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. 

California Supreme Court Halts the Appeals Board's Practice of Extending Its Own Reconsideration Deadline

A significant win for California public safety employees and the unions that represent them

By Mastagni Holstedt, APC Partner David E. Mastagni and Senior Associate Jonathan D. Char

The California Supreme Court has delivered a decision that strengthens the finality of workers' compensation awards for the firefighters, peace officers, and other public safety employees who depend on them. In Mayor v. Workers' Compensation Appeals Board, the Court held that the Workers' Compensation Appeals Board may not extend its own statutory deadline of sixty days to act on a petition for reconsideration, and it made clear that the Board's administrative delays cannot excuse that failure. Mayor v. Workers' Comp. Appeals Bd., No. S287261, 2026 WL 2470051 (Cal. Aug. 24, 2026) Public safety unions should welcome this ruling because it protects an injured member's hard-won award from administrative irregularity and from the Board’s own neglect and system systemic failure.

The dispute arose from an all-too-familiar pattern. Joseph Mayor suffered an industrial injury while working for the Ross Valley Sanitation District, and a workers' compensation judge found him permanently and totally disabled. The employer filed a timely petition for reconsideration, yet the petition never reached the Board within the 60-day window because the workers' compensation judge never acted on or transmitted it for reasons the record does not explain, and the Board did not grant reconsideration until roughly 144 days after the petition was filed. The Board justified this lengthy delay by invoking Shipley v. Workers' Compensation Appeals Board, and by asserting that an administrative irregularity had prevented it from receiving the petition on time. The Court rejected that justification and restored the certainty that the governing statute demands.

At the heart of the decision lies Labor Code section 5909. In the version that governed Mayor, a petition for reconsideration was deemed denied unless the Board acted within sixty days of filing. The Legislature has since amended the statute so that the sixty days now runs from the date the trial judge transmits the case to the Board. The Court agreed that this deadline is mandatory and that the Board possesses no authority to toll its own time to act. The Court explained that equitable tolling exists to allow litigants to pursue claims despite certain equitable circumstances, and it does not exist to rescue an agency from its own missed deadline. The Court further reasoned that the statute serves the essential purpose of ensuring that petitions do not languish, and it concluded that permitting the Board to toll the deadline because of its own inefficiency or neglect would defeat that purpose entirely. When the Board acts after the sixty-day period expires, it acts in excess of its jurisdiction, even though it does not lose fundamental jurisdiction over the matter.

The Court reserved particular scrutiny for the Board's habitual reliance on Shipley. It disapproved Shipley to the extent that the decision implied that every party enjoys a due process right to Board review of a petition after the sixty-day deadline has passed. The Court recognized that narrow circumstances may exist in which due process permits the Board to act late, yet it emphasized that the Board had transformed Shipley into a routine workaround for a recurring and systemic failure to receive petitions on time. The Court did not catalog those narrow circumstances, but it made clear where the floor lies. In footnote 7, it explained that "[m]ore is required to establish a due process violation resulting from the failure to timely rule on a petition for reconsideration than the simple filing of a reconsideration petition and the expiration of the statutory deadline to act." That systemic breakdown, the Court held, cannot justify a self-administered remedy that allows the Board to toll its own statutory deadline whenever it falls behind. This portion of the opinion forecloses the very rationale that agencies have used to keep contested awards open indefinitely. That said, Mayor does not eliminate every avenue for prolonging a case. Its holding reaches only untimely Board action, meaning action taken after the statutory deadline has run. If the Board acts within the sixty-day window, it may still grant reconsideration, including a grant for further study, and that timely order keeps the award from becoming final while reconsideration proceedings continue. Because no statutory clock comparable to section 5909 governs how long the Board may then take to issue its decision after reconsideration, a timely grant can leave an award unresolved for a substantial period. What Mayor forecloses is the Board's use of its own delay to manufacture more time after the deadline has already passed.

The practical value of this decision for unions and their members becomes clear when one considers what open ended delay actually costs an injured worker. Mayor won an award of total and permanent disability, yet he received no compensation for years while the reconsideration dispute remained unresolved, and the Court expressly noted that the Board's practice of tolling its own deadline opens the door to open ended extensions. A firefighter who suffers a career ending injury cannot afford to wait while an agency sits on a petition, and this ruling ensures that the statutory clock means what it says. By insisting on finality, the Court protects the reasonable expectation of every public safety employee that a favorable award will become enforceable on a predictable timeline. That predictability cuts both ways. The same sixty-day rule that finalizes a favorable award also runs against an injured worker whose own petition for reconsideration is deemed denied when the Board fails to act in time. In that situation, the worker cannot wait on the Board. Once the petition is denied by operation of law, the member’s only route is a timely petition for writ of review in the Court of Appeal, and that petition must be filed within forty-five days.

The decision provides tools to enforce the deadline rather than wait indefinitely for the Board to act. The Court confirmed that a petition for writ of mandate filed in the Court of Appeal is the proper mechanism for an affected party to compel the Board to honor section 5909. A union member who prevailed before the workers' compensation judge and who watches the Board blow past the statutory window now has a clear judicial path to protect the award. This remedy transforms the sixty-day deadline from an aspiration into an enforceable command, and it places meaningful leverage in the hands of the employees and advocates who invoke it. Which remedy applies depends on what the Board does once the sixty days run. If the Board simply fails to act and the petition is denied by operation of law, the adversely affected party must move quickly, because that finality holds unless the party timely seeks review. In that situation, the remedy is a petition for writ of review in the Court of Appeal, and it must be filed within forty-five days of the deemed denial. If instead the Board acts after the deadline has passed, the remedy is different. There, the party affected by the untimely order enforces the deadline through a petition for writ of mandate, which the Court held is the proper way to compel the Board to honor section 5909. Either way, the sixty-day deadline operates as a firm limit on the Board's power, but it protects only the party who tracks the deadlines and seeks the correct writ in time.

Mayor is a reaffirmation that the workers' compensation system exists to deliver substantial justice expeditiously rather than to accommodate bureaucratic delay. Although the Legislature has since modified the statute so that the sixty-day period begins when the trial judge transmits the case to the Board, the principle that administrative problems must not leave injured workers and their benefits in legal limbo endures. Firefighters and peace officers accept extraordinary risks in the service of their communities, and this decision recognizes that the compensation they earn will not remain hostage to an agency's own missed deadlines.

