This post was authored by Kristin D. Lindgren
Background
On June 10, 2014, Liebert Cassidy Whitmore reported on the Superior Court decision in Vergara v. State of California. The plaintiffs had alleged that teacher tenure, dismissal and layoff statutes found in the California Education Code unconstitutionally harmed students in two groups: (1) a general
An unprecedented number of protests – at educational institutions and in city streets – occurred nationwide last year, and protests continue to serve as focal points for public attention and debate going into 2016. The legal realm concerning free speech is in a similar state of turbulence for public employers and for educators.
Here are
This post was authored by Liara Silva and Alysha Stein-Manes
Last month, the California Court of Appeal issued a decision in Caldecott v. Superior Court (2015), finding that the Newport-Mesa Unified School District (“District”) was obligated under the California Public Records Act (“PRA”) to release certain documents related to an employee’s hostile work environment
Last week, President Obama signed the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (“ESSA” or the “Act”) into law. The Act reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (“ESEA”). A bipartisan compromise bill, ESSA supersedes the controversial No Child Left Behind Act (“NCLB”). ESSA effectively replaces NCLB’s federal-centric, one-size-fits-all model of K-12 education reform and
Over the past several years, mainstream media has become increasingly fixated on issues of sexual violence on college campuses, with major state universities like the University of Montana, Michigan State University, the University of Virginia (UVA), and the University of California at San Diego receiving the brunt of the attention and corresponding criticism. The
This blog post was authored by Stephanie Lowe and Alysha Stein-Manes
On Tuesday, June 30, 2015, Governor Brown signed into law a bill designed to require that California schoolchildren are fully vaccinated, regardless of their parents’ personal or religious beliefs. The bill applies to children enrolled in public or private day care, public school districts,
On June 30, 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States agreed to hear an appeal in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association to answer the question of whether compulsory “agency shop” fees violate the First Amendment. An “agency shop” arrangement requires non-union member employees to pay compulsory fees as a condition of employment even if
In September 2012, Fresno USD’s governing board adopted a resolution authorizing the execution of lease-leaseback construction contracts without competitive bidding.
The lease-leaseback structure permits builder-financed construction. A school district leases real estate it owns to a construction firm for $1.00 per year and the contractor agrees to build new facilities on that real estate. This
In recent months, partially in reaction to several investigations initiated by the U.S. Department of Education’s (“DOE”) Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”), the news media has drawn attention to the prevalence of sexual violence on college campuses and scrutinized administrative responses to claims of such violence. The height of this attention arguably came in November
It has been 50 years since the Free Speech Movement began at UC Berkeley in 1964, and approximately 40-50 years since near-riotous conditions overwhelmed college campuses in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. In our own time, it is about three years since the 2011 Occupy events and large-scale tuition protests erupted on college campuses.