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Merit Appeals Board July 18, 2025
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<br />Now, he was—also argued was, “Oh, well, we can’t argue discrimination in, if any later lawsuit,
<br />we can’t”—they’ll say, “Hey, the qualification was good and that’s the reason.” Well, it wasn’t
<br />the only reason. There was many other reasons and he admitted to several of them, too.
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<br />Also, that there’s the argument of pretext that is still afforded to him to say, “This was
<br />pretextual”—and then that—there’s case law regarding pretextual discrimination as well. So,
<br />that, if anything, would be part of his argument of why there’s discrimination and that appears to
<br />be the reason, from Step 1, Step 2, and here. Mr. Enriquez keeps saying, “This is an example of
<br />how I’ve been discriminated against”—not that it was not done properly—“but that’s the sole
<br />reason that I’m not here today.” It was one of several examples given and not just—it wasn’t the
<br />only one. If it was the only one, that might be an issue, but there was several others including
<br />losing his badge, misplacing his handcuffs. Frankly, I’m afraid he would have lost his gun, too.
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<br />So, that’s all I have to say.
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<br />CHR. CABANAS: Thank you, Mr. Disher.
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<br />MR. HONG: If I may briefly respond. This is not a bait and switch. This is actually another
<br />example of the County doing a sloppy job. And the reason why I say that is because the written
<br />attachment that you have to his appeal is the same one that was given to Mr. Waltjen. It was the
<br />same one that was given to Ms. Sako—and they, basically, paid lip service to it. They didn’t
<br />read it. It is lengthy, single-spaced, and it took me—even took me a while to get through it.
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<br />So, but that’s the job. I mean, Mr. Waltjen and Ms. Sako are very busy people but, obviously,
<br />they read the headline, they got the response from the department, they said “No”—they paid lip
<br />service to this. And, unfortunately, based on the substance of what he’s saying that was
<br />submitted, the Board actually has—the Board has to weave through what he’s saying as a
<br />layman, to determine if the Board has jurisdiction.
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<br />And we contend that he has put in his complaint a lot of other stuff, but when you look at it and
<br />the excerpts that we highlighted in our memorandum, he does raise the issue of the firearms
<br />qualification for which he was terminated.
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<br />Does he raise other issues? Sure. But there’s nothing that says that in terms of presenting an
<br />appeal to the Board that you can include other things. And because he’s not a lawyer, he doesn’t
<br />know what the limits of jurisdiction are or what the Board can consider and what it can’t
<br />consider was relevant/not relevant. A lot of people err on the side of caution as laypeople and
<br />they write a lot of things.
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<br />So, again, the law says under 76-14 that you have to look at jurisdiction liberally and what that
<br />means, I think for you is, unfortunately, you have to be the sifter—and, kind of, sift through it
<br />and does—in terms of what he said, raise any issues that the Board has jurisdiction over. We
<br />contend it does.
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<br />CHR. CABANAS: Thank you, Mr. Hong. Mr. Disher, anything else?
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