California Supreme Court Clarifies Declaratory Relief Under the CPRA and Rejects an Implied Three-Year Retention Duty Under the CPRA

On January 15, 2026, the California Supreme Court issued its decision in City of Gilroy v. Superior Court, 19 Cal. 5th 38 (2026). Writing for a unanimous Court, Chief Justice Guerrero resolved two questions of first impression under the California Public Records Act, Cal. Gov’t Code § 7920.000 et seq. The Court considered whether declaratory relief remains available after an agency has produced all existing responsive and nonexempt records, and whether the Act itself imposes a three year retention obligation once an agency asserts a statutory exemption. The decision carries practical significance for every public safety agency that regularly receives requests for body worn camera footage and related enforcement records.

Background

The dispute arose from successive requests that the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley submitted to the City of Gilroy beginning in 2018. Those requests sought, among other materials, Gilroy Police Department body worn camera recordings related to homeless encampment cleanups. The City asserted that the footage fell within a statutory exemption, conducted a search that the trial court later found inadequate, and destroyed certain recordings under its ordinary retention schedule while the requests remained pending. After the City produced the nonexempt footage still in its possession, the Law Foundation sought both mandamus and declaratory relief. The superior court granted limited declaratory relief concerning the City’s search practices and exemption assertions, yet determined that the Act created no independent retention duty. The Court of Appeal then held that declaratory relief became unavailable once the City had disclosed all remaining nonexempt records and that the Act imposes no three-year preservation requirement. 

Holdings

The Supreme Court reversed in part and remanded for further proceedings, holding that Cal. Gov’t Code § 7923.000 authorizes declaratory relief in at least some circumstances even after disclosure of all existing responsive and nonexempt records. The statutory command that a court may enforce a requester’s right to inspect or receive public records does not confine that enforcement power to contemporaneous production orders. Declaratory relief remains proper where a declaration would resolve an ongoing controversy concerning the parties’ rights and obligations under the Act in a manner that has some likelihood of affecting future records requests or future agency conduct. The trial court’s declarations addressing the City’s inadequate search and its blanket assertion of exemption without review of the body camera footage met that standard, and those declarations therefore survive the subsequent production of remaining records. 

On the retention question the Court reached the opposite result and affirmed the Court of Appeal. It rejected the argument that the Act imposes a three year retention period commencing from the moment an agency invokes a statutory exemption, because nothing in the text of the Act creates such a duty. The Court noted that the Legislature expressly enacted retention requirements for certain records in otehr statutes, including body worn camera data under Cal. Penal Code § 832.18, yet did not include retnetion requirements in the CPRA. Inferring a broad preservation obligation from the availability of judicial review or from the constitutional policy favoring access would rewrite a detailed statute to add a requirement the Legislature did not address. The Court limited the opinion to the ordinary operation of routine retention schedules, leaving open questions that might arise from intentional destruction undertaken for improper purposes. 

Take-Aways

Agencies cannot assume that production of remaining records will automatically moot claims for declaratory relief concerning search adequacy, the propriety of exemption claims, or compliance with response timelines. A declaration that an agency failed to conduct a reasonable search or improperly asserted a categorical exemption without segregating nonexempt material may still issue and may support an award of attorney fees under section 7923.115 if the requester is deemed to have prevailed. Departments that receive recurring requests for body-worn camera footage of enforcement activity therefore have a continuing incentive to document search efforts carefully, review footage before asserting exemptions, and provide specific rather than boilerplate justifications for withholding.

On the other hand, the rejection of an implied three-year hold provides agencies a significant win. The Act does not require public safety agencies to freeze every record once an official claims an exemption. Retention continues to turn on the agency’s adopted schedules and on any specialized statutes that govern particular media, including body worn camera recordings. Agencies should implement litigation holds when they reasonably anticipate litigation, as they already must under generally applicable preservation duties. The Act, however, does not convert every exemption claim into a three year preservation mandate of its own force.

Justice Groban filed a concurrence, which Justices Corrigan and Kruger joined, that supplies a useful limiting principle. In his view the Act does not authorize declaratory relief solely to pronounce that an agency’s past conduct violated the statute where the requester offers no evidence of a pattern or practice of violations and where the agency does not dispute its legal obligations. Broader use of the remedy, he warned, could incentivize requests pursued principally for fee recovery and could discourage agencies from reconsidering initial withholding decisions. That guidance should help courts and agencies distinguish controversies capable of guiding future conduct from isolated or technical disputes that warrant no declaration.

Conclusion

City of Gilroy therefore confirms that the Act remains a potent instrument for enforcing transparency while making equally plain that the statute is not a general records retention code. In light of the Court’s willingness to declare past practices unlawful even after production is complete, agencies will likely examine existing search protocols and exemption procedures now rather than await the next recurring request.  

The Supreme Court Says Cannabis Use Alone Cannot Disarm You. What Does that Mean for California Cops?

California peace officers now stand at the intersection of two bodies of law that pull in opposite directions. State law shields their right to use cannabis when they are not on duty, while federal law forbids anyone who uses cannabis from possessing the very firearm that their profession demands. The Supreme Court has just unsettled the federal side of that equation in United States v. Hemani, and its decision invites a fresh look at whether an officer who lawfully uses cannabis away from work may still be denied the badge and the gun. United States v. Hemani, 146 S. Ct. 1677 (2026) The answer is not yet clear, and the competing arguments deserve careful attention.

The Legislature spoke plainly when it enacted Assembly Bill 2188 and Senate Bill 700, which amended Government Code section 12954 and took effect on January 1, 2024. That statute makes it an unlawful employment practice for an employer to penalize a worker for using cannabis off the job and away from the workplace, and it forbids reliance on a drug test that detects only the nonpsychoactive cannabis metabolites that linger in the body long after any effect has passed. Gov Code § 12954. The Legislature exempted only employees in the building and construction trades, and it said nothing at all about peace officers. Because the Legislature expressly excluded one occupation and left every other unmentioned, officers possess a legitimate argument that the omission of their profession was deliberate and that the new protection reaches them. The statute therefore begins from a position that appears to favor the officer who uses cannabis on personal time.

