From pandemic to catastrophic wildfire to social upheaval, there is little doubt that the past year has been momentous for California. For firefighters, their families and all public workers, however, the past 12 months may be remembered as a turning point in the fight for secure retirement.
This past January, a California Superior Court ruling permanently struck down the most draconian pension-slashing initiative in California history: San Diego’s Proposition B. The 2012 pension grab in San Diego wiped out secure pensions for all city workers except police officers, The San Diego decision follows, by less than a year, a landmark decision by the California Supreme Court that kept in place the seminal “California Rule,” a 70-year precedent that protects the retirement promises made for all workers.
The retirement wars are far from over: Appeals and new court cases may continue to roil the waters. Taken together, though, these rulings that suggest that the courts are inclined to err on the side of protecting the promise of a secure pension.
“At nearly every turn, the courts have upheld the notion that a promise made is a promise that should be kept,” said CPF President Brian Rice. “While there are still many hurdles to overcome, these decisions are really important milestones for all public workers in California, especially our front line firefighters.”
San Diego’s long journey
The saga in San Diego began in 2012, when then-Mayor Jerry Sanders, joined by anti-pension hardline Councilmember Carl DeMaio, backed a “citizen’s initiative” campaign that ended secure defined benefit pensions for all public workers, except for police officers. Most critically, Prop. B ended death and disability benefits for the families of fallen firefighters. After a deceptive campaign, Prop. B was approved by voters by a relatively small margin.
Led by San Diego Firefighters Local 145, labor groups in San Diego banded together to challenge Proposition B before the Public Employee Relations Board (PERB), arguing that then-Mayor Jerry Sanders had gone around state labor law by claiming Prop. B was a “citizen initiative”. PERB sided with labor in ruling that Sanders had violated meet-and-confer standards.
The city challenged PERB’s ruling, and the case went all the way to the California Supreme Court, which ruled that the city had violated state labor law. But while the process for passing Prop. B was invalidated, another round of court cases is required to put the matter to rest.
This second challenge was a much harder lift — courts are generally unwilling to overturn a law approved by voters at the polls. But San Diego Superior Court Judge Richard Strauss bucked that trend, ruling that Prop. B itself is invalid.
“It is rare for any court to order that a voter-approved initiative be completely wiped off the books,” said Jesse Conner, president of San Diego Firefighters Local 145. “This decision demonstrates what we’ve been saying all along — the city was wrong when it put Proposition B before voters.”
The “California Rule”
For more than seven decades, pension promises for firefighters and other public workers have been shaped by a 1948 court case — led by Long Beach Firefighters Local 372 — that proclaimed pensions a vested contract right. This decision, known as the California Rule, establishes that a pension obligation made at the time of employment must be honored.
Over the course of the next several decades, local agencies and anti-pension advocates have sought to chip away at this vested right around the edges. These efforts intensified after the passage of a 2012 pension law — known as PEPRA — that implemented a series of rollbacks. Some of those rollbacks, notably a ban on purchasing service time (“air time”) were upheld by the courts, but a series of other pension cases working through the system sought to take more direct aim at the California Rule itself.
This past summer, the California Supreme Court’s ruling kept intact the California Rule's core tenet protecting pension promises. The ruling, in the case of Alameda County Deputy Sheriff’s Assoc. et al., v. Alameda County Employees’ Retirement Assn., et al., allowed local governments to roll back certain so-called “enhancements” that produced large pension spikes. Ultimately, however, the California Rule was preserved for core retirement benefits. While the case involved only county-run (“’37 Act”) retirement systems, most believe the legal standard ultimately applies to CalPERS and other public retirement systems.
“It’s disappointing that the court didn’t support lawfully-negotiated special pay provisions, but the court has upheld the central premise of the California Rule,” said President Rice. “The ruling reaffirms decades of legal president based on the simple premise that a pension promise made should be a promise kept.”
Securing the future
While the San Diego and Alameda County decisions are major milestones in the long fight to protect secure pensions, the end of the road is still a long way off.
In San Diego, anti-pension forces are mulling a likely appeal of the Superior Court decision, meaning that this case, like its predecessor, could make its way up to the state Supreme Court.
As mentioned, the Alameda County decision narrowly applied only to county-run systems. It also referred a number of lower-court cases back for further hearing, making it almost certain that further PEPRA-related lawsuits could be on the horizon.
“We know we’re going to have to keep fighting,” said San Diego president Conner. “It can be demoralizing, but every win gives us new hope and our members are united in continuing this fight.”
As it has throughout its 83-year history, California Professional Firefighters remains on the forefront of efforts — in Sacramento and throughout the state — to ensure that California’s firefighters will continue to gain the full benefit of a secure retirement for the job they do. CPF remains a leading member of the statewide pension protection coalition and has recently forcefully intervened to support efforts to protect retirement promises in local governments and the courts.
“Our secure pensions aren’t a gift — they are earned over a long career in a difficult and demanding job,” said President Rice. “As long as I’m in this job, CPF will never abandon its commitment to ensuring that our members can receive the secure retirement they’ve earned for a lifetime of service.”