## Facts

- San Jose, a charter city, employed police officers represented by the San Jose Peace Officer’s Association.
- In 1972, the police department adopted a written regulation limiting when officers could discharge firearms, including only specified circumstances such as defense of life or capturing certain felony suspects when other reasonable means failed.
- The parties had a memorandum of understanding covering employment terms from 1972 to 1975; the firearms rule itself had not been negotiated when adopted.
- In 1975, the chief of police issued a revised firearms-discharge policy without prior notice to, or bargaining with, the Association.
- The Association demanded the City meet and confer before implementing the revised policy and asserted unilateral implementation would violate the Meyers–Milias–Brown Act (MMBA).
- The Association sued seeking declaratory and injunctive relief to prevent implementation absent meet-and-confer bargaining, and requested attorney’s fees.
- The trial court declared the firearms policy a mandatory meet-and-confer subject, permanently enjoined changes without bargaining, and denied attorney’s fees.
- The City appealed the injunction and declaration; the Association cross-appealed the denial of attorney’s fees.

## Issues

1. Whether the MMBA required the City to meet and confer with the Association before changing the police department’s firearms-discharge policy.
2. Whether the Association was entitled to attorney’s fees.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeal reversed the judgment to the extent it required meet and confer and enjoined implementation of the revised firearms policy.
- The court held the firearms-discharge policy was not a mandatory subject of bargaining under the MMBA because it concerned the “merits, necessity, or organization” of police services.
- The court affirmed the denial of attorney’s fees to the Association.

## Legal Principles

- The MMBA requires meet-and-confer bargaining over “wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment,” but excludes bargaining over the “merits, necessity, or organization” of public services.
- A policy is nonbargainable when it primarily determines the nature, level, and method of providing a public service, even if it materially affects employees.
- Regulations defining when officers may use deadly force are treated as core law-enforcement policy decisions concerning public protection and thus fall within management’s reserved authority under the MMBA.

## Conclusion

The court held that San Jose could revise its police firearms-discharge policy without first meeting and conferring because the policy concerned fundamental law-enforcement service decisions excluded from mandatory bargaining under the MMBA, and it upheld the denial of attorney’s fees to the Association.


San Jose Peace Officer’s Ass’n v. City of San Jose, 78 Cal. App. 3d 935, 144 Cal. Rptr. 638 (Ct. App. 1978)