California Supreme Court Considers Key Public Pension System Fiduciary Governance Cases
On April 15, 2026, the California Supreme Court issued three important decisions for those who are interested in public pension system governance topics and related litigation:
- The Court scheduled oral argument in the widely watched case Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Ass’n v. County of Los Angeles, et al. (S286264) (LACERA) for 9 am on Wednesday, May 6 in San Francisco. The LACERA case addresses the scope and applicability of the California Constitution’s grant of plenary authority over and fiduciary responsibility for the administration of retirement systems to public retirement system boards.
- The Court also scheduled oral argument in another case of importance to county retirement systems in California, Ventura County Employees’ Retirement Ass’n v. Criminal Justice Attorney’s Ass’n of Ventura County(S283978) (CJAAVC) at 1:30 pm, also on Wednesday, May 6, in San Francisco. We last wrote about the CJAAVC case here. The CJAAVC case is the Court’s first involving application of its seminal decision Alameda County Deputy Sheriffs’ Assoc., et al. v. Alameda County Employees’ Retirement Association, et al. (2020) 9 Cal.5th 1032 to a subsequent dispute between a retirement system and its stakeholders over the meaning of one of the Public Employees’ Pension Reform Act of 2013 (PEPRA) amendments to the definition of “compensation earnable”.
- The Court denied a Petition for Review in a third important public retirement system case, Mendoza v. Board of Retirement of Ventura County Employees’ Retirement Association, which applied the common law mitigation doctrine, sometimes described as the doctrine of avoidable consequences, in the disability retirement context. This denial leaves the published decision of the Second District Court of Appeal, Mendoza v. VCERA (B327347) (Mendoza), unchanged. Mendoza affirmed the denial of a service-connected disability retirement based on the applicant’s unreasonable refusal to undergo recommended medical treatment, and in doing so clarified that the failure-to-mitigate analysis is conducted as of the time the applicant unreasonably refuses treatment, rather than at a later point when the medical condition has worsened because of that refusal.
Live links to oral argument are to appear 30 minutes prior to oral argument here: Webcast Library | Supreme Court of California. Also, except in unusual circumstances, the Supreme Court issues decisions within ninety (90) days of oral argument, and thus decisions in the first two of the above listed cases are expected to be rendered by early August 2026.
Ashley Dunning, co-chair of the Pensions, Benefits & Investments (PB&I) Group, and Alex Westerfield, a partner in the PB&I Group, represent VCERA in the CJAAVC litigation, and they, with Michael Price, an associate in the PB&I Group, submitted an amicus brief on behalf of eight (8) public retirement systems who supported VCERA in the Mendoza litigation.
