Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/717873
BySudhinThanawala TheAssociatedPress SAN FRANCISCO In a vic- tory for teacher unions, a divided California Supreme Court decided Monday to let the state's teacher ten- ure law stand. Thehighcourtdecided4-3 not to review a lower court ruling that upheld tenure and other job protections for teachers.Thatrulingcamein a lawsuit by a group of stu- dents who claimed that in- competent teachers were al- most impossible to fire be- cause of tenure laws and that schools in poor neigh- borhoods were dumping grounds for bad teachers. The case was closely watched around the coun- try and highlighted ten- sions between teacher unions, school leaders, law- makers and well-funded ed- ucation reform groups over whether policies like tenure and firing teachers with the least seniority keep ineffec- tive instructors in the class- room. Dozens of states have moved in recent years to get rid of such protections or raise the standards for obtaining them. Associate Justice Good- win Liu voted for the Cal- ifornia Supreme Court to take up the case, saying it affected millions of stu- dents statewide and pre- sented a significant legal issue that the lower court likely got wrong. "As the state's highest court, we owe the plain- tiffs in this case, as well as schoolchildren through- out California, our trans- parent and reasoned judg- ment on whether the chal- lenged statutes deprive a significant subset of stu- dents of their fundamental right to education and vio- late the constitutional guar- antee of equal protection of the laws," he said. Associate Justice Mari- ano-Florentino Cuellar echoed those concerns in a separate dissent. A Los Angeles Superior Court judge sided with the students in a 2014 ruling that threatened to shake up the state's public school system, which teaches more than 6 million students from kindergarten through 12th grade. In striking down several laws regarding tenure, se- niority and other protec- tions, Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu said the harm in- flicted on students by in- competent teachers "shocks the conscience." Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, ap- pealed the ruling, and an appeals court overturned that decision in April, say- ing the students had failed to show California's hiring and firing rules were un- constitutional. Justice Roger Boren, who presided over the 2nd Dis- trict Court of Appeal, wrote in the 3-0 opinion that some principals get rid of highly ineffective teachers by sending them to low-in- come schools, but those de- cisions have nothing to do with the teacher tenure law. Teachers have long ar- gued that tenure protects them from being fired on a whim, preserves academic freedom and helps attract talented people to a profes- sion that doesn't pay well. "I hope this decision closes the book on the flawed and divisive ar- gument that links educa- tors' workplace protections with student disadvantage," American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said in a state- ment. "It is now well past time that we move beyond damaging lawsuits like Ver- gara that demonize educa- tors and begin to work with teachers to address the real issues caused by the mas- sive underinvestment in public education in this country. " The Vergara v. State of California lawsuit, includ- ing Beatriz Vergara among the public school student plaintiffs, was backed by Students Matter, a non- profit group founded by Sili- con Valley entrepreneur Da- vid Welch. Welch assembled a high-profile legal team in- cluding Theodore Boutrous, who successfully fought to overturn California's gay- marriage ban. Boutrous said additional lawsuits in state and fed- eral court challenging the teacher tenure law were possible. Welch said he was hopeful the legislature would take up the issue. "While we are disap- pointed in the Supreme Court's decision to not grant review, we are grate- ful to the courts for shining a much-needed spotlight on these shameful laws and the enormous harm they inflict on thousands of chil- dren every year," Welch said in a statement. Assemblyman Chad Mayes, R-Yucca Valley, said the court's decision was dis- appointing and that legisla- tors needed to act to "stop protecting bad policies that deprive low-income and mi- nority students of a good education." CALIFORNIA Co ur t de ci si on k ee ps t ea ch er t en ur e pr ot ec ti on s By Jonathan J. Cooper The Associated Press SACRAMENTO California's state Senate on Monday re- vived a bill that would make the state the first in the United States to give farm- workers the same overtime pay as people who work in other industries, a last- ditch effort to reverse a nearly 80-year-old practice of exempting field hands from wage rules. The provision passed with only Democratic sup- port after a debate over whether it would help or hurt an estimated 829,000 people who work on Califor- nia farms harvesting fruit and vegetables, tending dairy cows and performing a wide variety of other ag- ricultural tasks. Hourly