First District in City of Oakland v. Hassey (2008) 163 Cal.App.4th 1477 held that such a clause was not an unlawful restraint under Business and Professions Code section 16600 because the officer remained free to work elsewhere. The court treated the obligation as contractual reimbursement rather than a covenant not to compete. It refused to decide Labor Code section 2802 because the issue arrived too late, and it barred collection through the final paycheck.

The Fourth District later reached the section 2802 question Hassey left open. In In re Acknowledgment Cases (2015) 239 Cal.App.4th 1498, Los Angeles required every recruit to attend its academy and repay prorated costs after an early departure to another agency. The court drew a disticntion. Basic POST certification is a statewide licensure prerequisite obtainable from more than one provider, so those hours are not standing alone an expense of discharging the duties of employment with a particular city. Department specific hours that the agency itself requires and delivers are expenses covered by section 2802 . A contract that waives that protection is void under Labor Code section 2804. Because Los Angeles bundled both categories and offered no apportionment, the entire acknowledgment failed.

The First District in USS POSCO Industries v. Case (2016) 244 Cal.App.4th 197 later upheld repayment of a voluntary and transferable private training program. That opinion helps optional coursework. It is a poor fit for a required police academy. The Ninth Circuit in Gordon v. City of Oakland (9th Cir. 2010) 627 F.3d 913 separately held that Oakland’s arrangement was not an FLSA kickback if the officer received at least the minimum wage in the final workweek. That federal holding does not control section 2802 or section 16608.

THE STATUTE

AB 692 makes it unlawful, for contracts entered on or after its operative date, to require payment of a debt if the relationship ends, to authorize collection upon termination, or to impose any penalty, fee, or cost because the relationship ends. Debt is defined broadly enough to reach education related costs. A violating term is treated as void under section 16600. A worker may sue for actual damages or five thousand dollars per worker, whichever is greater, together with fees and injunctive relief. The remedies are cumulative and expressly preserve section 2802 and the Unfair Competition Law.

The transferable credential exception reaches tuition for a degree from an accredited third party institution that is not required for the current job and that meets strict separate contract, cost cap, and proration conditions. POST basic training is a statutory prerequisite to exercising peace officer powers. Attendance is ordinarily a condition of hire. A classic in house academy clause does not fit the exception.

AB 1697, enrolled and presented to the Governor on September 3, 2026, would move the contract date from January 1, 2026 to January 1, 2027. Until the Governor acts, the original date remains on the books. If the delay is signed, 2026 contracts fall back under the pre statute cases.

WHAT CHANGES AND WHAT DOES NOT

Hassey held that a separation triggered academy repayment was not an unlawful restraint under section 16600. AB 692 reaches the opposite result by statute for new contracts. After the operative date, a department cannot rest a new acknowledgment on Hassey’s section 16600 reasoning. Optional college coursework that actually meets the transferable credential conditions may still be structured. A required academy cannot be rescued by calling it a loan.

The statute is prospective. Legacy papers signed before the operative date remain governed by Hassey, the Acknowledgment Cases, and USS POSCO. Recovery that isolates documented POST basic costs from an officer who leaves voluntarily may still be argued on those older instruments. Recovery that reaches academy wages or department mandated hours beyond POST remains barred by sections 2802 and 2804. Collection through the final paycheck remains independently unlawful. Because AB 692’s remedies are cumulative with section 2802, the 2015 decision continues to invalidate the department specific slice of any clause, old or new.

The statute speaks of an “employer” in general terms. The leading cases all involved municipal departments, which supports coverage. AB 1697 discusses collective bargaining calendars as a reason for delay. It does not enact a general memorandum of understanding exemption.

Published Appellate Decision Confirms Make Whole Relief When Agencies Skip Effects Bargaining Over Pension Changes

On August 28, 2026, the Second District Court of Appeal, Division Seven, certified for publication its decision in City of Los Angeles v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Nos. B336981 and B340065. The court affirmed an order of the City of Los Angeles Employee Relations Board requiring the City to bargain the effects of ending pension reciprocity and to make represented employees whole for reduced pensions and related losses until that bargaining obligation is satisfied. Publication converts a municipal labor dispute into statewide guidance under the Meyers-Milias-Brown Act.

BACKGROUND

From approximately 1980 until 2014, employees transferring between the Department of Water and Power and other City departments could carry pension service credit between the Water and Power Employees’ Retirement Plan and the Los Angeles City Employees’ Retirement System, with the result that the receiving plan treated the worker as if the entire career had been spent under that system. In 2010 the Water and Power Employees’ Retirement Plan Board commissioned a study that found net transfers had added approximately $183 million to that plan’s unfunded liability, and the Board voted to suspend reciprocity. The City thereafter adopted Ordinance No. 182824, effective January 1, 2014, and stopped counting prior Water and Power service when calculating Los Angeles City Employees’ Retirement System benefit amounts, except for the limited purpose of determining eligibility to retire.

