Michael Krause served as Chief Business Officer and then superintendent of the Adelanto Elementary School District (District) from 2022 until his June 2024 termination. Over roughly two years, three of his subordinates — executive assistants identified as S.A., X.L., and I.P. — experienced what the trial court later found to be a course of harassing conduct. Krause was prone to angry outbursts at meetings, including one in which he slammed his fists on a table and screamed at staff until several people cried. He also sent the three women a steady stream of unsettling text messages and photos: pictures he had secretly taken of them at a Chipotle, outside their homes at night, and near a family member’s workplace; comments suggesting he was watching them on office cameras or following them around town; and after-hours messages with a romantic or proprietary tone, such as telling one assistant he did not “love her anymore” when she was slow to reply.

On separate occasions he physically poked two of the women hard enough to startle and hurt them. After the women reported his conduct in 2024, Krause was placed on leave, filed an unsubstantiated sexual harassment complaint against one of them, and was later seen parked outside a coffee shop watching two of the women through his car window. The District terminated him and the parties signed a separation agreement releasing the District’s claims against Krause arising from his employment. Krause was then elected to the District’s own Board of Trustees, and during the campaign each woman found one of his yard signs planted near her home.

In October 2024, the District petitioned for a workplace violence restraining order (WVRO) against Krause on behalf of the three women under Code of Civil Procedure section 527.8, and the San Bernardino County Superior Court issued a temporary restraining order. Following a four-day evidentiary hearing spread across January and March 2025, at which the three women and Krause testified at length, the trial court granted a permanent WVRO. The court found Krause’s course of conduct met the statutory definition of harassment, rejected his shifting and sometimes “strained” explanations for the texts and photos, and found his lack of remorse supported a reasonable probability that the harassment would continue, particularly given that his election to the Board placed him back in regular contact with the women. The order barred Krause from contacting the women, required him to stay 100 yards from them and their workplace (five yards during Board meetings, where a District-funded security guard was required), barred him from commenting on the WVRO or the underlying proceedings at any regular Board meeting, and ran for four years.

In the published opinion in Adelanto Elementary School District v. Krause, No. D086337 (Cal. Ct. App., 4th Dist., Div. 1, July 2026) — the Court of Appeal affirmed the WVRO as modified, striking the provision barring Krause from commenting on the order at Board meetings and shortening the order’s duration from four years to the statutory maximum of three.

Writing for a unanimous panel, Justice Buchanan first rejected Krause’s argument that the District had waived its right to seek a WVRO by signing a separation agreement releasing claims against him. The court held that an employer’s statutory right to prosecute a WVRO on an employee’s behalf is unwaivable under Civil Code section 3513, which bars private contracts from contravening a law enacted for a public reason. Drawing on Armendariz v. Foundation Health Psychcare Services, Inc. (2000) 24 Cal.4th 83 and Bickel v. City of Piedmont (1997) 16 Cal.4th 1040, the court reasoned that section 527.8 was enacted to combat workplace violence and harassment as a matter of public concern, not solely for individual employers’ benefit, citing legislative history describing rising threats against school employees, health workers, and election workers. Because the public benefit of the WVRO statute is a primary purpose rather than a merely incidental one — a policy the court traced through Scripps Health v. Marin (1999) 72 Cal.App.4th 324 and a case it referred to as Franklin v. The Monadnock Co. (2007) 151 Cal.App.4th 252 — the release could not extinguish the District’s right to seek the order.

Second, the court found sufficient evidence of a future threat to support the WVRO. It held that the older “reasonable probability of future unlawful violence” standard from Scripps Health no longer controls, because the Legislature amended section 527.8 in 2023 to reach harassment as well as violence, effective January 2025, precisely so employers would not have to wait until a threat escalated into violence. Under the amended statute, a reasonable probability of continued harassment suffices, and the panel found that standard met given the two-year pattern of conduct, Krause’s continued contact after being placed on leave, and his consistent refusal to acknowledge that any of it was inappropriate.

Third, the court held Krause forfeited his argument that the WVRO improperly burdened his parental rights, since he raised no evidence or objection on that point below despite adequate notice of the order’s terms.

Fourth, the court agreed with Krause that the provision barring him from commenting on the WVRO or its proceedings at Board meetings was an overbroad restriction on his First Amendment rights as an elected official. Applying Balboa Island Village Inn, Inc. v. Lemen (2007) 40 Cal.4th 1141 and Madsen v. Women’s Health Center, Inc. (1994) 512 U.S. 753, the court explained that an injunction touching speech must be no broader than necessary to serve its purpose, and this provision swept in legitimate Board business — such as evaluating the performance of the law firm that handled the case — that had nothing to do with harassing the protected women. The panel struck that provision alone, while leaving intact the WVRO’s other bars on harassment or contact during Board meetings.

Finally, the court held the trial court exceeded its authority by setting the WVRO’s duration at four years, since section 527.8, subdivision (l)(1), caps such orders at three years subject to early termination. The panel modified the order accordingly and affirmed it as modified.