workers in Cal- ifornia are generally enti- tled to pay at one-and-a-half times the hourly rate af- ter they have worked eight hours in a day or 40 hours in a week. But for agricul- tural workers, the thresh- old required to get overtime pay is 10 hours a day or 60 hours a week. "It's time that we do right by these men and women who work these fields ev- ery single day to nourish our bodies," said Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles. The bill sponsored by As- semblywoman Lorena Gon- zalez, D-San Diego, would gradually eliminate the dis- parity over a three-year pe- riod beginning in 2019. Farms with fewer than 25 employees would get an ex- tra three years to meet the standard. The Senate's 21-14 vote sets up a showdown in the Assembly, which narrowly rejected a nearly identical bill in May. Since then, Gon- zalez agreed to give more time for smaller farms to comply and stepped up an online campaign to build support. "Eventually humanity wins out," Gonzalez said. "I think people realize just how tough of a job it is and how this inequality is really affecting people's lives." Republicans contend farm work is inherently seasonal and shouldn't be subject to the same rules as traditional labor. They said the bill would raise costs for farmers and make it more difficult for them to compete with rivals in other states and countries. It also would lead farm- ers to hire more workers, critics said, leaving their ex- isting employees with fewer hours and smaller pay- checks — or prompt farm owners to replace labor-in- tensive crops with products more conducive to automa- tion. "This bill, instead of try- ing to help the farmwork- ers, is hosing the farmwork- ers," said Sen. Tom Berry- hill, R-Twain Harte. The United Farm Work- ers union has lobbied in- tensely this year for in- creased farmworker over- time and is well connected to Democratic lawmakers. Approval by the Assem- bly and Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown would make California the first state with equivalent overtime rules for farm and non- farm workers, according to the UFW. Farmworkers have been exempt from overtime pay requirements since Con- gress approved the Fair La- bor Standards Act in 1938 to outline workplace pro- tections. Farmworkers were again exempted in 1999 when California guar- anteed overtime pay after eight hours in a day, not just 40 in a week. Livestock and dairy workers, irrigators and equipment operators would probably benefit most from the proposed change in California's overtime rule, said Philip Martin, a pro- fessor emeritus of agricul- tural and resource econom- ics at the University of Cali- fornia, Davis. Many seasonal harvest workers pick for less than eight hours a day, he said, though some work six days a week and could become eligible for a few weekly hours of overtime pay. SACRAMENTO Lawmakers revive farmworker overtime bill ERICRISBERG—THEASSOCIATEDPRESSFILE A picker rushes a bin of pinot noir grapes to a trailer a er they were picked at the Game Farm vineyard on the first day of harvest for Mumm Napa in Oakville. JEFF BARNARD — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE Matt Lauer of Portage, Wis., works a suction dredge to hunt for gold in the Klamath River near Happy Camp. By Sudhin Thanawala The Associated Press SAN FRANCISCO Cali- fornia's ban on the use of suction dredges to ex- tract gold from rivers is legal and not overridden by a 19th century federal law that allows mining on federal land, the Califor- nia Supreme Court ruled Monday. The court's unanimous decision was a victory for environmentalists and a blow to miners, who ar- gued that the ban essen- tially stopped gold mining because doing it by hand is labor intensive and makes the enterprise unprofitable. Environmentalists say suction dredge mining risks killing fish and stir- ring up toxic mercury. The high court's rul- ing came in an appeal of a criminal case in which miner Brandon Rinehart was convicted of a misde- meanor for suction dredge mining without a permit in 2012 and sentenced to three years of probation. Associate Justice Kath- ryn Werdegar, writing for the court, said the federal Mining Law of 1872 did not guarantee a right to mine free from regulation. Instead, its goal was to protect miners' property rights involving the fed- eral land to which they laid claim, she said. "The mining laws were neither a guarantee that mining would prove fea- sible nor a grant of im- munity against local reg- ulation, but simply an as- surance that the ultimate original landowner, the United States, would not interfere by asserting its own property rights," she wrote. Rinehart's attorney, James Buchal, said the high court showed a "ca- sual disregard" for federal law. He said Rinehart would likely ask the court to re- view its ruling or appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Suction dredges are powerful underwater vac- uums that suck up rocks, gravel and sand from river- beds to filter out gold. 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