Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero held her annual meeting with journalists on Thursday. She addressed a range of issues, as reported here:
Cheryl Miller in The Recorder — “Calif. Chief Justice Calls for Limits on ICE in Courthouses, More Opinions from State High Court.”
Malcolm Maclachlan in the Daily Journal — “Chief Justice says ICE activity, Racial Justice Act backlog and bar exam woes top court concerns.”
Quinn Wilson for Bloomberg Law — “California Top Justice Pushes Court Access as ICE Activity Grows.”
Cayla Mihalovich for CalMatters — “California chief justice steps up monitoring of immigration arrests at courthouses.”
From those sources:
Immigration enforcement
“Administrators and judges from 17 courthouses around the state have reported some type of immigration enforcement action, including agents working both inside court buildings and outside, waiting for targeted individuals to exit.” The judiciary has responded by expanding remote proceedings and the Chief Justice’s office has been giving guidance to courts about how to react.
The Chief Justice is quoted as saying that detaining litigants and witnesses “instills fear” and that federal agents “can do their work outside of the courtroom.”
“State judiciary leaders are studying ways to limit federal immigration activities inside state courthouses, including possible litigation.” However, Guerrero also said that “filing a lawsuit was only a ‘hypothetical situation’ and not ‘something that I think, under the circumstances, is the appropriate time.’ ”
The Chief Justice has previously expressed her concerns about immigration enforcement in California courts (see here and here), but she has been less publicly forceful than her predecessor, Tani Cantil-Sakauye, who was a frequent, vocal critic during President Trump’s first term, including sending a demand to the U.S. Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security that accused immigration agents of “stalking undocumented immigrants in our courthouses to make arrests” and asserting that the courts “should not be used as bait” (see here, here, here, here, here, and here).
Guerrero explained her different approach: “The president is not going to listen to me if I try to tell him what to do, so what really is the point of that? I’m less interested in making statements, trying to tell people what they’re doing wrong, and instead trying to find a way forward so that our courts are informed — that we are available.”
A pending proposal would require courts to regularly submit data to the Judicial Council on civil arrests in and around courthouses.
California’s Racial Justice Act
“Guerrero also addressed the massive backlog of Racial Justice Act cases facing the appellate courts. She said the court is on the verge of issuing guidance to assist lower courts, while warning that new types of appeals under the law are likely to follow.”
Court bashing
Guerrero said she finds some remarks by Supreme Court critics to be “really infuriating” when based on the view that “we’re ruling one way, because we have a political inclination to rule in that way, or we have a personal agenda or political agenda.” She singled out one Republican Assemblymember’s comments that, in denying review of a decision finding Huntington Beach’s voter ID law to be preempted by state law (see here), the court’s “liberal judges” acted as “lapdog, not a watchdog.”
The Chief Justice added, “People need to be better educated about what it is that we do, and what our role is.”
Related: Sore losers can be a threat to an independent judiciary.
Upping opinion output
Although last term’s 45 opinions by the court was an historic low (see here), or maybe not quite (see here), “Guerrero said the number is in line with those written in recent post-pandemic years.” Nonetheless, she “said she has also spoken to her colleagues about working toward a goal of at least 10 opinions per justice each year, a figure she called ‘a legitimate target.’ ”
We recently wrote that a low number of opinions should be a worry “[o]nly if the court is being too picky in deciding which cases to hear or if it’s taking too long to hear those cases it has already agreed to hear.” The Chief Justice indicated it’s the latter that’s of particular concern, saying, “I view it as an access to justice issue that the court should be promptly resolving cases that are before us. These are issues of statewide significance that impact everyone in the state. It impacts the courts of appeal. It impacts the trial courts, because they need our guidance on these questions.” (Related: A partially new list of old cases.)
Future bar exams
“Guerrero said that while she wants to see what state bar leaders recommend, she feels ‘more comfortable’ ” with the National Conference of Bar Examiners’ NextGen exam “after having gone through the February fiasco.” (Link added.) She added, “I’m not saying that the other alternative is off the table. But you ask what I feel about the NextGen and from what I have heard others, what I’ve seen, they’re doing a good job.”
Artificial intelligence
The Chief Justice reported the court is not allowing use of AI for writing opinions, reports, or memos. She also said sanctions against attorneys for “very egregious” misuse of AI “are important.” (See here about the court ordering a Court of Appeal hearing about a district attorney’s alleged use of fabricated citations, among other things.)
