Here’s the second part of the report on yesterday’s big double conference. Part I is here.
Racial Justice Act dissenting vote
Justice Goodwin Liu wanted to issue an order to show cause in In re Manjikian, but he was the only member of the court who did. The court’s denial order says the petition claimed a California Racial Justice Act (here and here) violation because the “prosecutor’s closing statements were ‘an implicit appeal to biases, stereotypes, and coded language playing on a trope that Armenians were not peaceful and non-violent like white people from Western Europe.’ ” The court concluded, however, that the petition didn’t make a prima facie case — “the allegations of the petition do not support the conclusion that the language cited by petitioner is racially discriminatory or that it reflects racial bias or animus.”
Three Strikes sentencing and parole dissenting votes
The court denied review in In re Payne, a habeas corpus petition filed by Stanford Law School’s Three Strikes Project, but Justices Joshua Groban and Kelli Evans recorded votes to issue an order to show cause. The petitioner was sentenced to 50 years to life under the Three Strikes law for evading arrest.
The petition claimed that the standard for “determining whether a person serving an indeterminate life sentence is suitable for parole” is unclear, leading to “arbitrary outcomes, conflicting rulings among lower courts, and a vague standard that violates Due Process.” It also asserted that the petitioner’s sentence is unlawfully cruel and unusual under the federal Constitution. The Attorney General’s informal response is here and the petitioner’s reply is here.
More dissenting votes for review about youth offender parole denial
Justices Liu and Evans recorded dissenting votes from the denial of review in People v. Nelson. In an unpublished opinion, the Second District, Division One, Court of Appeal rejected a constitutional challenge to the statute that prevents parole hearings for defendants serving life without parole sentences for special circumstances murders committed when older than 17 and younger than 26. In People v. Hardin (2024) 15 Cal.5th 834, the Supreme Court found unavailing an equal protection attack. (See here.) Justices Liu and Evans dissented there. After Hardin, they have been regularly dissenting from review denials in youth offender parole cases, including once with a separate statement asserting that cruel-or-unusual-punishment issues should be addressed. (See here and recently here.)
Statutory bar on discouraging union membership
The court denied review in Alliance Marc & Eva Stern Math & Science High School v. Public Employment Relations Board. The Second District, Division Two, published opinion rejected 11 public charter schools’ free-speech constitutional challenge to Government Code section 3550, which provides, “A public employer shall not deter or discourage public employees or applicants to be public employees from becoming or remaining members of an employee organization.” The PERB had found violations of the statute by some of the schools and by the schools’ management organization. Division Two held the statute “is not facially unconstitutional because it regulates only government speech unprotected by the free speech provisions of the First Amendment and the California Constitution.”
The appellate court opinion came only after that court had summarily denied the schools’ petition for a writ of review and the Supreme Court, in November 2023, had granted review and directed issuance of an order to show cause to the PERB. (See here.)
