The latest attempt to de-legitimize the judiciary is an attack on the California Supreme Court by a member of the state Assembly. Last month, the court denied without comment a petition for review he filed, which is the fate of around 95 percent of such requests to have the court hear a case. Yet, as the Orange County Breeze reports, the assemblyman responded to the denial in his case by saying, “we clearly can no longer trust . . . the California Supreme Court to be impartial or factual” and the court “has made a mockery of justice.”
The petition for review concerned an initiative that the assemblyman — Travis Allen — is pushing to repeal or amend various portions of the 2017 law that increased California gasoline taxes. (One of Allen’s central arguments in his repeal campaign has been rated “mostly false” by the nonpartisan fact-checker Politifact.) The Court of Appeal’s opinion, which the Supreme Court left standing by its denial of review, doesn’t keep the initiative off the ballot, but only rejects an attempt by the assemblyman to change the circulating title and summary that the State’s Attorney General, Xavier Becerra, prepared for the initiative.
Disagreements with court decisions are common. But attacking the legitimacy of the judiciary is dangerous, and is particularly pernicious when coming from an elected member of another, equal branch of government.
