A mechanism for pro-rata parity — and why the litigation makes it urgent
By Scott Douglas, Southern California Regional Representative
The problem is now a legal liability
California’s community colleges pay part-time faculty only for classroom hours, while requiring the preparation, grading, and student contact that teaching those classes demands. In February 2025 a Los Angeles Superior Court held, on the merits, that this violates California minimum-wage law — and that no adjunct can qualify for the professional exemption that would otherwise excuse a district. The ruling binds only the district it was decided against and is not binding precedent, but its reasoning turns on the pay structure most districts use, and more than 20 similar suits are now pending against districts statewide.
That is the situation the Legislature faces: an accumulating, district-by-district liability under current law, resolved one settlement at a time. Litigation is a poor way to spend the money. It compensates for past hours and fixes nothing going forward, and a real share of every dollar is consumed before it reaches anyone — one district set aside $20 million to deliver $18 million to its class members.
The mechanism: a mandate, and a shield for meeting it
The brief proposes mandating pro-rata compensation for part-time faculty — payment on the same district salary schedule as full-time colleagues, in proportion to the load carried — phased in as state funding ramps up. In exchange, a district that complies receives a statutory exemption from the wage-order exposure the 2025 ruling makes concrete, and owes no hour-by-hour timekeeping, precisely because it is paying a fraction of a full-time salary rather than a classroom-hours-only rate.
The shield is conditioned on two things together: applying the funds actually received toward parity, and complying with protections for incumbent faculty. And it declines on a fixed schedule — generous early, when parity is far off, contracting each year, and expiring at Year 8. That design distributes risk on purpose. The accumulating litigation exposure is why the Legislature must act. The contracting shield is why districts keep pressure on the Legislature to actually appropriate the money: because the shield shrinks on schedule whether or not the funding arrives, a district that falls behind sits exposed.
The brief is explicit about where this is hardest. If appropriations lag and the shield still expires at Year 8, districts could face the obligation before the state has fully funded it. That is a deliberate tradeoff — a permanent shield for underfunded districts would recreate the toothless 75/25 goal — but the brief states it as a real cost rather than arguing it away.
Protections, and what the bill does not do
A higher rate creates an obvious hazard: districts consolidating assignments and cutting the people the reform exists to help. The brief pairs the mandate with protections against exactly that — a floor on part-time staffing that can fall only through genuine attrition or conversion to full-time positions, protection of each incumbent’s existing workload with seniority governing who gets new or freed load, a rule that long service satisfies the minimum qualifications for a full-time position — so an incumbent who has taught the classes for years cannot be screened out on credentials when one opens, though merit selection still decides who is hired — and severance where a position is eliminated anyway.
One point matters more than any other to whether districts oppose this bill: it changes how faculty are paid, not how they are classified. Tenure and employment status remain governed by the existing Education Code, and nothing in the pay rule creates tenure by operation of law. That is a statement about mechanism, not about the destination. The temporary classification is the other half of the structure documented in Nobody Ever Voted for This, and it still needs correcting. This bill moves toward that single tier deliberately — through the conversion and floor provisions above, not through the pay rule — and it leaves the remaining step available rather than settled.
Nor does the brief claim to be finished. Statutory language has not been drafted. What exists now is the case for the bill, the mechanism’s design, and its cost: a floor of roughly $422 million a year, established in the companion Pro Rata Cost Analysis and understated for reasons that paper documents.
CPFA is seeking an Assemblymember or Senator willing to author this legislation. This is a synthesis of the full brief, A Compensation-Conditioned Exemption for California Community College Faculty. For a copy, or to discuss carrying the bill, contact Scott Douglas at sdouglas@cpfa.org.