The Court of Appeal has handed California public agencies a new argument for stripping peace officers and firefighters of their right to an administrative appeal, and every POA and union should take notice. In Cruz v. City of Hermosa Beach (2026) 124 Cal.App.5th 143, the Second District held that the termination of a Hermosa Beach police officer who refused to comply with a citywide COVID-19 vaccination requirement was not a punitive action under the Public Safety Officers Procedural Bill of Rights Act (POBR) and therefore did not trigger the administrative appeal protections that POBR guarantees. We think the decision is wrong and we intend to explain at length in a forthcoming article in PORAC News and Review.
The court treated the separation as a failure to satisfy minimum job qualifications rather than as a response to workplace misconduct, thereby avoiding the administrative appeal right in Government Code section 3304. This published ruling raises serious concerns for peace officers and firefighters across California. The holding sits in clear tension with White v. County of Sacramento, a case this firm won more than forty years ago in which the California Supreme Court established that dismissal, demotion, suspension, or reduction in salary are by nature penalties no matter the stated reason and are per se disciplinary. It also conflicts with Riverside Sheriffs’ Assn. v. County of Riverside where the court rejected a similar recharacterization and held that employment termination is per se punitive under the Act.
Officers and firefighters confronting comparable mandates should frame the issue from the outset as insubordination or neglect of duty arising from the refusal to follow a lawful order. That approach strengthens the claim that the separation constitutes punitive action subject to administrative appeal and is essential to being able to challenge the penalty as excessive. The result in Cruz may have been shaped in part by the litigation choices made to advance a per se dismissal theory without fully developing an insubordination argument. PORAC is currently weighing its legal options in response to this decision. A more thorough examination of the pleading implications, the conflict with controlling precedent, and practical strategies for members will appear in the upcoming issue of PORAC News and Review.
