California teachers won a major legal victory over an attempt to strip them of due process rights when the California Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal in the landmark Vergara vs. California case.
The unanimous decision, which was being watched school districts around the nation, brings an end to an acrimonious battle waged between charter schools and their advocates and teachers unions and their supporters over due process rights, permanent teacher status and seniority. Charter advocates claimed these protections harmed public education students by depriving primarily minority and low-income students of good teachers.
Plaintiffs in Vergara filed a lawsuit in state court in 2012 and two years later Judge Rolf Treu ruled in their favor, declaring the teacher protections unconstitutional. The defendants appealed and in April the Court of Appeal struck down Treu’s ruling, setting the stage for the state Supreme Court to hear the case.
“I am relieved by the court’s decision declining an appeal of the unanimous California Court of Appeal ruling upholding California educators’ due process rights. The billionaire-funded attack, from its inception, tried to pit our children against their teachers—people who make a difference in our children’s lives every day—rather than understand and solve the real problems ailing public education,” said American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. “Now that this chapter is closed, we must embrace our shared responsibility to help disadvantaged kids by supporting them so they can reach their full potential.”
Culver City Federation of Teachers President David Mielke agreed with Weingarten’s assertion that the lawsuit was a distraction from the real problems facing public education. “The fact that we prevailed on this is encouraging. The place to go to change a law if you don’t like it is the state Legislature,” Mielke said. “The groups that are behind this lawsuit are the same Silicon Valley billionaires who want to kill public education and privatize everything.
The California Charter Assn. declined to comment on the case.
Weingarten said she hoped the debate will now turn away from attempts to blame teachers for the shortcomings in public education.
“I hope this decision closes the book on the flawed and divisive argument that links educators’ workplace protections with student disadvantage. Instead, as the expert evidence clearly showed—and the Court of Appeal carefully reasoned—it was the discretionary decisions of some administrators, rather than the statutes themselves, that contributed to the problems cited by the plaintiffs.
Despite the legal victory, Mielke thinks the battle with those he refers to as privatizers is not over. “The privatization groups will have another lawsuit lined up somewhere,” the union leader predicted. “Their plan is to kill public education and we have to be ready for the next round.”
The lawsuit was named for Beatriz Vergara, a student at a charter school in the San Fernando Valley.
Gary Walker contributed to this story.
