The U.S. Supreme Court this week denied certiorari in City of San Diego v. Public Employment Relations Board. In California’s Supreme Court, the case was called Boling v. Public Employment Relations Board. There, the state high court unanimously ruled last August that San Diego’s mayor violated a statutory duty to meet and confer with a municipal employees’ union before supporting a successful 2012 citizens’ initiative to reform the employees’ pension system.
San Diego’s cert petition claimed the state court’s decision unlawfully impinged on the mayor’s First Amendment rights. (See also here.)
The Boling opinion leaves it to the Court of Appeal on remand to determine the proper remedy for the mayor’s violation. The Public Employment Relations Board, whose decision was being reviewed, said only a court could invalidate the initiative election, and instead ordered a make-whole remedy based on compensation lost by employees because of the initiative. A Court of Appeal ruling should come soon; after supplemental briefing, the court heard oral argument last week.
[March 25 update: The Court of Appeal filed its published opinion this morning. Here’s the court’s executive summary: “we decline the Unions’ request to invalidate the Initiative as a judicial remedy because we conclude the Initiative’s validity is more appropriately addressed in a separate quo warranto proceeding. We further conclude we must modify PERB’s compensatory and cease-and-desist remedies to prevent the remedies from impermissibly encroaching upon constitutional law, statutory law, and policy matters involving initiatives, elections, and the doctrine of preemption that are unrelated to the [Meyers-Milias-Brown] Act.”]