Get in Line, CalPERS!

PERS v. Santa Clara Valley Transp. Auth., No. C083355 (D3 May 29, 2018)

So there’s an issue regarding the interpretation of the Public Employees’ Pension Reform Act that keeps coming up in administrative appeals before the CalPERS board. Instead of riding one of those appeals through administrative mandamus to obtain a definitive interpretation, CalPERS’s executive filed a declaratory relief action in Sacto Superior, suing a public agency and a union. But it can’t do that.

When a statutory scheme directs disputes into an administrative proceeding, litigants—including the government—need to work through that scheme to obtain the relief they seek. Unless the statutes foresee the filing of an independent, de novo, civil action—as was the case in the recently-decided Taswell case—that means going though the administrative appeals process and then seeking review of the results of that process through a writ of administrative mandamus. CalPERS can’t just jump that line by seeking declaratory relief. Its efforts to do so in this case are barred for failure to exhaust the administrative remedies.

Affirmed.