That favorable starting point gives way, however, to several exemptions that may prove decisive for law enforcement. Section 12954 does not permit an employee to use or to be impaired by cannabis on the job, it preserves an employer's authority to maintain a drug free workplace, and it expressly leaves intact any other rights or obligations that state or federal law places on the employer. The statute also declines to preempt any state or federal law that requires controlled substance testing as a condition of employment, and it removes from its protection any position that requires a federal government background investigation or security clearance. The difficulty is that the ordinary municipal or county officer completes a state background investigation for good moral character under Government Code section 1031, not the federal investigation that the exemption describes, and Government Code section 1029 disqualifies only those convicted of a felony rather than those who use cannabis. Whether these provisions carve officers out of the statute or leave them comfortably within it remains genuinely uncertain.

The sharpest tension arises not from the employment statute but from the firearm that every sworn officer must carry. Federal law makes it unlawful for any person who is an unlawful user of a controlled substance to possess a firearm, and cannabis remains a Schedule I controlled substance under federal law no matter how completely California has legalized it. An officer who uses cannabis therefore appears, at least on the face of the statute, to be a person whom Congress has forbidden to hold a tool that the job requires. That same officer who buys a personal weapon must attest truthfully on the federal firearms transaction record that he is not an unlawful user of marijuana, and a false answer carries federal criminal exposure. The firearm requirement, far more than anything in the employment code, is what has long threatened to place cannabis-using officers outside the protection that Assembly Bill 2188 seems to promise.

For years the governing federal authority in California cut sharply against the officer. The Ninth Circuit in Wilson v. Lynch, 835 F.3d 1083 (9th Cir. 2016) applied a two-step inquiry and intermediate scrutiny and upheld the federal restrictions that keep marijuana users, including the holders of a state medical marijuana card, from acquiring firearms. The court reasoned that these laws burden the Second Amendment only minimally and incidentally, and it concluded that the Constitution tolerates such modest collateral burdens. Wilson supplied a straightforward answer that a cannabis user could be kept from the firearm and therefore from the job. That answer, however, rested on the Ninth Circuit’s Second Amendment analysis that the Supreme Court has rejected.

The ground shifted when the Supreme Court decided New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen and directed courts to measure firearm regulations against the Nation's historical tradition rather than against tiers of scrutiny. United States v. Hemani, 146 S. Ct. 1677 (2026), decided on June 18, 2026, applied that framework to the very statute at issue here. Ali Hemani used marijuana a few times a week, and the government sought to imprison and permanently disarm him on that basis alone, without any claim that he was an addict, that he was intoxicated while armed, or that he had ever posed a danger to anyone. The Court held that the prosecution could not stand, because the historical laws the government invoked, the old regimes that restrained habitual drunkards through vagrancy, civil commitment, and surety bonds, targeted persons whose intoxication left them incapacitated and operated only after some form of legal process. Section 922(g)(3), by contrast, automatically disarms any regular user of any controlled substance without proof of incapacity, intoxication, or dangerousness, and the Court concluded that this automatic and status driven ban does not fit within the Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation. Applying the statute to Hemani on those facts therefore violated the Second Amendment.

The Court took evident care to confine its ruling. It did not decide whether Congress may disarm those who are addicted or presently intoxicated, it did not disturb the separate prohibition on firearm possession by convicted felons, and, most importantly for officers, it did not resolve whether the government may proceed under the statute when it offers individualized proof that a person's drug use renders him a danger to himself or others. The holding thus dismantles one categorical justification for disarming cannabis users while expressly preserving room for a narrower approach that rests on individualized findings.

Arguably, if the federal firearm ban cannot constitutionally reach a person merely because he uses cannabis, then an agency can no longer prohibit marijuana use based on the contention that such an officer is legally incapable of possessing their duty weapon. Under this argument, the exemptions from section 12954 may not apply, because they preserve only employer obligations that federal law genuinely imposes, and under Hemani federal law may not impose a firearm disability based on cannabis use alone. The earlier Ninth Circuit rule in Wilson, resting on a repudiated legal framework, looks increasingly invalid after Hemani. Thus, an officer disciplined solely because he or she uses cannabis may run afoul of the categorical prohibition that the Supreme Court has now rejected. Read together, Assembly Bill 2188 and Hemani suggest the officer may be protected from discipline.

However, the application of Assembly Bill 2188 to peace officers remains unclear. Hemani decided only an as applied challenge that turned on the complete absence of any individualized showing, and the Court pointedly left open a prosecution supported by individualized proof of dangerousness. An agency may contend that an officer who carries a loaded firearm in public every single day presents exactly the individualized safety concern that the Court declined to reach, so that the reasoning of Hemani may provide officers no shelter at all.

Section 12954 independently preserves the employer's right to maintain a drug free workplace and to honor any obligation that federal law and regulation impose, and Government Code section 1031 must be read and applied consistently with federal law. Cannabis also remains unlawful under federal law even where a prosecution under section 922(g)(3) would fail, and the officer who purchases a personal firearm still confronts the sworn federal form and the criminal exposure that a false answer invites. 18 U.S.C.A. § 922. Wilson, while legally suspect, remains binding in the Ninth Circuit until that appellate court or the Supreme Court squarely overrules it, and an agency may reasonably continue to rely upon it.  

The honest conclusion is that the law has not settled and that officers and their employers alike should proceed with caution. Hemani has weakened the categorical federal bar that once made this analysis simple, yet it has deliberately left open the individualized path to enforcement. More importantly, the California exemptions remain untested in any court.

Public safety unions should resist any suggestion that their members must surrender the protections that the Legislature extended, and they should insist that any adverse action rest on an individualized assessment of fitness and risk rather than on cannabis using status alone. Officers, for their part, should remember that cannabis remains unlawful under federal law and should weigh that stubborn reality before they place their careers in the hands of an unsettled disciplinary dispute. Until the Legislature or the courts clarify this issue, prudent officers should tread lightly regarding off-duty cannabis use. 

A Published Victory for Proportionality in California Highway Patrol v. California State Personnel Board

The California Court of Appeal has handed California peace officers a rare and valuable published decision holding that a single, isolated act of dishonesty does not compel termination and does not, by itself, brand an officer as unfit to serve. In California Highway Patrol v. California State Personnel Board, No. B336135 (Cal. Ct. App. July 29, 2026, ordered published Aug. 5, 2026), the Second Appellate District affirmed the State Personnel Board's decision reducing an officer's dismissal to a suspension, and it did so in an opinion that peace officers and the unions who represent them will cite for years to come. Mastagni Holstedt represented the officer, and the published result confirms a principle that agencies too often ignore. Not every act of dishonesty is the same, and the penalty must fit the misconduct and the officer who committed it.

