Home » A little memory-refresher on California propositions

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A little memory-refresher on California propositions — 17 Comments

  1. My favorite example was when District Judge Benitez ruling that CA’s ban on the sale of high capacity gun magazines was unconstitutional. Shocker. A couple weeks later, a stay was placed on that ruling. Then it went to the 9th circuit court and the 3 judge panel unheld the Benitez ruling. Shocker#2.

    Wait… This is California! The rule of law is only important when the results move leftward. Solution: The 9th circuit en-banc re-hearing. All the judges on the court got to weigh in and bulldoze the constitutional minded ones.

    https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/30/us/california-ban-high-capacity-magazines/index.html

  2. Justice Gorsuch and a Supreme Court majority did the country a major disservice when they ruled that the term “sex” included “transgender” individuals. This redefinition of language which did NOT mean transsexuals when the law was written has led to many negative consequences.

  3. Certainly judicial activism gives lawyers more power than they would otherwise have. The Democrat narrative that the story of America is “Selma, Seneca Falls, and Stonewall” also tends to make the America more about judicial extension of rights than about majority rule. Our Democracy™ is more about results than about democratic processes

    I’ve also noticed that the “authoritarianism” that we are supposed to be afraid of has more to do with preserving or not overturning traditional social authority and traditions, than with dictatorial government and high-handed arbitrary exercise of power. I don’t usually buy the theory that what’s going on today is a result of the Frankfurt School, but in this case the connection is hard to deny.

  4. Neo, let us refresh our memory with proposition 209, a ballot initiative that passed in California in 1996. The proposition states

    “Proposition 209, a state constitutional amendment placed on the ballot by citizens’ initiative, was approved by California voters five years ago to ban discrimination or preferential treatment based on race, ethnicity and gender in public employment, education and contracting.”

    This certainly fits your definition of “targeting identity groups favored by the left”. Yet, as discussed in this document, it has survived multiple court challenges, both in state and federal courts.

    https://sor.senate.ca.gov/sites/sor.senate.ca.gov/files/Proposition%20209%20and%20the%20Courts.pdf

    It has also survived challenges at the ballot. The latest was proposition 16 on the 2020 ballot. The Initiative was placed on the ballot by an overwhelming majority of the Democrat controlled legislature, but the voters rejected it.

    To answer another one of your criticisms, that the state Attorney General will not defend the propositions in court, the three propositions each contain provisions that the proponents can defend them in court.

    To those of you who are not “nabobs of negativism” like Neo, /smile, you can contribute to the proponents of the propositions here

    https://protectkidsca.com/donate/

  5. BTW, I admit that proposition 209 is routinely ignored in California just as the Supreme Court Asian students lawsuit decision will be ignored by universities across the country. Conservatives have to go about winning elections. This recent article about the University of North Carolina gives us some hope. Even though North Carolina elected a Democrat governor, in a recent election, the voters gave the Republicans a super majority in the legislature. The Republicans have been governing effectively, overriding the Democrat Cooper’s vetoes. As the saying goes in politics, when they feel the heat, they see the light. Whatever the reason the University of North Carolina has done an about face.

    https://www.foxnews.com/media/unc-no-longer-consider-race-including-essays-during-admissions
    “UNC will no longer consider race, including in essays, during admissions
    UNC will no longer use race as a factor in its admissions and hiring decisions, including in application essays”
    By Kendall Tietz Fox News

  6. Bob Wilson:

    The point is that sometimes the courts overrule a proposition, not that it always happens that way.

    I’m explaining that for others, not for trolls,.

  7. It is notable that Proposition 8, that would have banned gay marriage, passed in the same election in which Obama carried California by a huge margin. During the campaign I saw a street-corner demonstration for Prop 8 in Silicon Valley. None of the participants were white.

  8. Neo, I am not clear on the point of your post and your response to my comment. Do you think it is worth the effort to put initiatives like the three Protect Kids CA on the ballot?

  9. As an ex-Californian of over thirty years residency, I would add that the Propositions portion of the ballot was always huge and the propositions were usually confusing, often intentionally misleading.

    Some ballot measures which might sound similar actually had opposite effects.

    Propositions were supposed to be a great advance for grassroots democracy. Instead they became a tool for left-wing activists and big money fixers.

  10. You say “California courts,” but both of the initiatives you cite were overturned by federal courts, and at least one of them (the gay marriage initiative) went all the way to the Supreme Court. There’s no reason to think that either initiative would have fared differently in enacted (i) in another state or (ii) by a legislature, rather than by initiative.

    If the report is that the courts are not a democratic (small d) institution, that is dog bites man.

