Cases Overturned By PERB

One of the difficulties of PERB practice is doing legal research. It’s easy enough finding cases on PERB’s website or from commercial legal research vendors like Westlaw. But how do you know if a particular point of law in a decision is still good law? Unlike with court decisions, there is no way to “shepardize” a PERB case to find out if it’s been overturned. So you really have to be aware of the status of PERB jurisprudence.

This is all the more difficult today because the current Board has been particularly active in overturning prior cases. Did you know that the current Board has overturned, at least partially, 13 prior decisions? Do you know which cases have been overturned? Below is a list of cases that have been expressly overturned one at least one point of law. Because the Board has overturned several doctrines, there are many more cases that are no longer good law on at least one point.

Case	Cases Overturned	New Holding
Trustees of California State University (2012) PERB Dec. No. 2287-H	Beverly Hills Unified School District (2008) PERB Dec. No. 1969	Demand to bargain only needs to identify potential prospective effects, not actual effects
	Salinas Union High School District (2004) PERB Dec. No. 1639	Demand to bargain only needs to identify potential prospective effects, not actual effects
Rio Hondo Community College District (2013) PERB Dec. No. 2313-E	San Francisco Unified School District (2009) PERB Dec. No. 2048	Don’t need to identify “actual” effects in a demand to bargain
County of Sacramento (2013) PERB Dec. No. 2315-M	State of California (Department of Veterans Affairs) (2010) PERB Dec. No. 2110-S	Don’t need to identify specific effects in request to bargain
	City of Richmond (2004) PERB Dec. No. 1720.	Don’t need to identify specific effects in request to bargain
	Fresno County Superior Court (2008) PERB Dec. No. 1942-C	Don’t need to identify specific effects in request to bargain
	County of Riverside (2010) PERB Dec. No. 2097	Don’t need to identify specific effects in request to bargain
	Beverly Hills Unified School District (2008) PERB Dec. No. 1969	Don’t need to identify specific effects in request to bargain
County of Santa Clara (2013) PERB Dec. No. 2321-M	State of California (Department of Corrections) (2011) PERB Dec. No. 2196-S	Union doesn’t need to demand bargaining where no notice of change is provided
	State of California (Department of Corrections) (2006) PERB Dec. No. 1848-S	Union doesn’t need to demand bargaining where no notice of change is provided
	County of Riverside (2010) PERB Dec. No. 2097-M	Union doesn’t need to demand bargaining where no notice of change is provided
	Sylvan Union Elementary School District (1992) PERB Dec. No. 919	Union doesn’t need to demand bargaining where no notice of change is provided
Santa Clara Valley Water District (2013) PERB Dec. No. 2349-M	County of Orange (2011) PERB Dec. No. 2155-M	Employee’s status as a union official is enough by itself to constitute protected activity
	Trustees of the California State University (2009) PERB Dec. No. 2038-H	Employee’s status as a union official is enough by itself to constitute protected activity
City of Sacramento (2013) PERB Decision No. 2351-M	City of San Diego (Office of the City Attorney) (2010) PERB Dec. No. 2103-M	Employer’s act of soliciting employees to waive a contractual right or to change an established practice constitutes actual change in policy for the purpose of demonstrating an unlawful unilateral change

Note: I got some feedback that it wasn’t clear whether the statement of law in the third column is the new holding or the holding that was overruled. I changed the title in the third column to (hopefully) make it clear that it represents the new holding from the Board.