UPDATE: California union president fails to regain leadership powers at court hearing

The president of California’s largest state employee union won’t be able to exercise leadership powers for at least several more weeks after an appearance in Sacramento County Superior Court Friday.

Judge Steven Gevercer granted a preliminary injunction Friday afternoon that extends the terms of a temporary restraining order against SEIU Local 1000 president Richard Louis Brown. Gevercer issued the initial order two weeks ago, after Brown entered the union’s Sacramento headquarters without a key, removed crates of documents and occupied the building for several days.

Brown said at the time that he had a right to be in the building despite actions taken by three union vice presidents to suspend his presidency and lock him out of the headquarters.

The back-and-forth at the 14th Street building on March 5, with Sacramento police acting as intermediaries, brought into public view a dispute between Brown and a group of Local 1000 board members that had been escalating since Brown was elected 10 months ago.

Local 1000 board member Bill Hall filed for the restraining order as part of a broader lawsuit in which he is trying to permanently strip Brown of his leadership powers, remove him from office and bar him from running for re-election. Hall accused Brown of spending union money improperly, mishandling lawsuits and preventing the board from performing its duties.

Brown has denied those claims, saying he has acted within his authority as elected leader of the organization, which has a roughly $47 million annual budget and represents 100,000 state employees ranging from office assistants to prison nurses.

Brown has accused board members of resisting the changes his voters wanted, including reducing the influential organization’s involvement in politics and its advocacy in a range of what Brown calls “social justice issues.”

Gevercer hasn’t weighed in on Hall’s broader allegations, and he didn’t address whether Brown’s suspension by the union vice presidents was legitimate.

Questions around the suspension may be addressed at a union hearing scheduled for April 12, Gevercer suggested, during which formal complaints filed by union members against Brown will be heard.

Gevercer said in court that he likely would issue a temporary injunction that would extend the terms of the restraining order. But Brown said in court that he had not been informed of the April hearing, so Gevercer said he would hold off on issuing the injunction until Hall’s attorneys provided proof they had served Brown.

Shortly after the hearing ended, SEIU Local 1000 attorney Anne Giese emailed to the court a signed declaration from a Local 1000 legal secretary saying she had emailed the notice to Brown and mailed it to his address on March 21.

Gevercer granted the injunction later in the afternoon, according to a court order.

Brown declined comment after leaving the court room. Court officials kept a group of Brown’s supporters separated from board members after the hearing ended.

When the vice presidents suspended Brown, Local 1000 stopped paying for attorneys to represent him, Mariano Cisneros, a Sacramento attorney who represented Brown Friday, told the judge.

Cisneros said that without money for legal support, Brown would be disadvantaged at the April hearing. Cisneros accused board members of engineering an unfair process to remove Brown.

“It’s manifestly unfair what’s going on here,” he said.

Attorneys representing Hall said on Friday that they had selected a hearing officer for the April proceedings, Washington, D.C.-based Howard University School of Law professor Homer La Rue.

Once the hearing officer issues a recommendation, Local 1000’s 65-member board of directors will vote on whether to accept the decision or to reject it. A two-thirds majority is required.

This story was originally published March 25, 2022 at 1:28 PM.