Reported / Citable
Background
The Municipal Attorneys Association of San Francisco (MAA) represents roughly 500 attorneys employed by the City and County of San Francisco. Under the San Francisco Charter, these attorneys hold “exempt appointments” — they are at-will employees who serve at the pleasure of their appointing authority and may be terminated without cause. This status was established by voters through the Charter.
In early 2024, during negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement, the MAA proposed two changes: (1) requiring “just cause” for any discipline or termination (Proposal 1), and (2) requiring layoffs to follow seniority order (Proposal 14). The City refused to submit these proposals to binding interest arbitration under the Charter’s impasse resolution provision (§ A8.409-4), maintaining that the at-will status of exempt city attorneys was a voter-established Charter protection not subject to arbitration. The MAA filed an unfair practice charge with the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB), alleging bad-faith bargaining under the Meyers-Milias-Brown Act (MMBA — Gov. Code §§ 3500–3511), the state law governing public-sector collective bargaining.
PERB found the City had violated the MMBA and ordered it to submit the proposals to interest arbitration. The City petitioned for judicial review.
The Court’s Holding
The First Appellate District reversed PERB’s decision, holding that the MAA’s just-cause and seniority proposals are not eligible for binding interest arbitration under the San Francisco Charter. The key textual analysis turned on Charter § A8.409-3, which expressly carves out “civil service merit system provisions” from the interest arbitration mechanism of § A8.409-4. The at-will status of exempt city attorneys — established by voters under Charter § 10.104 as part of the City’s civil service merit system — falls squarely within that carve-out.
The court rejected PERB’s attempt to “harmonize” § 10.104 with the MMBA by reading the Charter to permit arbitration over at-will protections. Because the Charter’s interest arbitration provisions intrude significantly on the City’s power over municipal affairs, no enlargement of that arbitral power can be implied — restrictions on charter city authority must be express. The City’s refusal to submit the proposals to binding arbitration was therefore not bad-faith bargaining, because those proposals were genuinely ineligible for that process in the first place, and the court vacated PERB’s associated remedies.
Key Takeaways
- A charter city’s voters can, through the city charter, exclude specific employment conditions — such as at-will status for civil-service-exempt employees — from the reach of MMBA binding interest arbitration.
- The San Francisco Charter’s interest arbitration provision does not extend to proposals that would alter the civil service merit system, which is a separate voter-established domain.
- Refusing to submit ineligible proposals to binding arbitration is not bad-faith bargaining under the MMBA — good-faith bargaining does not require agreeing to arbitrate every topic the union raises.
- Restrictions on a charter city’s authority over municipal affairs cannot be implied from the absence of an express exclusion; courts applying the charter read power narrowly, not broadly.
- Public sector employers in charter cities should carefully map which employment conditions flow from voter-adopted charter provisions before responding to PERB unfair practice charges — those conditions may be beyond MMBA’s reach.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces a meaningful limit on what MMBA collective bargaining — and PERB — can compel a California charter city to do. For the approximately 500 at-will city attorneys in San Francisco (and analogous at-will public employees in other charter cities), it means their employment status remains determined by the Charter itself, not by an arbitration panel. Changing that status would require amending the Charter — a process that goes to the voters, not the bargaining table.
For public-sector labor practitioners, the ruling clarifies that interest arbitration provisions in charter city agreements are bounded by the civil service merit system carve-outs built into those charters. PERB’s broad reading — that the MMBA’s good-faith bargaining mandate required the City to submit any mandatory subject to arbitration — was squarely rejected. This has practical significance for cities across California that adopted charter-based impasse procedures and are now facing similar union pressure to expand the scope of binding arbitration.