On Checks and Balances

By gmurai, March 1, 2026

It’s called “checks and balances” for a reason. And, generally, it works well so long as there are clear boundaries between the “co-equal” branches of government.

In Associated General Contractors of California, Inc. v. Department of Industrial Relations, 108 Cal.App.5th 243 (2025), the 3rd District Court of Appeals upheld a set of regulations issued by the California Apprenticeship Council that contradicted an earlier 2015 ruling of the Court of Appeals.

The Associated General Contractors of California Case

At issue in the case was California’s Prevailing Wage Law which requires public works contractors to hire a certain ratio of apprentices. The purpose of the apprenticeship requirements is to maintain the pipeline of skilled tradespeople on taxpayer-funded projects.

Labor Code section 1777.5 provides in pertinent part that “[e]very apprentice employed upon public works shall be paid the prevailing rate of per diem wages for apprentices in the trade to which he or she is registered and shall be employed only at the work of the craft or trade to which he or she is registered.” Section 1777.5 further defines “apprenticeable craft ro trade” as “a craft or trade determined as an apprenticeable occupation in accordance with the rules and regulations prescribed by the California Apprenticeship Council.”

Nearly 10 years earlier, in Henson v. C. Overaa & Company, 238 Cal.App.4th 184 (2015), the 1st district Court of Appeal held that an apprentice’s “craft or trade” is determined by the type of work journeywork’s perform, not by the specific work processes listed in the apprentices training program. In other words, if a contractor hired laborers to install process piping, it could also use laborer apprentices for that work, even if the laborer’s apprenticeship program didn’t specifically list process piping as a covered work process.   

The Overaa court famously declared that apprenticeship standards set “a floor, not a ceiling” and that an apprentice registered as a construction craft laborer could do anything a construction craft laborer journeyworker does, regardless of what their training program specifically covered. Contractor groups celebrated the ruling as it allowed them flexibility when using apprentices. The Council, however, was not as pleased.

In the years following Overaa, the Council took the position that defining what work could be performed by apprentices by the work performed by  journeymen in the same trade – rather than what is taught in the apprentice’s actual training program – would allow contractors to use apprentices as cheap labor for tasks they hadn’t been trained to perform.

So, the Council did what regulatory agencies sometimes do when they disagree with a court: It amended its regulations. Under the revised regulations, an apprentice’s “apprenticeable occupation” is defined by the work processes contained in the apprentice’s approved training program.” In other words, contractors would be required to hire apprentices in the same occupation as their journeymen counterparts, but an apprentice may only be assigned work that is included in the specific training program in which they are trained. 

Contractor trade groups including the Associated General Contractors of California, the Construction Employers’ Association, United Contractors, and the Laborers Training and Retraining Trust of Southern California filed petitions challenging the amended regulations arguing that the Council had exceeded tis rule making authority and that the revised regulations conflicted with both the Prevailing Wage Law and Overaa.

The trial court denied the petitions and the trade groups appealed.

The Appeal

On appeal, the trade groups argued that the Overaa court had already interpreted Labor Code section 1777.5 to mean that an apprentice’s trade or craft is tied to the journeyworker’s occupation not the training programs work processes.

The 3rd District Court of Appeal, acknowledging the tension between the Overaa decision and the Council’s new regulations, took the somewhat unusual step of declaring the Overaa decision to have been wrongly decided.

The Court of Appeal’s reasoning turned on a phrase contained in Labor Code section 1777.5 which provides that an “apprenticeable craft or trade” means a craft or trade determined as an apprenticeable occupation “in accordance with the rules and regulations prescribed by the California Apprenticeship Council.” That language, explained the Court of Appeal, delegated authorization to the Council to determine what crafts are or trades are an apprenticeable occupation.

The Court of Appeal drew a careful distinction, however. It agreed with Overaa’s holding that contractor’s must hire apprentices who are in the same occupation as their journeywork’s. That requirement comes directly from the statute. But, explained the Court of Appeal, the Overaa court went further, reading the statute to also mean that apprentices could perform any work in their occupational category, including work not covered in their training program. That interpretation was not compelled by the statute’s language, and improperly curtailed the Council’s authority to define what an “apprenticeable occupation” encompasses.

Conclusion

So, there you have it, the somewhat blurred lines that can sometimes arise between the judiciary branch’s authority to interpret laws and the executive branch’s authority to implement to laws.