EdLawConnect Blog

The California Labor Commissioner has posted a template  pursuant to the new sick leave law, the Healthy Workplaces, Healthy Family Act of 2014. As explained in our , the new law applies to employees who work at least 30 hours per calendar year and are not provided with sick leave under a collective bargaining agreement.  A poster describing the sick leave rights is required under amended Labor Code section 247.

Recently Governor Brown vetoed Assembly Bill 1550, which would have added 30 days to the already rigorous impasse procedures under the Educational Employee Relations Act (Government Code §§ 3540, et. seq.; “EERA”) impairing the ability of public employers to unilaterally implement a last, best, and final offer after completion of the statutory impasse process.

In these strained economic times, where governmental budgets can be stretched to their limits, public entities are often faced with unexpected financial exposure to claims and litigation.  Public entities can limit the scope of their exposure to monetary claims by simply adopting policies that shorten the time for presenting claims to a fraction of what California statutes of limitations would usually ...

On September 29, 2014, Governor Brown approved a series of bills to protect against misuse or unauthorized release of students’ personal information. Assembly Bills 1442 and 1584 add privacy requirements to the Education Code for school districts using a program or third-party provider to gather or store personal student information. Senate Bill 1177 adds restrictions under the Business and Professions Code for Internet operators in possession of personally identifiable student information, so that private companies may now share in the responsibility to protect this information. The legislation goes into effect January 1, 2015.

On September 2, 2014, a California appellate court upheld an order requiring a college math professor to undergo a “fitness for duty examination” (“FFD”) based on behavior that his colleagues considered erratic and threatening in nature.  The court also rebuffed the efforts of the professor’s attorneys to interject themselves into the workplace dispute by placing conditions on the FFD.  The ...

Recently the U.S. Supreme Court found that the exemptions for warrantless searches of arrestees for weapons or evidence, justified by the need for officer safety and to prevent destruction of evidence, did not apply to searching electronic data on a cell phone.  The Court unanimously ruled that the police need warrants to search cellphones of people they arrest.  The court heard arguments in two cases and ...

Ever wish you could delete that embarrassing picture you posted to Facebook from cyberspace…permanently? California’s new “Eraser Law” gives California minors the ability to do just that. Well, except, maybe not permanently.

Senate Bill 568, approved by the Governor on September 23, 2013 and codified as California Business & Professions Code section 22580 et seq., goes into effect on January 1 ...

On July 22, 2014, two opinions concerning the Affordable Care Act were issued from two different United States Circuit Courts of Appeals. Both opinions analyzed the same lawsuit filed in two different courts. Both opinions reached conclusions that were diametrically opposed to one another.

The first opinion, Halbig v. Burwell, which was decided by a three member panel of the United States Court of Appeals ...

In 1979, California voters added section 6 to Article 13B of the State Constitution, which specifies that if the state imposes any “new program or higher level of service” on any local government (including a school district), the state must reimburse the locality for the costs of the program or increased level of service. (Clovis Unified School District v. Chiang (2010) 188 Cal.App.4th 794, 798-799 ...

In a Tentative Decision announced earlier today, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rolf M. Treu ruled in favor of the Plaintiffs in Vergara v. California, concluding that five provisions of the California Education Code are unconstitutional — Education Code section 44929.21 (two year probationary period); Education Code sections 44934, 44938(b)(1)-(2) and 44944 (dismissal of permanent teachers); ...