Teachers Win Ruling on Vergara Lawsuit

Educators Applaud Appellate Ruling in Meritless Vergara Lawsuit

Stinging Reversal of Lower Court Decision Vindicates Due Process, Benefits of Challenged Laws to Students, School Districts

Contacts: For CTA, Frank Wells at 562-708-5425; For CFT, Fred Glass at 510-579-3343

LOS ANGELES – In a sweeping victory for students and educators, the California Court of Appeal today reversed a lower court decision in the deeply flawed Vergara v. California lawsuit. The unanimous appellate opinion is a stinging rebuke to Judge Rolf M. Treu’s poorly-reasoned ruling, and to the allegations made and millions of dollars spent by wealthy anti-union “education reformers” to bypass voters, parents, and the legislature with harmful education policy changes. The reversal affirms the arguments of educators, civil rights groups, legal scholars and education policy experts that the state statutes affirming educator rights do not harm students.

“This is a great day for educators and, more importantly, for students,” said California Teachers Association President Eric C. Heins. “Today’s ruling reversing Treu’s decision overwhelmingly underscores that the laws under attack have been good for public education and for kids, and that the plaintiffs failed to establish any violation of a student’s constitutional rights. Stripping teachers of their ability to stand up for their students and robbing school districts of the tools they need to make sound employment decisions was a wrong-headed scheme developed by people with no education expertise and the appellate court justices saw that.”

In their 36-page decision, Justices Roger Boren, Judith Ashmann-Gerst and Brian Hoffstadt outline the numerous ways in which the plaintiffs’ arguments were wrong and Judge Treu’s decision declaring the statutes unconstitutional could not be affirmed. “We reverse the trial court’s decision. Plaintiffs failed to establish that the challenged statutes violate equal protection, primarily because they did not show that the statutes inevitably cause a certain group of students to receive an education inferior to the education received by other students. …the statutes do not address the assignment of teachers; instead, administrators—not the statutes—ultimately determine where teachers within a district are assigned to teach. Critically, plaintiffs failed to show that the statutes themselves make any certain group of students more likely to be taught by ineffective teachers than any other group of students. With no proper showing of a constitutional violation, the court is without power to strike down the challenged statutes. The court’s job is merely to determine whether the statutes are constitutional, not if they are “a good idea.”…The judgment is reversed. The matter is remanded to the trial court with directions to enter judgment in favor of defendants on all causes of action.”

Teachers' Unions Survive Another Attack

Teachers and our unions in California, along with the rest of organized labor dodged a bullet (maybe a nuclear missile is a more appropriate metaphor) in yesterday's split decision in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association.  But I would caution against getting too happy about it or viewing the decision as a victory for organized labor on this issue.  

For one thing, the ruling will not stop anti-union cases that are already in the pipeline or the filing of new cases that aren't in the courts yet. Because of the split decision, no new precedents have been set, so labor remains just as legally vulnerable as it was before. Also, labor's enemies have been racking up major victories at the state level. 26 states are now right to work, and it's not outside the realm of possibility that public sector unions could see their collective bargaining rights curtailed further in more states.

(see below)

What now? "The plaintiffs in the case, led by the Center for Individual Rights, a conservative nonprofit, will file a motion for rehearing and pray that a Republican gets elected president in November."

(from Politico’s Morning Report)

Leaders of major public sector unions, meanwhile, say the case created a lasting resolve to organize and strategize together. SEIU's Mary Kay Henry, NEA's Lily Eskelsen Garcia, AFT's Randi Weingarten, and AFSCME's Lee Saunders all held a joint press call after Tuesday's decision, and "all four of us understand the importance of working together and combining our resources, working on a political agenda, legislative agenda," Saunders said. "We were doing that before Friedrichs but obviously Friedrichs pushed us to do more."

