Bob Egelko writes in the San Francisco Chronicle that “[t]he first signs of where [new Justices Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar and Leondra Kruger] stand, and how they approach their jobs, could come soon in a case on the sensitive issues of sex offenders and historic homophobia.” He is referring to the opinion in Johnson v. California Department of Justice, a 5-2 decision in which we issued a rehearing alert when the opinion was filed three weeks ago.
Other “signs” could come in Cuéllar and Kruger’s votes in Hughes v. Pham, People v. Grimes, and People v. Scott. In any one of those cases, Cuéllar and Kruger could indicate a willingness to change the Supreme Court’s course or, in Johnson, to return the court to a recently changed course.
Egelko’s article cites two law professors as skeptical that the new justices would be willing to shake things up, but the article also quotes former Justice Joseph Grodin, who knows first-hand about changes made by new justices, as having a different view: “What I was told when I got on the court was, it’s not a great idea to have a precedent established by (retiring) justices who are not going to be there, if the new justices have a different idea.” Grodin said that new justices should not feel constrained from voting for a rehearing, which is what could happen in Grimes and Johnson: “the argument for adhering to what is really a tentative decision is not really substantial.”
