SEC. 3.212. DECISIONS INVOLVING FAMILY MEMBERS.
§ 3.212
City officers and employees cannot make, participate in, or influence employment decisions (hiring, promotion, or discipline) involving their relatives, though they may provide personal references for relatives applying outside their own department; a department head unable to participate must delegate the decision in writing to another employee.
If you work for the City, you cannot be involved in hiring, promoting, or disciplining a family member. This includes spouses, domestic partners, parents, grandparents, children, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, and step-relatives. You are allowed to give a letter of recommendation for a relative who is applying for a job in a different City department than yours. If you cannot participate because of a family connection, your department head must have someone else make that decision instead.
- Could be simpler:The exception clause in subsection (a) is lengthy and could be clearer—it might benefit from a separate, numbered subsection to distinguish the permissible reference-letter activity from the main prohibition.
- Controversial:Nepotism rules affect hiring and workplace fairness, topics on which San Franciscans hold differing views about strictness and enforcement.
AI-generated · claude-haiku-4-5 · informational only, not legal advice.
Official text
(a) Prohibition. No officer or employee of the City and County may make, participate in making, or otherwise seek to influence a decision of the City and County regarding an employment action involving a relative. Nothing in this Section shall prohibit an officer or employee from acting as a personal reference or providing a letter of reference for a relative who is seeking appointment to a position in any City department, board, commission or agency other than the officer or employee's department, board, commission or agency or under the control of any such department, board, commission or agency.
(b) Delegation. A Department Head who is prohibited under Subsection (a) from participating in an employment action involving a relative shall delegate in writing to an employee within the department any decisions regarding such employment action.
(c) Definitions. For purposes of this Section, the term "employment action" shall be limited to hiring, promotion, or discipline, and the term "relative" shall mean a spouse, domestic partner, parent, grandparent, child, sibling, parent-in-law, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, first cousin, and includes any similar step relationship or relationship created by adoption.
(Added by Proposition E, 11/4/2003)