When the Supreme Court justices skipped a luncheon in their honor, the speculation was that they were sending a message disapproving of election challenges against four San Francisco Superior Court judges that are based on nothing more than the party affiliation of the governor who appointed the judges. Today, Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar writes in a letter to the editor of The Recorder that “[c]hallenging dedicated and highly qualified judges solely because of which governor appointed them or what party the governor belongs to is crass political opportunism.”
The justices’ message from their luncheon no-shows was a bit opaque, because they cited only unspecified “late arising obligations” for not attending. With Justice Cuéllar’s letter, however, it now seems clear that the justices’ “obligations” were to an independent judiciary.
