## Facts

- County Sanitation District No. 2 of Los Angeles County employed about 500 workers and provided sewage transport, treatment, and landfill services.
- Los Angeles County Employees’ Association, Local 660 (SEIU), was the certified bargaining representative for the District’s blue-collar employees.
- The parties bargained under the Meyers-Milias-Brown Act over a new labor agreement and reached an impasse.
- On July 5, 1976, about 75% of the workforce began a strike.
- On July 6, 1976, the District sued for injunctive relief and damages and obtained a temporary restraining order enjoining the strike.
- The strike continued until July 16, 1976; employees voted to accept the District’s July 1 offer and returned to work the next day.
- The District sought tort damages premised on the theory that public employee strikes are unlawful and therefore actionable.

## Issues

1. Whether California common law imposes a general prohibition that makes all public employee strikes illegal absent statutory authorization.
2. If public employee strikes are illegal, whether a public employer may recover compensatory tort damages from a union that organizes or participates in the strike.

## Decision

- The California Supreme Court reversed the judgment for the District and remanded.
- The Court rejected a per se common-law rule banning public employee strikes.
- The Court held that public employee strikes are not unlawful or tortious merely because they occur.
- The Court adopted a case-by-case standard: a public employee work stoppage is unlawful only if it poses a substantial and imminent threat to public health or safety.
- Because the damages award rested on treating the strike as inherently unlawful, it could not stand absent the requisite showing of imminent threat.

## Legal Principles

- California common law does not treat all public employee strikes as illegal; legality depends on the strike’s concrete effects on public health or safety.
- A concerted public employee work stoppage to improve wages or working conditions is not unlawful unless it poses a substantial and imminent threat to public health or safety.
- The absence of a broad statutory ban (aside from specific categories such as firefighters) supports rejecting a categorical common-law prohibition.
- Where the Legislature has not barred strikes by a defined class of public employees, courts must determine unlawfulness on the facts of the particular work stoppage.
- Tort liability for strike-related damages cannot be imposed solely on the ground that the strike occurred; it requires unlawfulness under the imminent-threat standard.

## Conclusion

The court held that public employee strikes in California are not per se illegal and do not automatically support tort damages; a strike is unlawful only when it creates a substantial and imminent threat to public health or safety, requiring a case-specific showing rather than a categorical ban.


Cnty. Sanitation Dist. No. 2 of L.A. Cnty. v. L.A. Cnty. Emps.' Ass'n, Loc. 660, Serv. Emps. Int'l Union, AFL-CIO, 38 Cal. 3d 564 (Cal. 1985)