(CN) - In the next few days, Governor Jerry Brown is expected to sign a new law on judges' pay, an issue that pits the law against politics.
The amended statute will effectively quash a judgment won by a class of 3,400 active and retired judges and justices in Mallano v. Chiang, where a Los Angeles court ruled that judges should have been given pay raises between 2008-2013 and are entitled to recover what they are owed at ten percent interest.
In the case, now-retired Justice Robert Mallano said judges and justices had taken pay cuts at the height of the state's fiscal crisis in 2008, but never received the raises to which they were entitled when state employees were given raises of between 0.10 and 0.97 percent since then. Likewise for retired judges, whose pensions are tied to judicial salaries.
The state has appealed the ruling.
Not liking the idea of a ten percent judgment payout, Brown decided to repeal Government Code Section 68203, which ties judicial pay to the average of what state employees earn. The California Judges Association met with the representatives for the governor's finance department over the last few weeks to mitigate that proposal, arguing that it would force judges to politicize their salaries by having to beg the legislature and governor for raises in the future.
What resulted was a compromise trailer bill clarifying some of the language in the code section to say that judges' pay will be offset by state employee furloughs. It also adds a section that effects the Mallano judgment by changing the interest calculation to the Pooled Money Investment Account rate, which currently floats somewhere between 2 percent and 0.2 percent; much less than the 10 percent rate that the judgment ordered.
"The proposed amendment seeks to all but wipe out the legal interest we are entitled to under the law," Mallano wrote in an email statement. "If the state employees sue for their raises and win, they get 10% pre-judgment interest; if judges sue and win, .05% at today's rates. Pure and simple anti-judge discrimination. The prejudgment interest is approximately $5,000 per judge."
He said, "This legislation is garbage: spiteful retaliation by the Department of Finance," and urged judges to oppose it.
But the trailer bill passed both houses in the Legislature along with the budget, and is now on Brown's desk.
Mallano was unreachable through his attorney Raoul Kennedy with Skadden Arps in Palo Alto, who did not reply to email and phone requests for comment.
Brown spokesman H.D. Palmer said he expects Brown will sign the trailer bill into law sometime next week. "The Administration supports the change because it ensures that any furloughs of state workers are taken into account when calculating raises for judges," he said.
Palmer also noted that the PMIA rate "reflects the state's interest earnings and is the same way we calculate interest owed in many other state matters."
But judges across the state felt betrayed, as they learned after the fact that the CJA was involved in negotiating the deal with Brown.
"What developed here was done in secret. It was at the behest of the the Governor's office and the Department of Finance," said Judge Steve White of Sacramento Superior Court, head of the judges group The Alliance of California Judges.