New O.C. School Lawyer’s Big Win

Until he went toe to toe with California’s schools chief this month, few people knew Mark Bucher.

A businessman-turned-lawyer, Bucher toiled in relative anonymity throughout the 1990s, fighting to get a series of conservative propositions onto statewide ballots and conservative candidates on Orange County school boards.

Sometimes he succeeded; often he did not. Most recently, as campaign manager of an initiative that would have required that parents be notified before a minor has an abortion, Bucher had to inform supporters that not enough signatures had been gathered to make the ballot in November.

But Bucher scored a major victory Monday when California’s superintendent of public instruction, Jack O’Connell, grudgingly ruled that the Westminster School District’s partial rewrite of a policy technically complies with a state antidiscrimination law.

The decision spared the district from a crippling loss of funding and granted a three-trustee majority on the school board a dramatic win.

A mild-mannered 45-year-old, Bucher was born and raised in Tustin, where he still lives with his wife and two children. The couple are expecting a third child this month. He owns Employers Resource, a Tustin firm that provides legal and administrative services to companies, and once owned a construction supply company.

A statewide debate in 1993 over school choice was his introduction to politics, and two years later, after a partisan battle between then-Dist. Atty. Mike Capizzi and then-Assembly candidate Scott Baugh inspired him to play a more active role, Bucher decided to become a lawyer.

Bucher enrolled at Western State University College of Law in Fullerton in 1996 and graduated in 2000; he joined the state bar later that year.

Hastily hired April 8 by the Westminster school board majority, which steadfastly opposed portions of the antidiscrimination law on moral and religious grounds, Bucher dived into an ugly fight. The three trustees had angered many parents and teachers by putting the district’s funding at risk.

Two of the three trustees still face a recall drive, and the district could still be taken over by the state under proposed legislation triggered by the case and still being pursued.

Where many saw enemies, however, Bucher saw allies.

“I don’t choose a battle because it can be easily won,” Bucher said. “I am drawn to issues where someone is needed to take up the battle. Often it is David versus Goliath. Whenever you have a situation where the laws are out of whack with the values of society

At issue in Westminster was an antidiscrimination provision meant to protect gays as well as transsexuals and others who do not conform to traditional gender roles. The three trustees -- Judy Ahrens, Helena Rutkowski and Blossie Marquez-Woodcock -- particularly objected to language allowing students and staff members to define their own gender.

Bucher worked quickly. Acting on a suggestion by a Westminster City Councilman Kermit Marsh, he persuaded the board majority to rewrite the district policy in a way that satisfied O’Connell’s office while still rejecting the idea that victims of discrimination may determine their own gender. Following Bucher’s lead, the three trustees approved language that defines a person’s gender as his or her biological sex or, in the case of discrimination, what it was perceived to be by an alleged discriminator.

While O’Connell said the policy is technically legal, he said in a letter to the board that he did not believe that Bucher and the three trustees intend to uphold the law and promised to watch them closely.

Far from satisfied with Monday’s victory, Bucher now wants the state policy changed to reflect Westminster’s. While Bucher said he has no political aspirations and does not plan to take the fight to Sacramento himself, he would be eager to assist.

Tim Rosales, spokesman for Assemblyman Ken Maddox (R-Garden Grove), who publicly supported Bucher and the three trustees, said the idea of broadening Bucher’s fight to the state level “is something [Maddox] is definitely interested in looking at.”

None of this surprises James Reed, the district’s board president, who has angrily opposed the three trustees throughout the saga and has few kind words to say about Bucher.

“I do not think he has the wherewithal to provide what this district needs and deserves,” Reed said. “He hasn’t done anything that allows me to muster any respect for him. He is pursuing 15 minutes of fame for himself.”

Bucher acknowledged that, with hardly any previous experience in education law, he was hired as a mercenary of sorts. But he insisted that he was qualified to stay on at the district -- at least for now.

“I certainly did what I was hired to do. I don’t think I would have been the most qualified to come in and just represent the district, but there was this issue and it was certainly the most pressing,” he said.