Court Eases Rules on Public-Employee Suits

In a victory for hundreds of thousands of government workers, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday that public employees can file discrimination lawsuits against governmental agencies without pursuing internal civil service remedies.

The state high court, ruling 5 to 2 in favor of a former Los Angeles city employee who claimed disability discrimination, held that government workers can choose to sue under a state anti-discrimination law rather than go through administrative complaint procedures.

The decision affects all public employees in the state. Government agencies had argued that employees for many agencies should have been required to exhaust internal administrative remedies before they could sue in court under the state’s anti-discrimination law.

For an employee with a strong case, a lawsuit can result in hefty damages, including emotional distress compensation. By contrast, a civil service procedure generally offers, at most, back pay and reinstatement.

The court’s decision “keeps the courthouse door wide open so public employees don’t first have to jump through burning hoops of fire set up by the employers,” said David J. Duchrow, who represented plaintiff employment lawyers in the case.

Duchrow said the decision would be “a big benefit for college professors” as well as municipal employees.

“UC has stacks and stacks of manuals you have to go through, per the department, per the school, per the university” to pursue a discrimination claim, Duchrow said. “They are never-ending, a labyrinth of procedures you have to follow at the university level, and this decision says you don’t have go through all that.”

Arlene Prater, who represented 61 cities in the case, complained that the ruling “is taking away a very useful tool to resolving disputes.

“Public agencies are losing the opportunity to resolve discrimination claims internally, where I think the agency and the employees are best able to resolve them,” Prater said.

The court’s decision stemmed from a lawsuit filed by Steve Schifando, who worked for the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks until 1998. Schifando said his supervisors knew he suffered from severe hypertension that made him dizzy and lightheaded when he was under stress.

In a meeting in August 1998 to discuss his complaints about recent changes in job responsibilities, two supervisors deliberately tried to make Schifando “blow his top” and resign, Schifando alleged. He said he began to sweat profusely, his chest felt constricted, his face turned red and he had trouble breathing.

“I can’t take it anymore. I quit!” he said he finally exclaimed.

Schifando, who worked for the city for 16 years, said resignation papers were shoved in front of him, and he signed under duress. He filed a complaint with the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing, which gave him a letter authorizing him to file a lawsuit.

Los Angeles city officials said Schifando first should have exhausted his administrative remedies set out by the city’s charter. An appeals court agreed.

But the state high court said the Fair Employment and Housing Act of 1980 was never intended to exempt public employees. The court said it found “troubling the possibility that exhausting City Charter procedures might deprive a victim of discrimination of a civil right created by the Legislature.”

The court also said it was not worried that public employees would now routinely opt out of internal procedures in favor of a lawsuit.

“Only those employees with the most egregious discrimination claims will likely choose litigation over the summary charter procedures,” Justice Ming W. Chin wrote for the majority in Schifando vs. City of Los Angeles, S106660.

Justice Marvin R. Baxter, joined by Justice Janice Rogers Brown, dissented. Baxter warned that the decision would force governmental agencies to spend large sums defending lawsuits that could have been avoided if worker complaints were settled internally.

A rule requiring exhaustion of internal administrative remedies made “employers, and in the case of public entity employers, their civil service commissions, the first line of defense against employment discrimination practices in the workplace,” Baxter argued.

Robert M. Ball, who represented Schifando in the case, said the ruling revives his lawsuit. “If it went the other way,” Ball said, “public employees would have been second-class citizens.”

A spokesman for the L.A. city attorney’s office said it was still reviewing the decision.