Caldwell v. Montoya

Decision Date27 July 1995
Docket NumberNo. S043156,S043156
Citation42 Cal.Rptr.2d 842,897 P.2d 1320,10 Cal.4th 972
CourtCalifornia Supreme Court
Parties, 897 P.2d 1320, 68 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. (BNA) 751, 66 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 43,652, 101 Ed. Law Rep. 1154, 95 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 5908, 95 Daily Journal D.A.R. 10,086 Richard CALDWELL, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. Joseph MONTOYA, III, et al., Defendants and Respondents.

Michelle R. Williams, Kohrs & Fiske, Santa Monica, for respondents.

Dale L. Gronemeier, Gronemeier & Barker, Pasadena, for appellant.

BAXTER, Justice.

In this case, we confront a narrow but important issue: Are individual members of an elected school board immune from a suit seeking damages against them personally for their successful votes to terminate the employment of the school district's superintendent even when the complaint alleges race and age discrimination in violation of California's Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA; Gov.Code, § 12900 et seq.)? 1

We conclude as follows: The Tort Claims Act § 810 et seq. (hereafter sometimes the Act)) 2 generally affords a public employee personal immunity from suit when the act or omission for which recovery is sought resulted from "the exercise of the discretion vested in him." (§ 820.2.) This "discretionary act" immunity extends to "basic" governmental policy decisions entrusted to broad official judgment. The decision of an elected school board whether to replace the school district's highest appointed official is such a determination. The board's free, open, and candid consideration of an issue of this magnitude should not be subject to judicial interference by means of lawsuits seeking to hold individual board members accountable for their motives. As a matter of law, participating board members therefore enjoy personal immunity under section 820.2. This immunity applies even where the dismissed official alleges that the members' votes were cast for reasons that violated FEHA. Because the Court of Appeal reached a contrary result, its judgment must be reversed.

FACTS

In September 1992, plaintiff Richard Caldwell sued the Paramount Unified School District (PUSD) and individual defendants Joseph Montoya III, Vivian Hansen, and Janet Miller. Plaintiff's second amended complaint, at issue here, alleged as follows:

In August 1991, plaintiff, then 66 years old, was serving as Superintendent of PUSD under a contract effective through June 30, 1992. On August 13, 1991, the Board of Education of PUSD (Board) voted, by three to two, that plaintiff's contract not be renewed. Defendants Montoya, Hansen, and Miller, as members of the Board, cast the three deciding votes. Montoya's "motivation" was that plaintiff is not Hispanic or Latino. Miller and Hansen were "motivat[ed]" by plaintiff's age. Hansen had a further motive to retaliate for public positions taken by plaintiff's wife as a member of the Paramount City Council. Plaintiff obtained this information from newspaper reports of "statements and actions by the individual defendants which indicated or suggested that they had acted from impermissible motives." As a result of the Board's action, plaintiff's employment was terminated effective July 1, 1992.

The complaint stated causes of action against PUSD for breach of contract, for violation of FEHA, and for retaliatory discharge in violation of public policy. The three individual defendants were included in the FEHA claims, Montoya for race discrimination (§ 12940, subd. (a)), Miller and Hansen for age discrimination (§ 12941, subd. (a)). Hansen was also included in the public-policy claim. The complaint sought compensatory and punitive damages against all defendants.

The individual defendants demurred, claiming discretionary act immunity under section 820.2. The trial court agreed, sustained the demurrer, and entered judgment dismissing the individual defendants from the action.

The Court of Appeal, Second District, Division Five, reversed in a sharply divided decision. Justice Armstrong concluded that the face of plaintiff's complaint does not establish defendants' claim of personal immunity for discretionary acts, because such immunity turns on the factual question whether defendants' challenged conduct involved conscious consideration of risks and benefits. (Citing Johnson v. State of California (1968) 69 Cal.2d 782, 794-795, fn. 8, 73 Cal.Rptr. 240, 447 P.2d 352.)

Moreover, Justice Armstrong determined, the individual defendants are not entitled to immunity under another provision of the Tort Claims Act, section 820.9. Section 820.9 provides personal immunity to certain executive and legislative officials of local public entities, including school board members, against suits seeking to impose vicarious liability for an "act or omission of the ... entity," but the statute expressly declines to afford immunity for "that individual's own wrongful conduct." The instant complaint, Justice Armstrong concluded, is based not on vicarious or imputed liability, but on personal wrongs directly committed by the individual defendants.

