In People v. Cannon, a 5-2 Supreme Court yesterday ruled that an equal protection challenge to the statutory scheme for advisement and waiver of jury trials regarding civil commitments under the Sexually Violent Predator Act should be evaluated under the least exacting constitutional standard. For now, however, the court doesn’t decide the challenge’s validity.
Unlike in proceedings for the civil commitment of defendants who have pled not guilty by reason of insanity or of prisoners who are alleged to be offenders with mental health disorders, proposed SVPA committees have no statutory right to be advised of the right to a jury trial, a jury trial is waived unless requested, and a court need not obtain a personal waiver of that right.
The court’s opinion by Justice Carol Corrigan concludes “the proper standard of scrutiny for . . . an equal protection challenge [of the lesser protections for proposed SVPA committees] is rational basis review.”
The court agreed that “the availability of a jury trial is an essential protection for the fundamental liberty interests at stake, and the decision is reserved to the defendant in the final analysis.” But, the court found, “the right to a jury advisement and personal waiver is, itself, [not] a fundamental right, and . . . the SVPA’s on-demand procedures [do not] constitute a significant burden on a defendant’s fundamental liberty interests”; thus, there is no “triggering [of] the most exacting form of scrutiny.”
The equal protection challenge wasn’t decided, however. The court opted “to allow the parties to create a more complete record and to litigate the question in the trial court.” “[T]he ultimate question of whether the differences in procedure can be constitutionally justified . . . will be reserved for the trial court to determine in the first instance, applying the level of scrutiny we clarify here,” the court’s opinion provides.
Justice Goodwin Liu dissented and was joined by Justice Kelli Evans except regarding a final section. He asserted that the majority framed the issue incorrectly. “[T]he pertinent inquiry here,” he wrote, “is not whether lack of personal advisement and waiver burdens an alleged SVP’s fundamental liberty interest, but whether lack of those procedures burdens the effective exercise of the fundamental right to a jury trial.” Because, he said, the answer is “yes,” “alleged committees have a fundamental interest in these procedures, and the selective denial of these procedures to alleged SVPs is subject to heightened equal protection scrutiny, not rational basis review.”
In the dissent’s section Justice Evans doesn’t join, Justice Liu explains that, although he believes rational basis review is not enough, he is “not convinced that the legislative classification here warrants the most exacting scrutiny either.” He would opt for having the superior court on remand “ ‘determine whether the legislative distinctions in classes of persons subject to civil commitment are reasonable and factually based — not whether they are incontrovertible or uncontroversial.’ ”
California currently doesn’t employ an intermediate scrutiny review, but Justice Liu suggested, “In the future, the civil commitment context may prove to be an appropriate area for our courts to transcend the rigid rational basis/strict scrutiny binary and adopt an approach with ‘nuance and sensitivity’ to account for the competing interests at stake in each case.” The court has adjusted its equal protection analysis before.
The court affirms the First District, Division Five, Court of Appeal’s partially published opinion.