CTA and CFT organize against Vergara

California Educators Appeal Decision in Meritless Vergara Lawsuit

Civil Rights Icon Dolores Huerta Joins Educators and Community Supporters in Urging Court to Overturn Flawed Decision for the Sake of All Students

Contacts: For CFT: Fred Glass, 510-579-3343; For CTA: Frank Wells, 562-708-5425

LOS ANGELES — Attorneys representing more than 400,000 members of the California Teachers Association and California Federation of Teachers appeared in the California Court of Appeal today in downtown Los Angeles, to ask that the June 2014 ruling in the deceptive and meritless Vergara v. State of California be overturned for the sake of California’s six million students. 

At a press conference before arguments were presented to the Court, Attorney Michael Rubin laid out the case for reversing the faulty opinion of Judge Rolf M. Treu. Appearing with Rubin were longtime union and civil rights leader Dolores Huerta, southern California elementary school teacher Gaby Ibarra, and Martha Sanchez, a concerned parent who believes current laws work best for students.

Stating that Judge Treu’s decision striking down five California Education Code provisions “is without support in law or fact,” the speakers predicted that Treu’s numerous errors will be clearly visible to the appeals court, and the earlier Superior Court judgment will be overturned. Treu’s decision was stayed pending appeal. But if upheld, it would cause great harm to public education.

Students First sue California Teachers' Unions

The latest legal assault on the right of the state’s public-sector unions to collect dues was filed in Los Angeles earlier this month by StudentsFirst, the Sacramento-based, national school-privatization organization.

The federal suit, Bain v. California Teachers Association, was brought on behalf of four California public school teacher union members who claim that the state’s current “fair share” rules infringe on their rights by forcing them to choose between paying for union-supported political causes with which they disagree or quitting the union. It seeks to bar unions from collecting dues money earmarked for political purposes as a condition of membership.

At stake are an estimated tens of millions of dollars — and a corresponding political clout — that unions stand to lose if the suit succeeds in making voluntary the 30 percent to 40 percent of dues that members currently pay for political activities.

In addition to California Teachers Association and its parent organization, the National Education Association, the suit names as defendants the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) and its parent, the American Federation of Teachers, as well as United Teachers Los Angeles. (Disclosure: The CTA and CFT are financial supporters of Capital & Main.)

Also being sued are the union locals where three of the teachers work along with the superintendents of Los Angeles Unified (LAUSD), West Contra Costa Unified and Arcadia Unified school districts.

CFT’s Pechthalt

“These folks essentially want to have their cake and eat it too,” CFT president Joshua Pechthalt told Capital & Main. “They disagree, I guess, with all of the union’s political stances, and so they want to be able to opt out of that portion. … It seems pretty clear to me that part of the intent of this suit is to weaken public sector unions.”

Not so, insists StudentsFirst spokesperson Kellen Arno. “I think that all the plaintiffs involved in this case are ardent supporters of the union. They want to be a part of the union. They appreciate all the representation that the union provides. I think they just don’t want to be coerced into also supporting a political agenda.”

The plaintiffs include StudentsFirst activists April Bain, a math teacher with LAUSD, and Bhavini Bhakta, an Arcadia Unified teacher who has testified on behalf of StudentsFirst in the past on proposed state education legislation, and testifed for plaintiffs in last year’s Vergara trial, which successfully challenged the state’s teacher tenure laws.

The high-powered corporate law firm that brought that suit, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, is also behind Bain.

Also named as plaintiffs are LAUSD teacher Kiechelle Russell, a member of Educators 4 Excellence (a Gates Foundation-funded anti-teachers union group), and Clare Sobetski, a Teach for America high school teacher with the West Contra Costa Unified School District.

California law requires that a union represent all workers at a so-called agency shop in matters of collective bargaining and workplace grievances, regardless of membership status. In return, the union can charge nonmembers a fair share of costs incurred under its statutory obligation to represent them in collective bargaining.

The Bain lawsuit, however, contends that by forcing dissenting teachers to forego union membership and the additional benefits provided by unions for its members, the law represents an unconstitutional First Amendment burden.

