California Correctional Peace Officers Ass'n. v. State Personnel Board

Government Code section 18671.1 1 specifies the time within which the California State Personnel Board (the Board) must render a *1138 decision following a hearing or investigation of a state employee’s appeal from a departmental disciplinary action. For most investigations and hearings the decision must be rendered in no more than six months from the date the petition is filed or ninety days from the time the matter is submitted following investigation or hearing, whichever is less. The statute provides neither a sanction to be imposed on the Board nor a remedy for failure to comply with the statutory deadlines, however. Instead, it provides that if the Board does not render a decision within the time limits, the employee will be deemed to have exhausted all available administrative remedies.

This court must decide if the Court of Appeal was correct in its conclusion that the Board loses jurisdiction over an employee’s appeal if the time limit is not met, making the aggrieved employee’s only remedy for the unfavorable agency action a petition for writ of mandate against the employing authority to compel that agency or department to set aside its action. If so, we must…

The essential question presented is whether the statutory time period within which the State Personnel Board (Board) must act is mandatory and jurisdictional or merely “directory.” A corollary issue is whether, when the Board has failed to act in a timely fashion, an employee bears the burden in a subsequent mandamus proceeding to establish that the employing agency’s action is unjustified.

Contrary to the majority, I would hold that the Court of Appeal correctly interpreted the governing statute to conclude that the statutory time frame is mandatory and jurisdictional. Unless the employee waives time, the appropriate remedy when the Board has failed to act in a timely manner is a proceeding in mandamus directly against the employing agency to revoke its adverse action. The Court of Appeal opinion herein, authored by Presiding Justice Klein and concurred in by Justices Croskey and Kitching, is completely persuasive on this point, and I would adopt it as the opinion of this court. That portion of the Court of Appeal opinion, with appropriate deletions and additions, is set forth in parts 1, 2 and 4 of the discussion which follows. *

I would also hold, contrary to the majority,…