Correspondence - #30 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

MORRISON FOERSTER Hon. Vicente Sarmiento March 1, 2021 Page Three The same is true of these Ordinances. While the City has the power to enact ordinances to further the health and safety of its citizens, it is prohibited from interfering directly in employers' and their employees' bargaining process by arbitrarily forcing certain grocers to provide Hazard Pay that is both unrelated to minimum labor standards or the health and safety of the workers and the general public. While minimum labor standards that provide a mere backdrop for collective bargaining are consistent with the NLRA, local laws such as these Ordinances which effectively dictate the outcome of the collective bargaining process are preempted. The Ordinances here impose unusually strict terms on a narrow band of businesses without any allowance for further bargaining. By enacting ordinances such as this, the City would end any negotiations by rewriting contracts. The Ordinances also violate the U.S. Constitution and California Constitution's Equal Protection Clauses (the "Equal Protection Clauses"). The Equal Protection Clauses provide for "equal protections of the laws." U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1; Cal. Const. art I, § 7(a). This guarantee is "essentially a direction that all persons similarly situated should be treated alike" and "secure[s] every person within the State's jurisdiction against intentional and arbitrary discrimination, whether occasioned by express terms of a statute or by its improper execution through duly constituted agents." City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, 473 U.S. 432, 439 (1985); Village of Willowbrook v. Olech, 528 U.S. 562, 564 (2000). No law may draw classifications that do not "rationally further a legitimate state interest." Nordlinger v. Hahn, 505 U.S. 1, 10 (1992). By requiring that any classification "bear a rational relationship to an independent and legitimate legislative end, [courts] ensure that classifications are not drawn for the purpose of disadvantaging the group burdened by law." Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620, 633 (1996). As discussed above, the Ordinances here unfairly target traditional grocery companies and arbitrarily subject certain 300-employee grocers to the Premium Pay mandate while sparing other generic retailers who also employ frontline workers and who sell groceries. See Fowler Packing Co., Inc. v. Lanier, 844 F.3d 809, 815 (9th Cir. 2016) ("[L]egislatures may not draw lines for the purpose of arbitrarily excluding individuals," even to "protect" those favored groups' "expectations."); Hays v. Wood, 25 Cal. 3d 772, 786-87 (1979) ("[N]othing opens the door to arbitrary action so effectively as to allow [state] officials to pick and choose only a few to whom they will apply legislation and thus to escape the political retribution that might be visited upon them if larger numbers were affected."). As ordinances that impinge on fundamental rights to be free of legislative impairment of existing contractual agreements, these ordinances would be subject to heightened scrutiny by courts. See, e.g., Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202, 216 (1982); Hydrick v. Hunter, 449 F.3d 978, 1002 (9th Cir. 2006); Long Beach City Employees Ass'n v. City of Long Beach, 41 Cal.3d 937, 948 (1986). The City's unilateral modification of contractual terms governing wages and hours of grocery employees goes to the very heart of bargained -for agreements it sf-4438126