The facts illustrate why proportionality matters. Officer Nathaniel Partridge joined the California Highway Patrol in 2006, compiled a record free of prior discipline, and earned excellent and proficient performance ratings that described him as conscientious, dependable, and ready for promotion. He worked overtime details under the Maintenance Zone Enhanced Enforcement Program, an arrangement through which the Department of Transportation reimbursed the Highway Patrol for enforcement services on highway maintenance projects. A local standard operating procedure required officers released early by Caltrans to remain at the East Los Angeles station for the balance of the scheduled shift. On September 17, 2017, after his detail ended early, Partridge went home rather than remaining at the station, yet he received the full scheduled overtime (roughly three hours and forty five minutes) pay. The agency also faulted him for failing to record the return time of his patrol vehicle on eight occasions over a six month period.

The State Personnel Board sustained a charge of dishonesty against Partridge, and it did not minimize his conduct. The Board held that theft of public funds and the falsification of official forms, even on a single occasion, constitute serious misconduct for a sworn peace officer. The Board nevertheless reversed his dismissal because the evidence established one isolated event rather than a pattern or a disposition to deceive. The Board contrasted Partridge with officers who had engaged in systematic overtime abuses and concluded that a single lapse by an officer with a long and unblemished career did not demonstrate a propensity to lie, cheat, or deceive. Applying the factors articulated in Skelly v. State Personnel Board, 15 Cal. 3d 194, 218 (1975), which direct the decision maker to weigh the harm to the public service, the circumstances surrounding the misconduct, and the likelihood of recurrence, the Board imposed a suspension that cost Partridge a full year of salary.

The Court of Appeal affirmed. A reviewing court may not substitute its own judgment for that of the administrative body on the question of penalty, and it will disturb the chosen discipline only in the exceptional case in which reasonable minds cannot differ. See Barber v. State Personnel Board, 18 Cal. 3d 395, 404 (1976). The Highway Patrol argued that dishonesty is a continuing trait of character and that any sustained finding of dishonesty therefore requires dismissal. The court rejected that categorical position and held that dismissal is not required in every case of dishonesty. See County of Siskiyou v. State Personnel Board, 188 Cal. App. 4th 1606, 1617 (2010). Reasonable minds could differ about the appropriate consequence for the officers' conduct, and the existence of that reasonable disagreement fortified rather than undermined the Board's exercise of discretion.

Most significant for officers facing discipline is the way the court distinguished degrees of dishonesty. The court confronted the authorities that agencies routinely invoke to demand termination and confined each of them to its facts. It explained that Kolender v. San Diego Civil Service Commission, 132 Cal. App. 4th 716, 721 (2005), described dishonesty as a continuing trait of character only in the context of an officer who lied to conceal the physical abuse of an inmate and refused to tell the truth until investigators exposed the falsehood. It viewed Cate v. State Personnel Board, 204 Cal. App. 4th 270 (2012), as a case in which dishonesty accompanied far more egregious misconduct, including the encouragement of a mentally ill patient to commit suicide, the intimidation of a witness, and an abuse of official power. Measured against that conduct, Partridge's isolated overtime claim occupied a different place on the spectrum, and the court refused to treat every falsehood as the equivalent of the aggravated dishonesty that had justified dismissal elsewhere. Degrees of dishonesty exist, and the law recognizes them.

The publication of this opinion carries independent importance. The published decisions in this area have generally sustained dismissals, and agencies have marshaled those cases to argue that any dishonesty finding ends an officer's career as a matter of law. A published opinion that affirms a proportional penalty for an isolated act of dishonesty now stands as citable precedent for the opposite and correct proposition. Officers and their representatives no longer need to rely on unpublished dispositions or on the bare language of Skelly. They can point to a binding appellate holding that an isolated lapse, committed by an officer whose integrity had never before been questioned, may warrant discipline short of termination. The decision restores balance to a body of law that had tilted heavily toward the agency.

The opinion also speaks to the decertification regime that now governs California peace officers. Senate Bill 2 empowered the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training to suspend or revoke the certification of an officer who engages in serious misconduct, and it defined serious misconduct to include dishonesty relating to the reporting, investigation, or prosecution of a crime or the investigation of officer misconduct. See Cal. Penal Code § 13510.8(b)(1). Nothing in that statute makes decertification automatic. The Commission possesses discretion, for the statute provides that it may suspend or revoke certification rather than that it must. See Cal. Penal Code § 13510.8(a)(2). The implementing regulation confirms that the analysis is individualized, for in deciding whether revocation is proper the Commission considers the extent to which the dishonesty related to a material or significant fact and whether the officer acted willfully and with the intent to deceive. See Cal. Code Regs. tit. 11, § 1205(a)(1). The Commission may recommend revocation only when serious misconduct is established by clear and convincing evidence. See Cal. Code Regs. tit. 11, § 1212(b)(2).

This case demonstrates that a sustained dishonesty charge should not trigger a presumption of decertification. The very factors that persuaded the State Personnel Board to impose a suspension rather than dismissal are the factors that the certification regulation directs the Commission to weigh. An isolated act, the absence of any pattern, the materiality and intent behind the conduct, and the officer's overall record all bear on whether the extraordinary sanction of decertification is warranted. An officer who commits a single lapse presents a fundamentally different case from an officer who lies repeatedly to conceal abuse or to defeat an investigation. Agencies and the Commission that read this opinion faithfully will understand that a dishonesty label, standing alone, does not resolve the proportionality question that both the disciplinary and the certification frameworks require them to answer.

Conclusion

For California public safety unions and their members, the practical lesson is clear and encouraging. When an agency seeks to terminate an officer for an isolated act of dishonesty, the decision maker should weigh the full circumstances, including the officer's career, the isolated character of the conduct, and the materiality and intent behind it. 

When an agency invokes Kolender or Cate to demand automatic dismissal, the officer may answer that those cases turned on aggravated misconduct far removed from an isolated error. And when the specter of decertification arises, the officer may remind the Commission that Senate Bill 2 and its regulations call for an individualized assessment rather than a reflexive revocation. 

The published opinion in California Highway Patrol v. California State Personnel Board gives officers and their advocates the authority to make each of these arguments with confidence. It affirms that fairness and proportionality remain the law, and that a single mistake need not end a career of honorable service.

