Appellate judges intensely question lawyers in Vergara case
In a closely watched case affecting public schools and students throughout California, a state appeals court on Thursday heard vociferous arguments over whether employment laws protect incompetent teachers and disproportionately hurt low-income and minority children.
The one-hour hearing in downtown Los Angeles involved an appeal by teachers’ unions and the state government to reverse a 2014 ruling by a lower court judge who struck down laws that he said help keep bad teachers in classrooms. The impact on students’ lives “shocks the conscience,” Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu declared in his August 2014 decision in Vergara v. California.
The three appellate judges on Thursday gave no overwhelming sense of how they might rule over the next 90 days, a decision with powerful implications for California’s 6 million public school students. But two of them expressed skepticism about some of the legal reasoning in Treu’s decision.
In their presentation Thursday in a full courtroom, attorneys for the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers, along with the state Attorney General’s office, sharply criticized Treu’s ruling.Appellate judges intensely question lawyers in Vergara case | EdSource: