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Court of Appeal Decision Requires Reemployment of Laid Off Employees Over District Employing New Hires When Minimum Qualifications Are Met In perhaps the most far-reaching Court decision on reemployment rights ever, the California Fourth Appellate Court held that laid off employee have reemployment rights into positions they did not serve in over outside applicants provided they can meet the minimum qualification for the job. In Tucker v. Grossmont Union High School District (2008) the court took up the issue of Charles Tucker Jr. a classified employee who was laid off from a classified management position of Maintenance and Operations in January of 2005. In April of 2005 the district created a “new” Maintenance Manager position that Tucker applied for. The district hired an outside applicant over Tucker. Note well here even though Tucker was a classified manager, as a classified employee the same legal standard will apply to CSEA members. Tucker sued the district asserting that he was unlawfully denied reemployment to the Maintenance Manager position. Tucker sued under the provisions of Education Code section 45298, most notably the phrase “Persons who are laid off because of lack of work or lack of funds are eligible to reemployment for a period of 39 months and shall be reemployed in preference to new applicants.”The Superior Court agreed and the parties appealed to the Court of Appeal. The district’s defense is that Education Code section 45308 read in conjunction with 45298 meant that Tucker only had reemployment rights in positions that he had served in. The Court of Appeal disagreed: “If the Legislature had intended to limit a laid off employee’s rights to reemployment, it easily could have sates the former employee ‘shall be reemployed within the same class from which the employee was laid off in preference to new applicants.’ It did not do so and the language of the statute has remained essentially the same since it was first enacted…” Further, the Court described the mischief the district’s interpretation would cause: “The district’s contrived reading of section 45298 and 45308 together could eliminate any advantage for the laid off employee verses the new applicant. By requiring that the preference be available only if the laid off employee is applying for a position within the exact same class form which he or she was laid off, a district would be free to simply eliminate the position or class after laying off the employee, thereby doing away with the benefit the Legislature intended to afford the laid off employee in enacting section 45298.” The court held that employees must be required to show that they meet the minimum qualifications of a position to be reemployed in preference to outside applicants. The reemployment preference also applies to employees who took demotions or reductions of hours instead of being laid off |