“There’s something like 40 years of legal precedent establishing our right to determine the qualifications for membership,” Pechthalt said. “And to that extent, from our perspective, I wouldn’t call this a frivolous lawsuit, but it doesn’t have merit.”

StudentFirst’s Blew

Bain signals the first major attack against teachers unions by StudentsFirst since its founder, former Washington D.C. school superintendent Michelle Rhee, resigned under a cloud last August. She was replaced as the group’s president by Jim Blew, who has worked as an advisor to the Walton family, the owners of Walmart.

The group’s funders represent a who’s who of billionaires and right-wing education reform foundations that include the Walton Family Foundation, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, hedge-fund managers David Tepper and Alan Fournier, the for-profit charter school management company Charter Schools USA, and the Laura and John Arnold Foundation.

Bain also follows on the heels of a barrage of lawsuits brought against unions in the wake of Supreme Court decisions in 2012’s Knox v. Service Employees International Union, Local 1000 and last year’s Harris v. Quinn, in which a conservative majority, led by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., used First Amendment arguments to chip away at state laws requiring public-sector workers to pay union dues.

Those decisions signaled the high court’s willingness to hear test cases aimed at overturning 1977’s landmark Abood v. Detroit Board of Education decision that allowed states to require all public employees represented by unions to pay union dues.

Chief among those cases is Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, a suit similar to Bain that was filed in 2013 by the ideologically conservative law firm Center for Individual Rights. The suit was submitted on behalf a group of 10 nonunion teachers challenging Calfornia’s law that authorizes teachers’ unions to charge agency fees to nonmembers. That lawsuit is now on appeal to the Supreme Court.

“Friedrichs is sort of attacking [Abood] head-on,” labor attorney and Century Foundation fellow Moshe Marvit told Capital & Main, “saying that it should be overturned, that the whole agency fee or fair share provision model that Abood sort of formalized in the public sector should be deemed unconstitutional. Bain is not attacking Abood in the same way. It’s saying that a fair share balance should be struck, not necessarily in favor of a right to work, but more in favor of the idea that nonmembers should get all the benefits of membership.”

Marvit: Not optimistic about SCOTUS

The common denominator, Marvit added, is an argument conservatives have been making for a long time — that people shouldn’t have to join a union, and even if the majority votes for it, they shouldn’t have to pay for political activities. That doesn’t mean the logic employed by Bainisn’t convoluted.

“They’re saying it’s your First Amendment right to not be a member,” Marvit noted, “and also a violation of your First Amendment rights not to be a member. You know, that you should still have the right to vote in an organization that you don’t want to be a part of, which is very bizarre. I’m not saying it won’t go anywhere in the courts, but it is a strange First Amendment argument to make.”

For California teachers unions, bearing the brunt of the suits has forced them to reallocate resources away from initiatives aimed at benefiting public schools. But, Joshua Pechthalt adds, it also highlights the competing, market-driven vision for education of the corporate reformers.

“It’s about testing kids to death,” the CFT president declared. “It’s about frankly creating greater disparity between kids from well-to-do families … and the growing number of middle- and working-class kids who are both finding higher education out of reach while attending schools that have, over the last 10 to 15 years, deadened learning.”

With Friedrichs a strong possiblity to land on the Supreme Court’s calendar, Marvit isn’t optimistic about the future of Abood.

“It seems like in Alito’s decisions,” observed the attorney, “he’s very much kind of laying the groundwork for destroying Abood and inviting a case that attacks it head-on. I think that’s what Friedrichs was made for, and I can’t imagine they won’t accept it. And if they do, if they don’t use it to kill Abood, I think they’ll just take one more kind of furious swipe at it. But I think over the next few years, it’ll probably be overturned.”