The financial effect on employees who had moved between the two systems was substantial. A stipulated example established that a Senior Clerk Typist who spent fifteen years in each system would receive $16,195 less each year than the employee would have received under reciprocity, and an employee earning $100,000 who sought to purchase two years of lost service would have been required to pay $60,000. The Coalition of City Unions demanded that the City meet and confer over those consequences. The City refused formal bargaining and offered only to answer questions.

THE ERB’S FINDINGS

The Employee Relations Board found that the City had no duty to bargain the decision to end reciprocity. Administrative Code section 4.1095, subdivision (k), made complete portability dependent upon participation by the Water and Power Employees’ Retirement Plan, and once that plan withdrew the City was obligated to stop counting the transferred service for benefit amounts. The City nevertheless retained discretion over the manner in which the change would be implemented. Disability retirement calculations, recognition of prior service for benefit amounts, retiree health treatment after a transfer, protected leave return windows, transfer rules, and the price of buying back service credit were effects of the decision rather than the decision itself, and those subjects therefore had to be bargained.

DECISION BARGAINING VERSUS EFFECTS BARGAINING

The court recognized the controlling distinction between decision bargaining and effects bargaining under the Meyers-Milias-Brown Act. Decision bargaining applies when the employer’s action itself falls within the scope of representation because the action significantly affects wages, hours, or other terms and conditions of employment, and a successful decision bargaining case can support rescission of the policy and restoration of the prior rule. Effects bargaining applies when the underlying decision lies outside the scope of representation, yet the policy change has reasonably foreseeable impacts on bargainable subjects. Pensions, severance, vacation, and seniority are classic effects subjects. The employer may lawfully make the core decision, but it must still give notice and an opportunity to bargain the effects after the decision is firm and before implementation.

The court treated the controversy as an effects bargaining case because the City could lawfully end reciprocity once its partner plan withdrew. Residual discretion over implementation, rather than any vested right to the former formula, is what made bargaining mandatory. The court therefore did not order restoration of the reciprocal arrangement itself and instead required bargaining over the discretionary aspects of implementation.

THE REMEDY

The court recognized that the Board could not recreate the arrangement that existed before 2014 or compel a nonparty retirement plan to return to it, and that full restoration of the prior system was therefore unavailable. The court held that a proper effects remedy must include an order to bargain together with limited make whole relief that continues until the parties reach agreement, reach impasse and exhaust any procedures that follow impasse, or the exclusive representative fails to request bargaining or to bargain in good faith. Back pay in this setting must include pension losses and other benefit reductions, and doubts about the measure of that relief are resolved against the employer whose unlawful conduct created the uncertainty.

The City argued that the make whole order conflicted with American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees v. City of Los Angeles (2025) 109 Cal.App.5th 179, which held that employees possessed no vested contractual right to continued reciprocity. The court refused to conflate the vested rights doctrine with the statutory duty to bargain under the Meyers-Milias-Brown Act. The absence of a vested right does not erase the duty to bargain effects. The employees were not awarded permanent restoration of reciprocity. They were instead restored, for a limited period, to the economic position they occupied when the bargaining duty attached.

That approach is consistent with Boling v. Public Employment Relations Board (2019) 33 Cal.App.5th 376, which held that when a labor board cannot undo the underlying action, compensatory payments run until agreement or impasse. A permanent order would have functioned as a repeal of the 2013 Ordinance and would have exceeded the Board’s remedial authority. The court instead approved a bridge remedy that restores the economic status quo only until bargaining concludes and that does not compel the City Council to legislate.

THE BOARD’S AUTHORITY

The Board’s authority to award that relief was not confined to a prospective cease and desist order. The court relied on Ordinance section 4.810, subdivision (f)(12), which authorizes the Board to perform such other duties as may be necessary to carry out its responsibilities, and on Government Code section 3509, subdivision (d), which requires the Board to issue orders consistent with the policies of the Meyers-Milias-Brown Act. The Public Employment Relations Board has long treated retroactive make whole relief as standard relief for compensating harm, deterring unilateral action, and restoring bilateralism. The Employee Relations Board’s reading of its ordinance was therefore not clearly erroneous. Because the analysis rests on the Act rather than on a local peculiarity, the Public Employment Relations Board and other reviewing courts should be expected to follow it. The court also affirmed attorney fees under Code of Civil Procedure section 1021.5 and directed a further fee award on appeal.

TAKEAWAYS

The published opinion confirms that effects bargaining is not a lesser right. It identifies pension features that remain negotiable even after a lawful plan design decision, including disability calculations, service recognition for benefit amounts, retiree health treatment after a transfer, leave return windows, transfer rules, and the cost of buying prior service. An agency that implements first and bargains later can face make whole liability measured by the pension dollars members actually lost.