Appellate Court Affirms Broad Make Whole Remedy for Violation of Duty to Engage in Effects Bargaining Over Pension Reciprocity

On July 30, 2026, the Court of Appeal for the Second Appellate District, Division Seven, issued an unpublished decision in City of Los Angeles v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Nos. B336981 and B340065. The court affirmed the Los Angeles Employee Relations Board order requiring the City to engage in effects bargaining and to make whole Coalition represented employees who suffered reduced pension and other benefits after the City suspended reciprocity between the Los Angeles City Employees Retirement System and the Water and Power Employees Retirement Plan. Although the Employee Relations Board exercises jurisdiction limited to the City of Los Angeles, the Court of Appeal expressly construed the Meyers Milias Brown Act in reaching its conclusions. That construction carries significant weight for every public employer and exclusive representative subject to the Act statewide. The decision confirms that when a public employer implements a nonnegotiable change that foreseeably affects retirement benefits, it must still bargain the effects of that change, and that make whole relief for resulting pension losses remains an available and appropriate remedy under the Meyers Milias Brown Act.

Factual Background

Beginning in 1980 the City and the Department of Water and Power maintained a reciprocal arrangement that permitted employees transferring between the two systems to carry pension service credit. In 2010 the Water and Power Employees Retirement Plan Board voted to suspend reciprocity after determining that net transfers from City service into the Department of Water and Power increased the Plan unfunded liability by approximately one hundred eighty three million dollars. After litigation and settlement in Romero et al. v. City Council of the City of Los Angeles, the City Council in December 2013 adopted Ordinance No. 182824, effective January 1, 2014. The Ordinance ceased crediting prior Water and Power Employees Retirement Plan service for benefit calculation purposes under the Los Angeles City Employees Retirement System, although such service continued to count solely for eligibility to retire. The Coalition of City of Los Angeles Unions, which includes the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and several other organizations representing Los Angeles City Employees Retirement System members, demanded bargaining. The City provided information but refused formal meet and confer obligations.

LA ERB Ruling

The Coalition filed unfair employee relations practice charges. After extensive hearings the Employee Relations Board concluded that the City possessed no duty to bargain the underlying decision to suspend reciprocity yet retained a clear duty to bargain the effects of that decision. Those effects included disability retirement calculations, retiree health subsidies, protected leave return rights, and transfer practices. The Board ordered the City to meet and confer in good faith over those subjects. It further ordered the City to make whole any Coalition represented employee who sustained losses, including reduced pension or other benefits, from January 1, 2014, until the parties reached agreement or impasse or the Coalition failed to bargain in good faith. The Board also directed the City to cease and desist from applying the post 2013 Administrative Code provisions governing treatment of Water and Power Employees Retirement Plan service until that bargaining obligation was satisfied.

Superior Court Ruling

The trial court denied the City petition for writ of mandate and granted the Coalition cross petition seeking enforcement. The court further awarded the Coalition attorney fees under Code of Civil Procedure section 1021.5. The City appealed both the judgment and the fee order. On appeal the City conceded its duty to engage in effects bargaining yet challenged only the remedy. It argued that the Employee Relations Board lacked statutory authority to order make whole relief, that the particular remedy failed to restore the status quo and conflicted with other provisions of law, that the order was vague and overbroad, that it violated separation of powers principles, and that the fee award was improper.

Court of Appeal Ruling

The Court of Appeal rejected each contention. It first held that Employee Relations 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, empowers the Board to award retroactive make whole relief. The court reasoned that local rules implementing the Meyers Milias Brown Act must remain consistent with the policies of that Act. Government Code section 3509, subdivision (d), expressly grants the Employee Relations Board power to issue determinations and orders it deems necessary consistent with and pursuant to the policies of the Meyers Milias Brown Act. The Public Employment Relations Board has long recognized that make whole relief serves the dual purposes of compensating employees for harm caused by an unfair practice and deterring future violations. Because the Employee Relations Board interpretation of its remedial authority was not clearly erroneous, the court deferred to it.

The court next confirmed that make whole relief constitutes an appropriate and customary remedy for effects bargaining violations. Effects bargaining stands on equal footing with decision bargaining. Both protect the principle of bilateralism that forms the centerpiece of the Meyers Milias Brown Act. The usual remedy directs the employer to bargain over effects and awards limited back pay, understood to encompass all forms of economic loss including reduced pension and medical benefits, until the parties reach agreement or impasse. The Employee Relations Board remedy in this case tracked that established framework. The make whole obligation terminated upon completion of the bargaining process. The court distinguished the earlier decision in American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees v. City of Los Angeles, 109 Cal. App. 5th 179 (2025), which held that employees possessed no vested contractual right to continued reciprocity. Absence of a vested right does not eliminate the distinct statutory right under the Meyers Milias Brown Act to bargain the effects of terminating reciprocity and to receive interim relief that restores the parties as nearly as practicable to the position they occupied when the bargaining duty arose.

This distinction is critical for bargaining rights over pension changes. Public employers frequently retain the unilateral right to alter retirement plan design, contribution rates, or reciprocal arrangements so long as those changes do not impair vested contractual rights. The Court of Appeal made clear that the absence of a vested right does not extinguish the concurrent duty under the Meyers Milias Brown Act to meet and confer over the effects of such changes on represented employees. Pension calculations, service credit recognition, disability retirement eligibility, and retiree medical subsidies all fall within the scope of effects bargaining when a nonnegotiable decision foreseeably impacts them. The make whole remedy, which can include the difference between the pension benefits employees would have received and the benefits they actually received, remains available until the employer satisfies that bargaining obligation. Because the Court of Appeal grounded its analysis in the policies of the Meyers Milias Brown Act rather than in unique features of the Los Angeles Employee Relations Ordinance, the reasoning applies with equal force to every public agency and exclusive representative subject to the Act.

The court found no separation of powers violation. The remedy did not compel the City Council to enact or rescind legislation. It merely maintained the economic status quo on a temporary basis until the City satisfied its statutory bargaining obligation. Nor was the cease and desist directive vague or overbroad. The order identified the clear category of post 2013 Administrative Code provisions governing treatment of Water and Power Employees Retirement Plan service for employees moving into Los Angeles City Employees Retirement System covered positions. Read in light of the Board findings identifying the specific effects subjects, the order provided sufficient notice of the conduct enjoined.

Finally, the court upheld the attorney fee award under Code of Civil Procedure section 1021.5. The Coalition was the successful party because it achieved the core objectives of securing an effects bargaining order and make whole relief. The litigation enforced an important public right, namely compliance with the duty to bargain under the Meyers Milias Brown Act, and conferred a significant benefit on a large class of City employees and on other bargaining units that may confront similar unilateral changes. The Coalition is likewise entitled to its reasonable attorney fees and costs on appeal.

