CASE PROCESSING PROCEDURES; LIMITATION PERIOD FOR FILING CHARGE – Amended Charge or Complaint; Withdrawal of Charge; Relation Back Doctrine

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1101.00000 – CASE PROCESSING PROCEDURES; LIMITATION PERIOD FOR FILING CHARGE
1101.02000 – Amended Charge or Complaint; Withdrawal of Charge; Relation Back Doctrine

When a charging party amends an unfair practice charge and thereby adds new allegations, the statute of limitations for the newly-added allegations is generally the six months prior to the date the charging party filed the amended charge, unless the new allegations relate back to the allegations in the initial charge, or another recognized exception applies. (County of Santa Barbara (2012) PERB Decision No. 2279-M, p. 10.) Newly-added factual allegations in an amended charge relate back to those in the initial charge if they clarify or provide further detail regarding the facts initially alleged or assert facts that are a logical and sequential manifestation of the same course of conduct initially alleged. (Monterey Peninsula Unified School District (2014) PERB Decision No. 2381, pp. 37-39.) The relation back doctrine also allows a charging party to add new legal theories, provided that such new theories rely on allegations included in the initial charge and/or allegations that satisfy the relation back standard. (Id. at pp. 37-38.) The Board found several of the new allegations in the amended charge related back to allegations in the initial charge because they were a logical and sequential manifestation of the same course of conduct alleged in the initial charge, but other new allegations were untimely because they did not relate back to the initial charge.