It is therefore advisable that exclusive representatives treat any announced change to reciprocal service credit, disability calculation, retiree medical eligibility, or service purchase terms as an event that at a minimum triggers an effects bargaining obligation. Notwithstanding an employer’s claim that plan design is reserved, the foreseeable impacts on pension amounts and related benefits remain inside the statutory duty. In light of the fee holding, successful enforcement of that duty can support an award under Code of Civil Procedure section 1021.5. The exclusive representative must request effects bargaining promptly and must participate in good faith, because a failure to do so can terminate the make whole remedy. For members who transfer, promote, or retire across systems, the opinion imposes a meaningful limitation on an employer’s ability to implement pension related changes unilaterally and to retain the resulting savings before the bargaining duty has been satisfied.

PORAC, CAHP, and CPRC Urge the US Supreme Court to Invalidate Semi-Automatic Rifle Bans

Mastagni Holstedt, APC was privileged to file an Amicus Curiae brief in the Supreme Court of the United States on behalf of the Peace Officers Research Association of California, the California Association of Highway Patrolmen, and the Crime Prevention Research Center in Viramontes v. Cook County, No. 25-238. The brief supports the petitioners’ challenge to Cook County’s semiautomatic rifle ordinance and to Illinois’s Protect Illinois Communities Act. Those restrictions track California’s assault weapon statutes. They also bear on pending Ninth Circuit challenges to the Unsafe Handgun Act’s feature-based ban on most modern handguns. PORAC and CAHP have filed a brief in that appeal challenging the constitutionality of the UHA. Viramontes will also determine whether California peace officers may retain, after retirement, the same commonly owned rifles they lawfully carried in public service.

The organizations speak from professional experience rather than from a partisan political perspective. PORAC and CAHP represent rank and file officers who enforce firearms laws every day, the men and women who run toward gunfire. CPRC conducts rigorous academic crime research. Their shared perspective supports sound public policy that disarms prohibited persons, confines violent offenders through firearm enhancements, and protects the self-defense rights of law-abiding citizens. They reject the approach of blaming the tools of self-defense while excusing the failure of state officials to enforce existing laws and to impose consequences on violent criminals.

Common Use Ends the Inquiry

The Second Amendment’s text covers the keeping and bearing of arms. Once that threshold is met, the government must demonstrate a historical tradition of comparable regulation. District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008); New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022). Arms “in common use” for lawful purposes may not be banned. That protection reaches even arms unknown at the founding, subject only to the limitation that “dangerous and unusual” weapons not “in common use” may be restricted.

AR-15 platform rifles satisfy that test because they are in common use. Americans own an estimated twenty to thirty million of them. They are lawful in forty-one States. Owners keep them for self-defense, target shooting, hunting, and pest control. Their ergonomics, modest recoil, and accuracy make them well suited to defense of the home. A firearm tens of millions of responsible citizens have chosen is not “dangerous and unusual.” Laws that treat these rifles as the functional equivalent of machine guns cannot be reconciled with Heller.

The Data on Gun Crime Refutes the Safety Rationale

The States defend these bans as necessary public safety measures. The empirical record does not support that claim. Criminals rarely obtain firearms through the lawful retail channels these statutes regulate. Bureau of Justice Statistics prisoner surveys show that most offenders who used a gun stole it, found it, or bought it on the street or in the underground market.

Rifles of every type account for a small and shrinking share of homicides. In 2025, of 16,091 murders in which the weapon was identified, only 494 involved a rifle or shotgun. That is fewer than 3.1 percent. The rifle share of firearm murders was 4.8 percent before the 1994 federal assault weapons ban, 4.9 percent while that ban was in effect, and 3.6 percent afterward, even as civilian ownership of AR-15s and similar platforms rose sharply.

Handguns, not rifles, are used in most felonious killings of officers. The rifle share did not fall during the decade of the federal ban.

National Institute of Justice evaluations of the 1994 ban found no discernible reduction in gun violence or in the lethality of gun crime. Independent state-level work controlling for preexisting differences and other gun laws reached the same conclusion. RAND’s synthesis and a 2005 systematic review in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found no significant evidence that assault weapon restrictions reduce violent crime, homicide, or mass shootings. Mass public shooting data from 1998 through 2025 show that a majority of attacks used only handguns. Rifles of any type appeared in a minority of incidents. The deadliest attacks typically involved multiple weapon types rather than a single banned rifle.

Although the effectiveness of these rifle bans is not the historical test applied by the Court, the data is presented to refute the false premises used to enact these statutes.

