6DCA Oral Argument - 2025/11/20 Afternoon Session - Nov 20, 2025

argument

6DCA Oral Argument - 2025/11/20 Afternoon Session

California Sixth District Court of Appeal 2h 11m 1 speaker 8 chapters transcribed 8 days ago official recording ↗

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What is the case and who are the parties in the first oral argument (Case 1 H052286)?

Courtney Rae Hudson 2:32

Welcome again to the Sixth District Court of Appeal for Oral Argument. We have three cases on the afternoon calendar and a panel change. I will call the first case. I will take appearances and time estimates from each of the parties. Beginning with Case 1, H052286. Laura McCabe, plaintiff and appellant versus County of Santa Clara defendant and respondent. Appearances for appellant, please.

Frank Sicola 3:02

Yes, good morning, Your Honors. Frank Sicola on behalf of the appellant. I would like to speak for 10 minutes and reserve five minutes.

Courtney Rae Hudson 3:10

All right. And do you have co-counsel?

Frank Sicola 3:11

Oh, yeah. Sorry. Ms. Gloria Costanza.

Courtney Rae Hudson 3:13

Good afternoon to both of you. And for the county, please.

Alicia Roll 3:19

Good afternoon. Alicia Roll, Deputy County Counsel, appearing on behalf of the County of Santa Clara.

Courtney Rae Hudson 3:26

Fifteen

Alicia Roll 3:26

minutes? Yes. Thank you so much.

Courtney Rae Hudson 3:28

Thank you to both counsel. I will let you know I keep track of the time here on my computer, and I'll let you know when you have about a minute left for each of your arguments. Mr. Ciccola, we look forward to hearing from you, sir. Please go ahead.

Frank Sicola 3:44

May it please the court. Again, this is Frank Ciccola on behalf of the appellant Laura McCabe. This case is about the protections put in place to report government misconduct at a time when the political climate is such that the risk of future government misconduct is increasingly high. As a policy matter, we should be expanding powers and protections to report government abuses, not restraining them. The policy of protecting government employees who speak out against the bad actors in government must be the overriding policy when viewing the issues in this case. Affirming the trial court in this case would chill and restrain those court protections guaranteed to government workers who report abuses of power when their superiors misuse their authority and threaten the rule of law.

Frank Sicola 4:36

Affirming the trial court will insulate bad actors in the government at a time when bad actors, more than ever, need to have the whistle blown on them. In this case, Ms. McKay was retaliated against for speaking out. She was essentially iced out of her decades-long career as a punitive measure for reporting on government offenses. The trial court made several key errors in its ruling on the demur in this issue. First, It abandoned the liberal policy of permitting amendment to complaints so that cases can be tried on their merits and not on procedural... Caltech.

Unknown 5:16

Yes. I'm going to interrupt you there, and I appreciate the introductory remarks, but I want to make sure we utilize your time wisely. And so I would appreciate if you could spend time specifically addressing the continuing... violation doctrine and how that particularly applies to your client's case.

Frank Sicola 5:35

Yes, sure. So the continuing violations doctrine is at the heart of this case. And under the case law, the incidents and events have to be sufficiently similar. They don't have to be identical or near identical. I think the county and the trial court wanted to put in place a rule that the events needed to be more similar than than they need to be. And I wanted to quote Justice Ginsburg on this. She said that the continuing harm doctrine is the sum of several different acts and practices. That's the defining quality. And so here, the similarities are all have to do with a parent getting iced out of her career. It was the denial of her transfer to another department. where she could succeed more readily than in a department that was ostracizing her for speaking out.

Frank Sicola 6:33

It was leaving appellant out of meetings. It was taking work away from her. It was ignoring her. It was shunning her, being condescending and patronizing to her. It was putting up a ceiling that prevented her from transferring and improving on her career. And finally, the final act was failing to put her on the organizational chart. Also related to this is the fact that Ms. McCabe's HR complaints were not fully dealt with in order to allow her to succeed at the county. So if those aren't a signal of adverse employment actions that are all sufficiently similar, I don't know what would meet the threshold.