State-wide Impacts

Although the Employee Relations Board exercises jurisdiction only within the City of Los Angeles, a Court of Appeal decision that construes the Meyers Milias Brown Act itself benefits all public employee organizations operating under that statute. The Public Employment Relations Board and reviewing courts consistently look to appellate interpretations of the Act when resolving effects bargaining disputes. This decision reinforces that pension related impacts remain fully subject to effects bargaining even when the underlying decision to change a retirement system is nonnegotiable. It further confirms that make whole relief measured by the difference in pension benefits is an ordinary and available remedy designed both to compensate employees and to restore the parties to a more balanced bargaining position. Unions throughout California therefore gain a clearer statement of the rights their members hold when employers alter reciprocal service credit arrangements, contribution formulas, or related retirement features without first addressing the foreseeable effects.

Public employee unions and their members should take careful note of the temporal limits the court endorsed. Make whole relief is not permanent restoration of reciprocity. It functions as a temporary bridge that preserves bargaining leverage and compensates for delay caused by the employer unlawful refusal. Associations therefore should remember to request effects bargaining promptly when management announces nonnegotiable changes that will foreseeably affect retirement service credit, disability benefits, leave rights, or transfer opportunities. Failure to request bargaining or to bargain in good faith can terminate the make whole period. Conversely, employers that ignore the duty face the prospect of years of retroactive liability measured from the date employees first experience harm.

The Court of Appeal affirmed the judgment and the attorney fees orders. Although the opinion is not certified for publication, its careful synthesis of Employee Relations Board authority, Public Employment Relations Board remedial doctrine, and the policies of the Meyers Milias Brown Act will inform future disputes involving effects bargaining over pension and benefit changes throughout California. 

Conclusion

Where management retains unilateral authority to alter certain arrangements, associations should prepare written demands for effects bargaining and document the economic consequences that will flow from any suspension. The make whole remedy affirmed in this case supplies a potent tool for restoring balance when that duty is ignored.

A Narrow Reading with Wide Consequences: The California Supreme Court Limits Leave Cashout Credit Under PEPRA

Every public safety professional who has banked unused leave across a long career understands the quiet promise embedded in that ledger. Those hours represent time not taken with family, shifts covered for colleagues, and holidays spent in uniform. The expectation has always been that those hours would count when the pension calculation finally arrived. On July 27, 2026, the California Supreme Court unsettled that expectation for legacy members of the state’s county retirement systems. In Ventura County Employees’ Retirement Ass'n v. Criminal Justice Attorneys Ass'n of Ventura County, No. S283978 (Cal. July 27, 2026) (“Ventura”), the Court held that the California Public Employees’ Pension Reform Act of 2013 (“PEPRA”) bars a retiring employee from counting leave cashouts above the annual limit fixed by the terms of employment, even when the employee designates a final compensation period that spans two calendar years. The decision affirms the Court of Appeal (see 98 Cal.App.5th 1119 (2024)), and it deserves the close attention of every association that negotiates leave and retirement terms on behalf of California’s peace officers, public sector attorneys, and other impacted public sector employees.

The Issue the Court Decided

The dispute turned on a single sentence in Government Code section 31461(b)(2). That provision excludes from compensation earnable any payment for unused leave “in an amount that exceeds that which may be earned and payable in each 12-month period during the final average salary period, regardless of when reported or paid.” (Cal. Gov’t Code § 31461(b)(2).) The retirement system read the phrase to incorporate the annual cashout cap set by an employee’s terms of employment, so that a member who may cash out 200 hours in a calendar year cannot inflate that figure by straddling two calendar years within a single final compensation window. The employee associations read the same phrase to permit inclusion of every hour cashed out during the elected final compensation period, subject only to what the period itself allowed. The Court adopted the retirement system’s reading and confirmed that section 31461(b)(2) caps includable cashouts at the annual allowance no matter how the final compensation period is drawn.

The facts illustrate the stakes with unusual clarity. The retired member accrued 368.16 hours of leave each year, and his terms of employment permitted him to cash out 200 hours in any single calendar year. He designated October 10, 2019 through October 10, 2020 as his final compensation period, and within that window he cashed out 40 hours in December 2019 and another 200 hours in February 2020, for a total of 240 hours. He asked the system to include all 240 hours in his final compensation. The system included only 200, and the Supreme Court agreed that the 40 additional hours fell outside compensation earnable because they exceeded the annual allowance that governed a single calendar year per the terms of his employment.

The Court Conceded Ambiguity and Then Resolved It Against the Member

The most consequential feature of the opinion is not the result but the route the Court traveled to reach it. The Court did not hold that the statute plainly compelled the retirement system’s position. It acknowledged instead that the system’s construction “may not be the most immediately obvious or intuitive reading of the statutory text,” and it described that construction as merely “plausible.” (Ventura, slip op. at p. 22.) Both the trial court and the Court of Appeal had likewise found the language ambiguous. Confronting genuine ambiguity, the Court turned to legislative purpose and concluded that “[c]onsiderations of statutory purpose conclusively resolve the issue” in the retirement system’s favor because the competing reading would reopen the door to the pension spiking that the Legislature enacted the statute to close. (Id. at p. 23.)

In a concurring opinion, Chief Justice Guerrero underscored the divergence from the actual text. She wrote to explain that the majority’s interpretation is not apparent on the face of the statute, that the ordinary use of the word “during” is inconsistent with the majority’s construction, and that the reading survives only because a latent ambiguity emerges once the statute’s anti-spiking purpose is considered. (Ventura, Guerrero, C.J., concurring op. at pp. 2-4.) Her concurrence is candid confirmation that the words the Legislature chose pointed one way while the result points another.

The Court’s analytical move carries real significance for public employees because it required the Court to set aside a rule that has long favored pensioners. For decades, California courts have construed pension statutes liberally and resolved ambiguities in favor of the applicant. (See Barrett v. Stanislaus Cnty. Emps. Ret. Ass'n (1987) 189 Cal.App.3d 1593, 1603.) The employee associations pressed that principle here, and it pointed squarely toward the broader reading. The Court answered that liberal construction “must be consistent with the clear language and purpose of the statute,” and it held that the pensioner favoring canon must yield here because it conflicts with the Legislature’s overarching anti-spiking design. (See Ventura Cnty. Deputy Sheriffs' Ass'n v. Bd. of Ret. (1997) 16 Cal.4th 483, 490.) In other words, the tie no longer runs to the employee once a court identifies a countervailing legislative purpose, and pension spiking supplies a purpose that a reviewing court can invoke across a wide range of compensation disputes.