  11. ey81:

    Prop 187’s legal challenges [emphasis mine; remarks in brackets are mine]

    The constitutionality of Proposition 187 was challenged by several lawsuits. On November 11, 1994, three days after the bill’s passage, Federal Judge W. Matthew Byrne [of the United States District Court for the Central District of California] issued a temporary restraining order against institution of the measure, which was filed by State Attorney General Dan Lungren.

    In other words, the California state AG made the decision to challenge the referendum passed by a large majority in his own state. The restraining order was in federal court in California.

    More:

    After Judge Mariana Pfaelzer issued a permanent injunction of Proposition 187 in December 1994, blocking all provisions except those dealing with higher education and false documents, multiple cases were consolidated and brought before the federal court. In November 1997, Pfaelzer found the law to be unconstitutional on the basis that it infringed on the federal government’s exclusive jurisdiction over matters relating to immigration. Pfaelzer also explained that Proposition 187’s effect on the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, the congressional overhaul of the American welfare system, proved that the bill was a “scheme” to regulate immigration:

    “California is powerless to enact its own legislative scheme to regulate immigration. It is likewise powerless to enact its own legislative scheme to regulate alien access to public benefits.”

    Same court: United States District Court for the Central District of California.

    More:

    Governor Wilson appealed the ruling, which brought the case to the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. But in 1999, the newly elected Democratic Governor Gray Davis had the case brought before mediation. His administration withdrew the appeal before the courts in July 1999, effectively killing the law.

    The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is in the West – that is, California, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, and a few other western states – but it never heard the case because the governor of California, Gray Davis, would not defend the appeal and withdrew it, letting the verdict of the lower courts (federal courts in California) stand. Gray Davis was a Democrat. Prop 187 had passed by a vote of about 59% to 41%, so it had strong support from California voters.

    Now let’s look at the legal history of Prop 8. The California Supreme Court said it was constitutional, but then cases went forward on the issue to various district courts. One went to the Southern Division of the United States District Court for the Central District of California but was thrown out on a technicality. Another went to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California , and this is how it went [emphasis mine]:

    California Attorney General, and former and later again Governor Jerry Brown backed the lawsuit, saying that Proposition 8 violates the U.S. Constitution and should be struck down. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger took a more neutral path, saying that he supported the lawsuit because the Proposition 8 conflict asks “important constitutional questions that require and warrant judicial determination.” Because this means that the Californian government will not defend the law in court, the proponents of Proposition 8’s campaign were granted the right to intervene as defendants. The case was first heard on July 2, 2009, in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco, Judge Vaughn R. Walker presiding.

    In an act unprecedented in California history both the Governor and Attorney General refused to defend a constitutional amendment.

    So the government officials either fought it or refused to defend it – which was unprecedented in California history. Judge Walker ruled against it, declaring it unconstitutional. The state once again refused to appeal (that’s the AG and the governor). Later, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling that it was unconstitutional. An appeal went to SCOTUS, but the Supreme Court did not hear the case on the merits; the ruling had to do with lack of standing. Other challenges were mounted by Prop 8’s backers, and the California Supreme Court denied them.

    I think we can safely say that the two propositions were not defended by California AGs or governors (except for Wilson quite early on), were not upheld by the California courts (except initially for 187), and were not upheld by the federal district courts in California either. The latter are federal courts and apply federal law, but they operate in California and the judges were Californians, and district courts partake of the atmospheres of the regions in which they operate.

  12. huxley:

    Agreed. I’m not in favor of government by referendum. You wrote, “Propositions were supposed to be a great advance for grassroots democracy. Instead they became a tool for left-wing activists and big money fixers.” I think that is inevitable. That is why the Founders made us a republic instead of a pure democracy. The Democrats have been trying to change that for quite some time.

  13. Bob Wilson:

    I absolutely think it’s worth the effort. However, it may not pass – it depends on whether people understand what is going on regarding parental rights or women’s sports or medical transition of minors, and what the initiatives’ proponents are trying to do regarding those issues. I also think that, if it does pass, the leadership of California will try to oppose it through the mechanism of the legal system. Whether they will succeed, I don’t know, but there’s precedent for the possibility of their succeeding in blocking it and most definitely precedent for their attempting to block it through the courts.

  14. I realize that I am no longer welcome here but I could not resist a comment on Prop 8. That campaign was nasty, the gay mafia seeking out those who had contributed to the fund raining for the proposition. One was a waitress in a Mexican restaurant who was fired after her name was publicized. The federal judge who ruled it unconstitutional retired soon after and married his gay lover.

    Apologies for intruding.

  15. ” There’s no reason to think that either initiative would have fared differently in enacted (i) in another state or (ii) by a legislature, rather than by initiative.”

    Prop 8 failed at the US Supreme Court because the Court stated that the people arguing in favor of it lacked standing. Only the state, or individuals directly affected by the proposition could have standing to appeal. If a different state has been involved, and that state’s AG had done his job, then standing wouldn’t have been a problem.

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