Reposted from Capital and MainP

Vergara v. State of California Decision |

Vergara v. State of California is a meritless lawsuit brought by Students Matter, an organization created by Silicon Valley multimillionaire David Welch and a private public relations firm for the sole purpose of filing this suit. Students Matter is supported by Michelle Rhee and Students First, Parent Revolution Executive Director Ben Austin, Billionaire and school privatizer Eli Broad, former lawmaker Gloria Romero, and other corporate education reformers with an interest in privatizing public education and attacking teachers’ unions. The suit challenges California statutes governing due process in teacher dismissals, using experience as a criteria during school layoffs, and the two-year probationary period for teachers. The suit wrongly alleges those laws are unconstitutional and hurt students. The defendant in the suit is the State of California. CTA and the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) intervened in the case to ensure all stakeholders have input in educational policy decisions and to protect the rights of educators. 

Simply put, this lawsuit highlights the wrong problems, proposes the wrong solutions, and follows the wrong process. This is yet another attempt by the usual corporate special interests to undermine the teaching profession and push their agenda on California public schools and students. Circumventing the legislative process to strip teachers of their due process rights will not improve student learning, will make it harder to attract and retain quality teachers in our classrooms, and ignores all the research that shows experience is a key factor in effective teaching. This is a blatant effort to legislate from the bench, keeping parents and educators out of education policy decisions.  

Explaining the Economic Crisis - Ed Asner

Tax the Rich. Ed Asner. 

CFT On Prop. 30 Victory

CFT president Pechthalt on Prop 30 victory, Prop 32 defeat

November 7, Sacramento—CFT president Joshua Pechthalt issued the following statement this morning:  "Educators are overjoyed that Proposition 30 passed.  In standing up for public education and social services, a majority of Californians declared that we can turn the Golden State around.  The huge blizzard of deceptive and scary political advertising couldn’t obscure the reality that our schools are underfunded. "The people have spoken:  the best way to build a better education system is to properly fund it by asking those who can most afford it, the wealthy, to pay their fair share in taxes.  As a result, educators will be in a better position to help the students of the state achieve their dreams. "The decisive victory of Prop 30 reveals an important shift in California’s orientation.  For more than thirty years it has been common wisdom that “Californians don’t like taxes.”  No more.  Prop 30 shows voters once more understand what Oliver Wendell Holmes said a century ago:  “Taxes are the price we pay for civilized society.”  Prop 30 is a sign we can create a fair tax system to accomplish California’s priorities.

Millionaires should pay their fair share of taxes

 by Duane Campbell

California needs additional revenue to fund schools and to invest in the future.  A tax plan known as  The Millionaires Tax has been   proposed by the California Federation of Teachers and the Courage Campaign to increase revenues to pay for vital services.   It was assigned the official title "Tax To Benefit Public Schools, Social Services, Public Safety, And Road Maintenance," on Friday, Feb.2,   by California  Attorney General Kamala Harris.

A report of the California Budget Project notes that  “measured as a share of family income, California’s lowest-income families pay the most in taxes. The bottom fifth of the state’s families, with an average income of $12,600, spent 11.1 percent of their income on state and local taxes.  In comparison, the wealthiest 1 percent, with an average income of $2.3 million, spent 7.8 percent of their income on state and local taxes.”

The Millionaires  Tax  plan, of  the California Federation of Teachers and the Courage Campaign would raise taxes by three percentage points on income above $1 million and five percentage points on income over  $2 million.    Analysts say the proposal would generate $4 billion to $6 billion annually.  Signature gathering for the plan will begin within weeks.

The plan competes  with Gov. Jerry Brown's tax initiative, which would raise income taxes on earners starting at $250,000 for single filers, as well as increase the statewide sales tax by a half-cent.

Marty Hittleman: CFT, on Race to the Top ?

