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SUPREME COURT REINFORCES
PEACE OFFICER BILL OF RIGHTS
By: Dieter C. Dammeier
Lackie, Dammeier & McGill APC
LASPA General Counsel
On March 28, 2002, the California Supreme Court issued its decision in the case of
Madrigal v. County of Riverside (2002) DJDAR 3387. Madrigal was a former police officer with the City of Perris, which in 1996 decided to contract out to the Sheriff's Department for police services. Madrigal was hired as a probationary deputy sheriff pending completion of his background investigation. As a condition of this provisional hiring, Madrigal signed a waiver of his ability to view any background materials. This waiver, however, contradicts the Pubic Safety Officers Procedural Bill of Rights Act, specifically Government Code §3306, which allows an officer to see any "adverse comments" used for personnel purposes. When Madrigal subsequently was terminated on probation, he of course requested the background information to determine the specific reasons. The County denied this request based on their assertion of confidentiality in backgrounds and Madrigal's signed waiver.
Madrigal was successful in the Superior and Appellate Court which held that Madrigal's waiver of his right afforded by the Public Safety Officers Procedural Bill of Rights Act was unenforceable because it was against public policy. The Supreme Court reversed this decision but did so in a very limited fashion. Although ruling against Madrigal in his specific case, the Court otherwise reinforced the protections of the Act.
The Supreme Court expressed the importance of the Act in maintaining stable employee/employer relations in the law enforcement community. The Court carved out a narrow exception in this case, allowing Madrigal's wavier to be enforceable, holding that "where the employee's waiver is limited to an investigation of matters that arose
prior to employment, and where the waiver expires after one year, so the employee is not subject to continued investigation long after being hired, enforcement of the waiver would not particularly undermine the public purpose of the Act." This exception is basically limited to the unusual facts of
Madrigal, that being where a police department is absorbed by another law enforcement agency and a provisional hiring agreement is signed. Despite allowing this limited exception, the Court made clear that other waivers of the protections afforded under the Act are unenforceable.
The Court cited Civil Code §3513 which provides "anyone may waive the advantage of a law intended solely for his benefit. But a law established for a public reason cannot be contravened by a private agreement." The Bill of Rights Act, was clearly established for a public reason. The Court went on to analogize rights created by other statutes in which employee waivers have been held unenforceable such as claims for unpaid wages, worker's compensation protections and other employee protective statutes.
Interestingly, of the seven Supreme Court justices, all of which agreed that the general provisions of the Bill of Rights Act cannot be waived, four of them carved out the limited exception for the facts in front of them, allowing for a waiver of protections of the Act for matters which occurred "prior" to employment as a peace officer. The three other justices in the minority of the decision did not wish to even make that small minor exception and expressed that all of the protections under the Act should not be waiveable since they are a matter of public policy.
Since 1995, in Runyan v. Ellis, 47 Cal.Rptr.2d 356, it has been established law that a police association or other bargaining unit cannot waive a police officer's rights under the Act in a collective bargaining agreement. Since that time the legal question has arisen as to whether an individual officer may waive his or her rights. This case seems to answer that question in the negative. Absent the specific facts illustrated in Deputy Madrigal's case, involving a waiver for acts which occurred prior to employment for the limited purpose of a background investigation, officer's individual waivers of their rights under the Public Safety Officers Procedural Bill of Rights Act will not be enforceable. While not specifically mentioned in this case, the enforceability of last chance agreements, work improvement contracts and settlement of disciplinary actions in which officers waive their right to appeal are know brought into question. Since the right to appeal disciplinary action is one of the corner stones of the Bill of Rights, based on this recent Supreme Court's decision, it appears that a waiver of such rights in those agreements would not be enforceable. No doubt, based on this decision, the enforceability of these types of agreements will be challenged.
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