II. Standing

II. Standing

Statutory and Policy Framework Authorizing This Filing

The Complainant files this Sworn Retaliation Complaint and Protected Disclosure under three independent grants of standing, each established by California statute or University of California systemwide policy. The Complainant does not claim — and does not need — current employee status under § 8547.10 to file. Standing is established three times over on grounds that do not depend on employment classification at the time of the adverse acts.

Controlling case framing. California Government Code § 8547.10 and the University of California’s implementing whistleblower procedures together create the governing administrative framework for retaliation claims against The Regents. Under Miklosy v. Regents of the University of California (2008) 44 Cal.4th 876, the legal significance of UC non-response or untimely response is not merely procedural: a civil damages action under § 8547.10 is available where the employee filed the required complaint and the University failed to reach a timely decision. Miklosy further recognizes UC’s unique constitutional status under California Constitution Article IX, § 9 and holds that UC’s internal whistleblower process must provide a meaningful, non-perfunctory mechanism that satisfies due process. The Complainant invokes this framework throughout.

Path 1 — Member of the Public Disclosure under UC Policy 1100171. UC’s systemwide policy Reporting and Investigation of Suspected Improper Governmental Activities (Policy 1100171) expressly authorizes disclosures by employees, former employees, contractors, students, applicants for employment, and members of the public. The Complainant qualifies as both a former University employee (UCLA Police Department, December 1989 through March 1, 1996) and as a member of the public. Policy 1100171 standing is undisputed and not contingent on employment classification at the time of the adverse acts. The disclosures catalogued in Section III constitute Improper Governmental Activities within the meaning of Policy 1100171 and Government Code § 8547.2.

Path 2 — California State Auditor Whistleblower Hotline under § 8547.5. California Government Code § 8547.5 authorizes the California State Auditor to receive whistleblower complaints from any person alleging improper governmental activity by a state agency or its employees. Government Code § 8547.2(c) defines “Person” as “any individual, corporation, trust, association, any state or local government, or any agency or instrumentality of any of the foregoing.” The Complainant qualifies as a “person” under this definition. Standing under § 8547.5 is statutory and unconditional.

Path 3 — Former Employee Continuing-Violation Standing under § 8547.10. To the extent any element of this Complaint is processed under § 8547.10 and Policy 1100563, the Complainant qualifies as a former University employee and the Adverse Personnel Actions catalogued in Section IV constitute a continuing course of retaliatory conduct rooted in the original employment relationship. Under Richards v. CH2M Hill, Inc., 26 Cal.4th 798 (2001), the continuing-violation doctrine treats a series of related discriminatory or retaliatory acts as a single actionable course of conduct for limitations and standing purposes where the conduct is similar in kind, reasonably frequent, and has not acquired a degree of permanence sufficient to put the complainant on notice that further informal conciliation would be futile. Each Adverse Personnel Action catalogued in Section IV — the August 25, 2023 CCW denial premised on disputed classification, the four mutually irreconcilable custody-of-file statements of 2026, the April 9, 2026 Erin Morse 90-Day Review structure, the April 17, 2026 UCLA Compliance closure of CMP373 without interview — is administered against the same personnel file, by the same institution, on the same disputed classification record that originated in the 1989–1996 employment relationship. The conduct is continuous; the file is continuous; the institutional actors are continuous. Former-employee standing under § 8547.10 attaches.

Path 4 — Standing as Continuing Beneficiary of an Unmodified WCAB-Adjudicated Award. The Complainant’s status is governed by the Octagon Risk Services permanent and stationary determination of August 8, 2001 establishing a 6¾% permanent disability rating in connection with the February 16, 1996 industrial injury. The Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board has retained exclusive continuing jurisdiction under California Labor Code §§ 5300–5301, 5803, and 5804, and the case therefore never been formally closed, modified, commuted, or superseded by any WCAB order, by any compromise and release, or by any tribunal of competent jurisdiction. No medical authority has revoked the Octagon P&S determination. No WCAB modification order has ever issued that complaintant is aware of.

In 2015, the University of California converted the Complainant’s tax-exempt Duty Disability Income (a workers’ compensation benefit administered under WCAB jurisdiction and excluded from gross income under 26 U.S.C. § 104(a)(1)) into taxed regular service retirement benefits administered under the University of California Retirement Plan (UCRP). That conversion was made without any petition to the WCAB, without any WCAB order, and without the approval of any tribunal possessing jurisdiction over the underlying award. UC’s unilateral action was ultra vires — beyond the institutional authority of any UC officer, UCRP administrator or myself, to alter benefits adjudicated under and protected by WCAB jurisdiction. A unilateral conversion of a WCAB-adjudicated benefit, taken without the WCAB order required by §§ 5300, 5803, and 5804, is void ab initio* — without legal effect from the moment of the attempted conversion. See Labor Code § 5300 (WCAB exclusive jurisdiction); Vacanti v. State Comp. Ins. Fund, 24 Cal.4th 800, 815 (2001) (WCAB exclusive jurisdiction over rights and liabilities arising out of workers’ compensation claims).

Because the 2015 conversion is void ab initio, my legal status, as a matter of California workers’ compensation law, remains as it was prior to the unauthorized conversion: a continuing beneficiary of the unmodified WCAB-adjudicated Compensation Claim No. 199650445. I therefore stands before this proceeding not as a “former employee” under Policy 1100563 § B, but as a continuing beneficiary of a live, unclosed, WCAB-adjudicated industrial-injury award whose terms UC has refused to honor and whose modification UC has never lawfully obtained. Standing under § 8547.10 attaches in the alternative to the extent any element of the underlying employment-status determination is required for the disposition of this Complaint, because the underlying employment relationship has never been lawfully terminated as to the workers’ compensation award that governs the Complainant’s continuing benefits and continuing institutional connection to the University.

Standing is established four times over. The Locally Designated Official may proceed under any one of the four grants. There is no procedural path on which I may be dismissed for lack of standing.