Working Around Pension Protections

This is the fourth post in a series on the “California rule” and constitutional protection of public-sector employee pensions, based on the White Paper I’ve written for the Federalist Society. I introduced the issue in Monday’s post and went through the California caselaw and federal constitutional issues in Tuesday’s post. You can read those posts for an introduction to the issue if you’re unfamiliar with it, but the short version is that in California (and some other states), the courts give constitutional protection not only to the amount of public employees’ pensions that has been earned by past service, but also to employees’ right to keep earning a pension based on rules that are at least as generous for as long as they stay employed.