## Facts

- California enacted the State Employer-Employee Relations Act (SEERA) to provide collective-bargaining rights and a labor-relations framework for state employees.
- Pacific Legal Foundation and others filed mandate proceedings seeking to compel the Governor and state agencies to disregard SEERA and to perform duties as if SEERA were invalid.
- Petitioners asserted SEERA conflicted with the California Constitution’s civil service provisions (article VII), particularly the merit system and the State Personnel Board’s (SPB) assertedly exclusive authority.
- SEERA assigned substantial responsibilities to the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) and authorized bargaining over “wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment,” including dispute-resolution mechanisms.
- The California Supreme Court considered the matter as a broad facial constitutional challenge to SEERA.

## Issues

1. Whether SEERA is facially unconstitutional because it conflicts with article VII’s civil service merit system and the SPB’s constitutional authority.
2. Whether SEERA impermissibly transfers, dilutes, or supplants SPB’s constitutionally assigned powers by granting PERB authority over labor-relations matters and by authorizing bargaining and arbitration procedures.
3. Whether asserted conflicts must be resolved by invalidating SEERA on its face or by construing and applying SEERA to preserve SPB’s merit-system functions.

## Decision

- The California Supreme Court denied the requested writ of mandate.
- The Court upheld SEERA against the facial challenge, concluding the statute is not unconstitutional on its face under article VII.
- The Court construed SEERA to operate consistently with the merit system by preserving SPB’s primacy over core civil service functions.
- The Court indicated that particular applications that intrude on SPB’s constitutional functions could be litigated as as-applied challenges.
- A dissent would have been more receptive to the claim that SEERA improperly encroached on SPB’s constitutional authority.

## Legal Principles

- A statute should be construed, where reasonable, to conform to constitutional requirements rather than to create a conflict.
- Article VII establishes a constitutional merit system for state civil service but does not foreclose legislative authority to create collective-bargaining mechanisms so long as merit-system essentials remain intact.
- A facial constitutional challenge requires showing the statute cannot be applied constitutionally in any circumstance; speculative or contingent conflicts are insufficient.
- Legislative authorization of bargaining over wages, hours, and working conditions may coexist with constitutionally protected civil service governance, provided constitutionally assigned SPB functions over merit-system matters are preserved.
- Potential constitutional problems arising from administration of the statute are generally addressed through as-applied review rather than wholesale invalidation.

## Conclusion

The California Supreme Court sustained SEERA against a broad facial attack, holding it can be implemented in harmony with article VII by maintaining the SPB’s constitutional control over core merit-system matters while allowing collective bargaining and PERB-administered labor-relations processes over negotiable working conditions.


Pac. Legal Found. v. Brown, 29 Cal. 3d 168, 624 P.2d 1215 (Cal. 1981)