Why the Reasoning Matters Beyond Leave Cashouts

The holding governs a discrete question about leave cashouts in a final compensation period that straddles two calendar years, yet its method reaches much further. PEPRA is a sprawling statute enacted quickly, and many of its provisions have given rise to disputes and are likely to continue doing so in the future. Every one of those provisions is now subject to interpretation under the framework this Ventura decision reaffirms, and that framework instructs courts to consult the anti-spiking purpose whenever the words admit more than one reasonable meaning. A retirement association that wishes to exclude a category of pay will attempt to frame inclusion as a potential avenue for spiking, and after this decision, that framing will carry substantial weight. Members should therefore expect systems to press expansive exclusions in future disputes over on-call pay, specialty premiums, uniform and equipment allowances, and other items whose treatment PEPRA did not spell out with precision.

The decision also weakens a tool that member advocates have relied upon for a generation. When a pension statute was ambiguous, the liberal construction canon gave employees a thumb on the scale, and it often proved decisive in close cases. This opinion subordinates that canon to legislative purpose and thereby shifts the balance of interpretive advantage toward the systems in exactly the situations where the statute is least clear. Associations litigating future ambiguities will need to build their arguments on text and structure rather than on the presumption that ambiguity favors the applicant, because the Court has now signaled that the presumption gives way whenever the anti-spiking rationale is available. 

The Signal to the Legislature

The opinion carries a further lesson for those who shape pension policy in Sacramento. The Court repeatedly grounded its reading in the practical concerns of plan administration and funding, observing that the retirement system’s interpretation allows counties to anticipate their obligations rather than absorb liabilities that swing between one hundred and two hundred percent of the annual cashout limit depending on how a member elects a final compensation period. (Ventura, slip op. at p. 24.) Legislation should be assessed against this backdrop in which courts will fill statutory gaps with cost containment and anti-spiking assumptions rather than with the older presumption favoring the pensioner. If the Legislature intends a benefit to be included, it will need to say so with precision, because ambiguity will no longer be construed generously in the member’s favor. Associations that seek legislative clarification of favorable treatment for particular pay items should draft proposed amendments with that reality in mind and should not assume that silence or generality will be read to their advantage.

What This Means for Your Members

The immediate practical consequence is straightforward. Legacy members who plan to cash out substantial accrued leave near retirement can no longer increase their final compensation by designating a final compensation period that reaches into a second calendar year in order to stack two annual allowances. The annual cap set by the terms of employment now controls the entire 12-month final compensation period regardless of when it falls in relation to calendar years. Associations should review their memoranda of understanding and their members’ retirement planning materials so that no member approaches retirement expecting credit for cashouts that this decision now excludes.

The larger consequence is strategic. This case reflects a determined and well-resourced effort to secure the broader reading for public employees. Nevertheless, that effort did not prevail before the state’s highest court despite thoughtful advocacy and a serious textual argument that even the Chief Justice found more faithful to the statute’s words. The outcome confirms that the interpretive terrain has shifted and that future gains for members will come from careful bargaining and precise legislative drafting rather than from favorable canons of construction. We stand ready to help our client associations reassess their leave and retirement provisions, to model the effect of this ruling on individual members nearing retirement, and to press for the statutory clarity that will protect the benefits our public safety professionals have earned through decades of service.

When the Verdict Second Guesses the Officer: Appellate Reversal Affirms Officers’ Right to Defend Themselves

Every officer who has ever cleared a doorway understands the arithmetic of a fraction of a second. The decision to use force is made in the moment, on the information then available, against a threat that does not pause to let anyone deliberate. California law honors that reality, yet officers know that courtrooms and juries are frequently invited to second-guess split-second decisions against a leisurely reconstruction that no officer on the scene ever had. A recent Texas reversal of a verdict against an officer illustrates the point. The court’s reasoning is a timely reminder of the constitutional and statutory protections that govern peace officers in California. Although the decision is not binding here, its reasoning is persuasive in holding that a conviction built on hindsight analysis cannot survive when the governing standard is properly applied.

A Dangerous Encounter

In an appeal decided by a Texas appellate court, a police officer had responded with three colleagues to a report that a man was roaming the halls of a downtown building with a knife held to his own throat and threatening suicide. The officers were told the man had a history of mental health crises and was on an upper floor with a large kitchen knife. When the officers reached that floor by elevator, the man was facing a mirror with the knife at his throat. When the doors opened, he turned toward the officers, reoriented the knife away from himself and toward them, and advanced in close quarters while ignoring the commands shouted at him. The officers fired, and the man died. The officer was convicted of a firearm offense and sentenced to prison, notwithstanding testimony from fellow officers that they would not have acted differently, expert testimony that the use of force was justified, and the conclusion of the department’s own investigators that the conduct did not warrant criminal charges. The appellate court reversed and rendered a judgment of acquittal, holding that the prosecution never carried its burden of disproving justification once the objective evidence was examined at the only moment that mattered. Taylor v. State, 729 S.W.3d 124 (Tex. App. 2025).

Reviewing the body worn camera footage, it found that the officers were confined with no meaningful avenue of retreat, that the man turned toward them and advanced with the knife oriented in their direction, and that this presented an immediate and potentially lethal threat. The prosecution’s theory, by contrast, rested almost entirely on what the officers supposedly should have done differently, including waiting, using the stairs, or relying on less lethal options.

The court held that this evidence, even if accepted in full, did not answer the dispositive question, because it showed at most that different decisions could have been made. As the court explained, could have, would have, and should have do not disprove justification, and tactical misjudgments or hindsight critiques do not render an otherwise reasonable belief in the necessity of deadly force unreasonable. The court further rejected the notion that a subject who advances with a weapon is demonstrating compliance, holding that the law does not require officers to treat such conduct as surrender or to wait until an attack is completed before responding. Finally, it observed that a mental health crisis is dynamic, so that a person who is a danger only to himself in one moment may become an immediate threat to others in the next, and that reasonableness is measured on what the officer perceived at the moment force was used rather than on earlier assurances or missed opportunities to de-escalate.

