Reported / Citable
Background
Jose Cardenas and 21 fellow school safety officers, police officers, and security personnel sued the Los Angeles Unified School District over its COVID-19 vaccination requirement. The employees claimed religious objections to the mandate and brought causes of action for religious discrimination.
The trial court granted summary judgment in favor of LAUSD on several grounds, including that accommodating the religious objections would impose an undue hardship — unvaccinated employees would expose students to disease. Cardenas and the other plaintiffs appealed.
The Court’s Holding
The Second District Court of Appeal affirmed on forfeiture grounds without reaching the merits. The court found that the appellants’ opening brief violated the fundamental appellate rule requiring factual assertions to be supported by citations to the record. Instead of citing evidence in the appellate record, the brief cited only three pages of the appellants’ own trial court briefing opposing summary judgment — and those three pages themselves contained no record citations.
The court emphasized that appellate records can be massive, and courts depend on specific citations to locate and examine key evidence. Simply pointing to an attorney’s prior unsworn arguments is not a substitute for directing the court to deposition transcripts, declarations, or other evidence. The failure to provide proper record citations forfeited the appellants’ arguments on appeal.
Key Takeaways
- Appellate briefs must support factual assertions with specific citations to the appellate record. Citing your own prior trial court briefing — which itself lacks record citations — does not satisfy this requirement.
- Failing to cite record evidence forfeits arguments on appeal, regardless of the underlying merits of the case.
- Appellate courts will not search a voluminous record to find evidence supporting a party’s claims. The burden is on the appellant to direct the court to the relevant portions.
- This rule applies even in high-profile cases involving constitutional rights and vaccine mandates — procedural compliance is non-negotiable.
Why It Matters
This short but pointed opinion serves as a cautionary tale for appellate practitioners: no matter how strong the underlying claims may be, an appeal will fail if the briefing does not follow basic rules. The court did not address whether LAUSD’s vaccine mandate or the undue-hardship defense was legally correct — it never got that far. For attorneys handling appeals, the case is a stark reminder that factual assertions must be tied to specific record evidence, not recycled from trial court papers. The opinion also implicitly preserves the trial court’s summary judgment for LAUSD, leaving the vaccine mandate unchallenged on the merits at the appellate level.