Overview The redistricting season happens once every ten years, and it is always characterized by two things: fierce partisan struggles for control of the maps that will determine political power in the next decade, and anguished complaints about how politicized the process is. The current redistricting cycle is no different, featuring the usual allegations of partisan gerrymandering and consequent legal challenges to proposed district maps across the country. This boring-but-important topic receives less news coverage than it merits, and consequently it is rarely a target for major reforms. For example, a recent Pew poll found that most Americans are unaware...

Overview In the past two years members of California’s Assembly twice tried to advance tax bills (AB 2088 and AB 310) that were designed to capture revenue from wealthy residents who fled the state to avoid the other income tax increases in those bills.[1] Both would have imposed a tax (levied annually for 10 years) on a California resident who leaves the state. This article argues that such an exit tax has grave legal defects that should prevent a state from imposing a wealth-based exit tax on its former residents. Analysis The two bills employed distinct approaches to capturing revenue...

Overview Under California’s equal protection doctrine, Los Angeles Municipal Code 56.11 and similar laws that are designed to harass the homeless may be unconstitutional. In 2016, the Los Angeles City Council adopted LAMC 56.11 to address the city’s homeless encampments.[1] The law’s purpose is to “balance the needs” of residents to access “clean and sanitary” public areas with the “homeless population[’s]” property interests, and it prohibits storing “any tangible property” in public areas.[2] The ordinance permits the city to confiscate and destroy such property if it violates the law’s size, placement, or personal attendance requirements after written notice.[3] The ordinance...

Overview Our review of the California Supreme Court year in 2021 will focus on the court’s immediate future, and we see two possible viewpoints there. From one perspective the court is in harmony, with only incremental changes on the horizon. We still see no evidence on the current court of the partisan behavior that characterized voting patterns in its past, consensus continues to dominate, and there is no evidence of a Brown versus senior justices split. Yet from another perspective the court is primed for change, and that potential for change is our primary concern here. Analysis The court’s performance...

Overview Confusion reigns about the constitutional status of bail because the California constitution contains two contradictory provisions on the subject. Article 1, section 12 provides that “[a] person shall be released on bail by sufficient sureties” except for certain enumerated exceptions.[1] But article 1, section 28 says “[a] person may be released on bail by sufficient sureties” except for capital crimes.[2] Worse: section 28 directs courts to make public safety and the safety of the victim the “primary considerations in bail decisions.”[3] Some view bail as an absolute right under section 12, yet that is difficult to reconcile with the...

Overview In this article the California Constitution Center evaluates Justice Leondra R. Kruger’s record on the California Supreme Court. We searched for evidence of partisan behavior, and focused on defining her alignment and orientation. We conclude that Justice Kruger is the median justice on a court that is closely aligned within a narrow band on the spectrum of possible orientations. We see no evidence of partisan ideology or voting behavior by Justice Kruger, who instead proceeds from a neutral approach that produces equivalent proportions of relatively liberal and conservative results. And we maintain our view that the current California Supreme...