OAKLAND — Nine Alameda County court employees who were laid off two years ago in an attempt to close a $5.9 million budget deficit should be rehired and receive back pay for the time they were unemployed, an appellate court ruled.
Saying that court administrators violated employees’ seniority rights and the court’s own personnel rules, the First District Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that the nine employees who were laid off instead should have been offered other jobs.
The ruling stems from a 2009 lawsuit filed by the Alameda County Management Employees Association after the county court system, which is mostly funded by the state, laid off more than 70 employees as a budget-cutting move.
The union argued that 11 of those employees who lost their jobs had their rights violated because court administrators did not follow a rule mandating that those with a certain level of seniority be offered other positions before being laid off.
Of those 11 employees, one was given their job back through a lower court’s ruling and another’s case must still be reviewed. The remaining nine, however, were ordered to receive new jobs with the county court and back pay if they remained unemployed, said Arthur Krantz, an attorney who represented the union.
Some of those nine employees already had been called back to work, Krantz said. He said he did not know how much money the court system will have to pay those employees and nor when they will return to work.
A court spokesman did not return calls seeking comment.
Under court rules, the employees should have been offered a demotion to a job they held in the past if they had more seniority than an employee holding the position at the time of the layoffs.