Presiding Justice Turner concurred in Justice Armstrong's analysis but wrote a lengthy separate opinion urging an additional ground for reversing the judgment of dismissal. As a matter of law, the concurring opinion asserted, section 820.2 can never provide immunity against FEHA claims. Justice Turner reasoned as follows: Section 820.2 accords immunity for discretionary acts "[e]xcept as otherwise provided by statute." FEHA is such a statutory exception, because the "employer[s]" covered by FEHA include public agencies such as school districts, and individuals who cause or assist a covered "employer" to commit employment practices forbidden by FEHA are personally liable under the statute, either as "agents" or as "aiders and abetters." Therefore, by the express terms of section 820.2, whenever FEHA makes a public employee individually liable, that liability prevails over the immunity for discretionary acts.

Justice Godoy Perez dissented, relying primarily upon section 820.9's "vicarious immunity" for members of local governing boards. As the dissent noted, section 820.9, unlike section 820.2, does not qualify its immunity with the phrase "except as otherwise provided by statute."

The dissent argued that the entity responsible for terminating plaintiff's employment was PUSD itself, and that any liability sought to be imposed on individual members of the Board is thus derivative and vicarious. In the dissent's view, the fact that PUSD was legally required to act through the collective votes of the Board members does not mean that those votes, cast in an official capacity and individually meaningless, were personal wrongs for which section 820.9 withholds immunity.

We granted review. Contrary to the Court of Appeal majority, we conclude as a matter of law that section 820.2 affords discretionary act immunity to the individual Board members against both the common-law and FEHA causes of action stated in plaintiff's complaint. 3

DISCUSSION

The common law of California long provided that a governmental official has personal immunity from lawsuits challenging his or her discretionary acts within the scope of authority. (E.g., Lipman v. Brisbane Elementary Sch. Dist. (1961) 55 Cal.2d 224, 233, 11 Cal.Rptr. 97, 359 P.2d 465 (Lipman ).) This common law immunity was said to extend to "all executive public officers when performing within the scope of their power acts which require the exercise of discretion or judgment." (Hardy v. Vial (1957) 48 Cal.2d 577, 582, 311 P.2d 494.) The immunity was absolute, and it protected an official "notwithstanding malice or other sinister motive." (Ibid.)

The historical basis of the rule was that fear of civil lawsuits might deter officials from the zealous and unflinching discharge of their public duties. (Hardy v. Vial, supra, 48 Cal.2d at p. 582, 311 P.2d 494; see Gregoire v. Biddle (2d Cir.1949) 177 F.2d 579, 581 (Hand, J.).) On more than one occasion, we applied the rule liberally to protect the officials of public agencies, such as school districts and state colleges, when they took discretionary actions within the scope of their authority and duty concerning the employment of academic or administrative personnel. (Lipman, supra, 55 Cal.2d 224, 233-234, 11 Cal.Rptr. 97, 359 P.2d 465 [school district trustees personally immune for investigating fitness of district superintendent]; Hardy v. Vial, supra, 48 Cal.2d at p. 583, 311 P.2d 494 [state college officials personally immune for "conspiracy" with outsiders to secure dismissal of professor].)

In Muskopf v. Corning Hospital Dist. (1961) 55 Cal.2d 211, 11 Cal.Rptr. 89, 359 P.2d 457, this court repudiated any inference in the common law that government entities are generally immune from suit for the negligent ministerial acts of public employees acting in the scope of their authority. Lipman, supra, a companion case to Muskopf, held that the government retained some immunity for the discretionary acts of its officials, but suggested that this immunity was not necessarily coextensive with that afforded to the officials themselves. (Lipman, supra, 55 Cal.2d at p. 229, 11 Cal.Rptr. 97, 359 P.2d 465.)

In the wake of Muskopf and Lipman, the Legislature adopted the Tort Claims Act. The Act governs all public entities and their employees (§§ 811.2, 811.4) and all noncontractual bases of compensable damage or injury that might be actionable between private persons (§§ 810.8, 814). It establishes the basic rules that public entities are immune from liability except as provided by statute (§ 815, subd. (a)), that public employees are liable for their torts except as otherwise provided by statute (§ 820, subd. (a)), that public entities are vicariously liable for the torts of their employees (§ 815.2, subd. (a)), and that public entities are immune where their employees are immune, except as otherwise provided by statute (§ 815.2, subd. (b)).

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