Effective January 1, 2022, permanent classified employees, as well as classified employees about to attain permanent status, have the right to challenge a threatened layoff through a hearing before an Administrative Law Judge, and can only be laid off if there is cause.  This places permanent classified employees on an equal footing with certificated teachers and educators in terms of their layoff hearing due process rights.  The Legislature, in enacting Assembly Bill 438, amended Education Code sections 45117 and 88017 to grant permanent classified employees layoff hearing rights similar to those of certificated teachers and other educators.  Prior to the enactment of Assembly Bill 438, classified layoffs had to proceed in seniority order, but classified employees did not have a guaranteed hearing process to challenge their layoffs.  

Now, under the new procedures enacted through Assembly Bill 438, once a permanent classified employee is given a notice of layoff, he or she has seven days to request a hearing to have an Administrative Law Judge determine whether there was cause for the layoff and to ensure that the layoff notices were given in reverse seniority order.  The hearing will take place under California’s Administrative Procedures Act, Government Code sections 11500 et seq.

We are very pleased to see permanent classified employees granted this important layoff hearing right.  As CTA Group Legal Services attorneys, Langenkamp, Curtis, Price, Lindstrom & Chevedden regularly represents teachers in certificated layoff hearings in an effort to save educator jobs.  We look forward to helping classified employees exercise the same hearing rights and we hope, with the new due process rights and hearing procedures, that fewer permanent classified employees have to suffer the traumatic experience of layoff and job loss.