The California Framework

California officers enjoy the same core protection, secured by both the federal Constitution and state statute. As the Supreme Court held in Graham v. Connor, the reasonableness of a use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene rather than with the twenty-twenty vision of hindsight, and the analysis must make allowance for the fact that officers are forced to make split second judgments in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving. That inquiry turns on whether the person confronting the officer posed an immediate threat to the safety of the officer or others.

The Legislature wrote these principles into Penal Code Section 835a, which states that the decision to use force be evaluated from the perspective of a reasonable officer in the same situation, based on the totality of the circumstances known to or perceived by the officer at the time, rather than with the benefit of hindsight, and it expressly accounts for the reality that officers must sometimes make quick judgments about using force. The statute permits deadly force when the officer reasonably believes, based on the totality of the circumstances, that such force is necessary to defend against an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury. A threat is imminent when a reasonable officer would believe the person has the present ability, opportunity, and apparent intent to immediately cause death or serious bodily injury, a harm that must be instantly confronted rather than a mere fear of future harm. The same section confirms that an officer need not retreat and is not rendered an aggressor, nor deprived of the right of self-defense, by using objectively reasonable force.

California courts have applied this framework with a clear eye toward the dangers of hindsight analysis. Applying AB 392, Koussaya v. City of Stockton, (2020) 54 Cal. App. 5th 909, confirmed that the reasonableness of force is still judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene rather than hindsight, and the standard provides deference to the split second decisions of an officer who, unlike a private citizen, is charged with acting affirmatively and using force. Critically, so long as an officer’s conduct falls within the range of conduct that is reasonable under the circumstances, there is no requirement that the officer choose the most reasonable available action or the conduct least likely to cause harm.

California decisions confronting the knife wielding advancer have reached the same conclusion the Texas court reached, holding that where deadly force is otherwise justified there is no constitutional duty to use less forceful or non-deadly alternatives first, and that the proper inquiry is whether the officer acted reasonably, not whether some less intrusive alternative was theoretically available. Martinez v. Cnty. of Los Angeles, 47 Cal. App. 4th 334, 54 Cal. Rptr. 2d 772 (1996). The focus remains on the vantage of the reasonable officer, not on the after the fact opinions of bystanders who did not perceive a threat.

Why a No Reasonable Alternative Standard Cannot Be Squared With the Constitution

This settled framework is the measure against which the earlier legislative proposals to rewrite California’s deadly force law must be judged. As those proposals were originally introduced, they would have gone considerably further than any jury in the case discussed above, restricting an officer’s use of deadly force to circumstances in which it was strictly necessary and in which no reasonable alternative existed. Such a standard would unreasonably invite the factfinder to convict an officer whenever some other course could later be described as available. Representing the Peace Officers Research Association of California (PORAC), our firm opposed that approach because it would have transformed the objective reasonable officer inquiry into an impossible mandate to exhaust every conceivable option before acting. In holding such a standard unconstitutional, our Ninth Circuit has recognized, “(r)equiring officers to find and choose the least intrusive alternative would require them to exercise superhuman judgment. Scott v. Henrich (9th Cir. 1994) 39 F.3d 912, 915.” Our firm was privileged to assist the law enforcement advocacythat ultimately helped secure the amendments to Assembly Bill 392 that removedthe most punitive features of the introduced language and preserved thereasonable officer standard in the law as enacted.  

The reversal of the Texas conviction reenforces the point that such a standard, had it been enacted in California as introduced, would be constitutionally infirm. A criminal conviction may rest only on evidence from which a rational factfinder could find every element beyond a reasonable doubt, and in a justification case that necessarily includes proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the officer did not reasonably believe force was necessary in the moment.

A no reasonable alternative standard collapses that inquiry. It permits conviction not because the officer’s real time perception was unreasonable, but because a prosecutor, working backward from a known outcome, can always describe another path not taken. The Texas court rejected this reasoning when it held that could have and should have do not disprove justification. It is also precisely what California law already forecloses, because there is no constitutional duty to resort to the least forceful alternative where deadly force is justified. An officer is not required to select the least harmful option to avoid liability. A statute or instruction that made the availability of a hypothetical alternative dispositive would nullify those protections and convert the reasonable officer standard into a strict liability regime, judged in the calm of a courtroom rather than from the position of the officer on the scene. Koussaya, supra. 

When jurors are told to ask whether any reasonable alternative existed, and to measure that question against a reconstruction assembled after the danger has passed, they are no longer deciding whether the officer’s belief was reasonable at the instant of the threat. They are grading the officer against an idealized response that the moment never permitted. That is the very danger the reasonable officer standard exists to prevent, because it refuses to let a sanitized reconstruction assembled after the fact displace the dangerous and rapidly evolving reality the officer actually confronted. An instruction that operationalizes hindsight in this way threatens the due process guarantee that a conviction rest on proof of an actual element of the offense, and it departs from the constitutional command of Graham that force be assessed from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene rather than hindsight.  

It is worth emphasizing that the deadly force statute the Legislature ultimately enacted, as shaped by the amendments described above, stopped far short of the standard the original proposals contemplated. Section 835a expresses the intent that officers use deadly force only when necessary in defense of human life and that they use other available resources and techniques, but it qualifies that expectation by requiring only what is reasonably safe and feasible to an objectively reasonable officer, and it preserves throughout the reasonable officer perspective and the rejection of hindsight. SB 230 also codifies the legal definition of "feasible” is defined as "reasonably capable of being done or carried out under the circumstances to successfully achieve the arrest or lawful objective without increasing risk to the officer or another person." (emphasis added.)  This definition clarifies that tactics increasing the risk to officers are not "feasible." 

In other words, the enacted law retains the constitutional anchor that the introduced version would have disgaurded. That distinction is the difference between a statute that channels officer discretion and one that would punish officers for failing to achieve a perfection the law has never demanded.

Practical Significance of Taylor for California Officers

For officers and the agencies that stand behind them, several lessons follow. Justification is assessed on the threat as it reasonably appeared at the instant of the decision, and neither a prosecutor nor a jury may substitute a menu of tactical alternatives for proof that the officer’s belief was unreasonable. A subject who advances with a weapon and disregards commands is not demonstrating compliance merely because no blow has yet landed, and officers are not required to absorb the first strike before responding. Prior information that a person is troubled or suicidal does not freeze the threat assessment, because the encounter is judged as it evolves. Where objective evidence such as body worn camera footage confirms the threat, that evidence can be decisive. And under existing California law, an officer who acts within the range of reasonable conduct has no separate duty to have chosen the least forceful option that a later critic might prefer.