After most recent school board appointment, Jackie LaBarbera faces new legal challenge

On January 1, 2025, after gaining more votes than any other candidate for the role, Jackie LaBarbera assumed her seat as a trustee on the board of the Shasta County Office of Education. Since 2023, she’d also been sitting on another school board, overseeing the Anderson Union High School District.

Some community members assumed when she took her new seat on SCOE that she’d drop her role overseeing Anderson Union. Instead, she’s continued to serve on both boards since then.

Early on in her dual roles, over the spring of 2025, some community members, and California’s largest teachers union, accused LaBarbera of violating the law by holding school board roles that conflicted with each other. But no legal challenge to her dual seats ever emerged. LaBarbera has consistently denied the allegation that holding both offices violates California law, insisting it is legal for her to do so. 

Then last week, following extenuating circumstances at the Cascade Union Elementary School District in Anderson, LaBarbera was appointed to a third role. After three of five CUESD board members resigned amid a dispute with the superintendent, SCOE’s board president appointed LaBarbera to temporarily fill one of the three vacant seats in order to form a quorum — thus allowing for the board to function until new board members are appointed.

Within days of her appointment to the CUESD Board, a document known as a quo warranto was filed against LaBarbera with the state, according to a representative from the Attorney General’s office who responded to Shasta Scout’s request for information last week. A quo warranto is a legal action through which individual voters can dispute whether an elected official has the right to hold office.

The legal challenge alleging that LaBarbera’s roles are incompatible was filed by Anderson resident Jeff Carr. His filing focused on LaBarbera’s role at AUHSD without challenging her temporary role at CUESD. 

“Assuming the application satisfies our regulatory requirements,” the AG spokesperson wrote, “Ms. LaBarbera will have an opportunity to respond, then we would expect to publish an opinion granting or denying the application in the coming months.”

If the application moves forward, Carr would then be entitled to sue LaBarbera in the Shasta County Superior Court under the supervisor of the AG, in an effort to remove her from her first school board office.

The official guidelines for the quo warranto process state that once the application for quo warranto is approved as to form by the AG’s office, “the superior court will decide whether the defendant is lawfully entitled to the office in question.” If Carr were to sue and a judge were to rule that LaBarbera is not legally entitled to retain her seat at AUHSD, the court could compel her to vacate the seat and fine her up to $5,000. 

LaBarbera confirmed for Shasta Scout that she has received the quo warranto notice filed by Carr saying she remains confident that she has served “in full compliance with all applicable California laws and the Education Code.” She added that she will continue fulfilling her duties while the matter follows its proper legal course and said she would provide Shasta Scout with her attorney’s opposition to the quo warranto challenge once it’s filed with the state.

Why the legal action? 

Over the past year, LaBarbera’s decision to hold multiple, some say conflicting, school board seats has been the subject of criticism by a number of community members as well as the California Teachers Association, which accused LaBarbera of violating Government Code 1099 early last year. 

Government Code 1099 prohibits elected officials from holding two “incompatible offices” at once. While it is not illegal for someone to serve in two elected positions simultaneously, the law does prevent officials from holding both positions if “either of the offices may audit, overrule, remove members of, dismiss employees of, or exercise supervisory powers over the other office or body.” 

In a cease and desist letter the CTA sent to LaBarbera last year, attorney Theresa C. Witherspoon cited SCOE’s partial oversight of AUHSD’s district budget, among other alleged conflicts of interests that CTA said made the roles incompatible. No further legal action emerged after the letter and CTA did not respond to a request for comment last week.

LaBarbera’s legal counsel issued a response to the CTA soon after — calling the association “a liberal WOKE organization that holds disdain for conservative school board members.” The letter referred to CTA’s allegations as “merely hypothetical and not based in actual conflicts,” and said that LaBarbera was willing to recuse herself from decisions when necessary.

Why did Carr file the quo warranto?

Carr is a retired educator and school administrator who sat on the CUESD board from 2010-2014. That’s the board that LaBarbera was most recently appointed to. 

Asked about his motivation to file the quo warranto, Carr kept it simple. “I think that elected officials should respect and abide by the law,” he said. He clarified that LaBarbera’s most recent school board appointment had no bearing on his decision to file the legal challenge, saying that he had started researching the process before that appointment occurred.

In 2023, Carr applied to fill a vacancy on the AUHSD board, which the board — including LaBarbera — denied. Carr said that denial is “not at all” relevant to his current legal challenge. 

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4.9.2026 9:57 a.m.: We have updated this story to include LaBarbera’s lawyer’s response to the CTA cease and desist letter issued in March of 2025.

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