California Extinguishes the Officer’s Right at Retirement

Peace officers and their families face reprisal risks that do not end with their shift or at retirement. California nevertheless treats possession of these arms as a revocable employment privilege. An officer may possess a registered “assault weapon” only while employed by a qualifying agency and only upon the agency head’s written certification of the specific firearm. Off-duty possession is confined to limited locations absent a Department of Justice permit. When employment ends, the right collapses. Cal. Penal Code §§ 30625, 30630(a), (b)(1)–(2), 30945(a)–(g), 31000(a)–(c).

Within ninety days the departing officer must permanently disable the rifle, sell it to a licensed dealer, obtain a difficult permit, or remove it from the State. Registered weapons may not be transferred to anyone in California except a licensed dealer. Weapons surrendered to law enforcement are forfeited for destruction. Cal. Penal Code §§ 30915(a)–(d), 30910, 30605. California thus forbids the officer simply to keep at home the rifle he or she lawfully acquired, registered, and carried for years of public service. Federal LEOSA grants qualified retired officers a nationwide concealed carry right, but it leaves the State’s possession ban intact. 18 U.S.C. §§ 926B, 926C.

The contradiction is dispositive of the safety rationale. If a trained, vetted, background-checked officer may carry the arm on duty for decades, there is no principled basis to treat that same officer as too dangerous to own it in retirement, or to deny it to any other law-abiding citizen.

Feature Bans Are Designed to Evade Heller

When a legislature cannot ban a common firearm by name, it bans ordinary commercial features instead. Those features include pistol grips, folding or telescoping stocks, flash suppressors, and detachable magazines. The feature prohibition does the work of banning the arm. California has carried that method furthest. It first applied the approach to rifles, then to standard capacity magazines, and then to most modern handguns through the UHA. Few, if any, California officers carry a handgun that meets the UHA requirements, even though they carry those same purportedly unsafe handguns on duty, when they are most likely to use them for self-defense. The result is a de facto freeze on new semiautomatic handguns even as agencies issue those same “unsafe” pistols for duty. Boland v. Bonta, 662 F. Supp. 3d 1077 (C.D. Cal. 2023). PORAC and CAHP filed a brief in the Ninth Circuit challenging the UHA in Boland.

A ban on a feature is, in operation, a ban on every common arm that bears it. Heller’s common-use test therefore resolves the question. Even if the Court proceeds to Bruen’s “how and why” inquiry, the bans fail. Reducing firearm misuse is a concern as old as the Republic. The Founders could have banned common arms and did not. No founding-era tradition supports prohibiting possession of arms in common use, whether the prohibition is labeled by model or by feature. United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680 (2024), confirms that the Nation’s tradition properly targets dangerous persons, not the common arms responsible citizens choose. PORAC and CAHP support Rahimi. A State cannot, however, erase Second Amendment rights through incremental hardware mandates. In the Court’s words, a right that can be erased in that manner is no constitutional guarantee at all. Heller, 554 U.S. at 635.

California Restricts the Law-Abiding While Relaxing Enforcement Against the Violent

California legislates aggressively against citizens who obey the law. At the same time, the State exhibits no equivalent zeal for keeping firearms from prohibited persons. It made once-mandatory firearm enhancements discretionary. It directed courts to dismiss enhancements in the furtherance of justice and to give great weight to circumstances favoring dismissal. It opened parole and resentencing pathways for certain individuals serving life without parole for serious, often firearm-related, offenses. The recent Glock ban was prompted by a Sacramento mass shooting committed by a violent felon released from prison six years early. Nevertheless, California tolerates widespread nonenforcement of laws already barring felons from possessing any firearm. Its Armed and Prohibited Persons System carries a backlog of approximately 24,000 individuals known to possess firearms unlawfully.

The cost is not hypothetical. On June 14, 2022, two El Monte police officers were murdered by a gang member who should have been imprisoned on a prior firearm possession arrest. He went free when the district attorney declined to enforce prohibited-persons laws.

A government serious about gun violence prosecutes armed felons. It does not ban common rifles from law-abiding people, and it does not disarm retired peace officers.

What a Favorable Ruling Would Mean for California Officers

A reversal would confirm that arms in common use may not be banned and that feature-based restrictions are measured by their burden rather than their label. The same principle would reach pending challenges to California’s assault weapon statutes, magazine limits, and the Unsafe Handgun Act. Officers who spent careers carrying these rifles would no longer be required to disable, sell, or exile them the day the badge comes off. Law-abiding citizens would regain access to the Nation’s most popular defensive rifles.

Amici ask the Court to hold that these statutes violate the Second Amendment. The brief reflects the work of David E. Mastagni  and Alexandra Holland of Mastagni Holstedt, APC, and Timothy K. Talbot and Michael A. Morguess of RLSSS. This blog will continue to report on the case as it develops. Our firm is proud to stand with amici on this case of national importance.

READ THE BRIEF HERE.