“Race To The Top:” Feds Demand Too Much, Too Soon, For Too Little

By Marty Hittelman
President
California Federation of Teachers
The California Federation of Teachers has a number of serious concerns regarding Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s proposed “Race to the Top” competition for state education funding. The proposed regulations for federal funding would require changes that could harm California students, are not based on research, and won't turn around struggling schools. There are two rounds of application, and no need to be panicked by the governor into rushing into the first one without proper discussion. Following are concerns, excerpted from a letter I wrote to the Education Secretary. For the complete text of the letter, go to www.cft.org.
Student Data
The California Federation of Teachers believes that student achievement and student growth data may be worthwhile tools in helping to improve school instruction when the data instruments contain information that is useful to the teacher. We do not believe that current standardized tests being administered as part of the No Child Left Behind Act meet those criteria. In terms of the “firewall” between student and teacher data, California has no restrictions on the use of such data at the local level, where it matters, for such evaluations. California should be judged to be in compliance with this requirement.
We need the right reforms
It takes more than the ability to fill in bubbles to be considered an educated person. We thought President Obama understood that. With the proposed requirements of “Race to the Top,” we are led to believe that he subscribes to the No Child Left Behind ideology of narrow testing and one-size-fits-all education. We are disappointed.
I am concerned that the governor and legislators of California will succumb to the temptation of increased funding while, at the same time, giving up traditional state and local autonomy in the area of education. We believe that many of the requirements of Race to the Top will be detrimental to our students’ education. We believe that it is unwise for California to accept, and for the federal government to impose, changes that have not been shown through research and practice to be productive. It is one thing to try new ideas, another to impose them before they’ve been proven to work.
Our experience indicates that schools improve when teachers are provided: relevant professional development; support such as mentoring and induction and manageable class sizes; supportive principals and qualified and trained support staff; a voice in school-level decisions; and safe schools in which to work. Firing or moving staff en masse hasn’t been proven a successful solution. Closing a school has the devastating effect of disrupting communities and displacing children, disruptions that weigh most heavily on minority communities.
Charter Schools
The CFT believes that the heavy emphasis in favor of charter schools in The Race to the Top is misplaced. Most charter schools do not do better than regular public schools, and many of them do worse. A recent study has shown that only 17 percent of charter schools produced higher academic gains than the traditional public schools and 37 percent did worse. The rest were about the same.
If charter schools are to become labs for new directions they should be required to serve English-language learners, students with disabilities, and very low income students. They should be held accountable for academic achievement the same way that our traditional public schools are. They should be financially sound and based on the same state standards as those proposed for traditional public schools.
Standardized Testing, Student Assessment, and Teacher Evaluation
The CFT believes that the emphasis on standardized tests, and their linkage to teacher evaluation, is misplaced and destructive. Multiple-choice tests in math and reading do not address the real goals of education. Teaching to the test not only narrows the curriculum but also tends to destroy any love of learning. When tests drive the curriculum, instruction suffers. It is not fair to teachers, students, and schools to have standardized test scores as the main determinant of teacher and school quality. It is not fair to base high stakes decisions on these test scores.
Anyone who has spent much time in the classroom will tell you that one day’s performance in not a valid indicator of a student’s mastery of his or her school year curriculum and growth. That is why educators use ongoing quizzes, tests, written assignments, and portfolios to determine how much a student is growing. Not only are children’s performances on one standardized test not a valid measure of quality, but it also is unfair to determine things like teacher compensation and dismissal based on these test scores. Such an approach will cause some teachers to fight for the easiest group of students to teach in order to maximize pay. This is just not a productive approach.
In addition, it is unclear how the proposal would base teacher evaluation, compensation, promotion and dismissal on standardized tests, when most teachers teach grades and subjects not captured in standardized tests or repeated. We are also concerned that the use of data may violate student and educator privacy rights. We are concerned that the programs being proposed have no track record in turning around schools while proven programs are not under consideration.
Making Progress in Closing the Achievement Gap
Any effort to close the achievement gap in our schools that does not address the conditions that children grow up in is doomed to failure. Schools can only do so much in the time that they work with students. Until this country closes the gaps in job opportunities at a livable wage, health care, and affordable housing, efforts for improvements in the schools will have limited success. In addition, you can develop all the best tests in the world but if you don’t improve the conditions in the schools that students and teachers operate in, the test scores will not improve. As the famous farmer said, “weighing my hog doesn’t help it to grow heavier.”
Posted on August 28, 2009