Reported / Citable
Background
Andreas Jung was the president of AFSCME Council 36, one of Southern California’s largest public-employee unions with over 20,000 members. Maribel Alvarenga was his executive assistant. Following an earlier employment dispute brought by Adam Acosta, a former Council 36 employee, the parties mediated and settled in 2021.
After the settlement, Acosta provided fellow union officials — the “Bigelow defendants” — with a mediation brief (styled “Non-Confidential”) and attached text messages between Jung and Alvarenga. Those messages allegedly contained racist, anti-LGBTQ, and sexist content. The Bigelow defendants used the materials to file charges against Jung and Alvarenga before the International Union’s judicial panel, accusing them of violating the union’s prohibitions on bigotry and discrimination. Following a full hearing, the judicial panel found them guilty, removed Jung as president and expelled him from the union, and terminated Alvarenga’s employment.
Jung and Alvarenga then sued Acosta and the Bigelow defendants, claiming that the disclosure of the mediation materials to drive the judicial panel proceedings constituted breach of contract, conspiracy, and interference with their employment relationships. The defendants responded with anti-SLAPP motions (Code Civ. Proc. § 425.16 — California’s special motion to strike lawsuits targeting protected speech or petitioning activity). The trial court granted the motions and dismissed the challenged claims. Plaintiffs appealed.
The Court’s Holding
The Second District affirmed. The court first held that the union judicial panel proceedings constituted “official proceedings authorized by law” within the meaning of anti-SLAPP section 425.16, subdivision (e)(2). The Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 (LMRDA) establishes specific procedural rights for union members facing disciplinary action — including notice, a full hearing, and appeals — and affirmatively authorizes unions to conduct disciplinary proceedings. That statutory authorization is sufficient to make them “official proceedings” even though the proceedings are internal to a private organization.
Having established that the defendants’ conduct (filing charges, testifying, sharing the mediation brief) arose from protected activity in those official proceedings, the court then examined whether Jung and Alvarenga demonstrated the “minimal merit” needed to survive the anti-SLAPP motion. It concluded they could not. Alvarenga failed to show she was a third-party beneficiary of the mediation or settlement agreement between Acosta and Jung. The conspiracy claim failed because conspiracy is not an independent tort — it is a theory of vicarious liability that requires an underlying tort, and the only predicate tort alleged was a contract breach, which does not trigger liability in tort. And Alvarenga’s interference claims were preempted by the Labor Management Relations Act, which governs disputes arising from collective bargaining relationships.
Key Takeaways
- Union disciplinary proceedings authorized by federal labor law (LMRDA) are “official proceedings authorized by law” for anti-SLAPP purposes — speech and petitioning activity in those proceedings is protected activity under section 425.16(e)(2).
- Members and officers who file charges, testify, or provide documents in LMRDA-governed union disciplinary processes have broad anti-SLAPP protection against subsequent civil claims arising from that participation.
- A mediation brief labeled “Non-Confidential” by the party who drafted it may not be shielded by mediation confidentiality — the court declined to extend Alvarenga’s contract-based confidentiality theory to that document.
- Conspiracy to breach contract is not a viable stand-alone tort claim; without an independently tortious act, there is no conspiracy liability.
- Employment-related interference claims against union officials and members may be preempted by the LMRA when they are “inextricably intertwined” with a collective bargaining relationship.
Why It Matters
This decision extends the reach of California’s anti-SLAPP statute into union governance, giving union officials, members, and employees who participate in LMRDA-sanctioned disciplinary processes a powerful early defense against retaliatory civil litigation. For the tens of thousands of workers in California’s public-sector unions — AFSCME alone represents hundreds of thousands statewide — this means that participants in internal disciplinary hearings can invoke anti-SLAPP protections to obtain early dismissal of claims targeting those activities, with fee-shifting in their favor.
For employers and union-side practitioners, the case also offers a useful reminder that conspiracy claims require an actual independent tort, not merely a coordinated breach of contract. And the LMRA preemption analysis reaffirms that state-court interference claims against union actors are often displaced when the underlying relationship is governed by a collective bargaining agreement.