A La Jolla hair salon filed a proposed federal class action against Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday, claiming California’s regional stay-at-home order infringes on the constitutional rights of barbering and cosmetology professionals. Among other causes of action, the suit alleges that salons must be compensated for the shutdown of their businesses under the Fifth Amendment’s takings clause. In the 52-page complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, Tatoma Inc. claims that hair and nail salons have been “singled out for closure in order to benefit the public” and are one of the only types…
Over 50 Bay Area restaurants and wineries served Gov. Gavin Newsom with a lawsuit Tuesday asking that he take back his order for regional bans on outdoor dining. The class action suit brought by the Wine Country Coalition for Safe Reopening seeks to enjoin Newsom’s December ban on outdoor dining and wine tasting. Public Health Director Tomás J. Aragón is also named in the complaint. The complaint requests that the outdoor dining ban be rescinded for the entire Bay Area region, or just Napa and Sonoma Counties. Newsom’s order divided the state into regions and imposed strict regulations in regions…
A new bill proposed by California Democrats could extend the reach of a recently passed racial discrimination law that prohibits the state from seeking criminal convictions or sentences based on race, ethnicity, or national origin. AB 256 would make AB 2542 retroactive, which could open up a large number of challenges to convictions where race may have been a factor. When it went into effect on Jan. 1, AB 2542 added evidence of racial discrimination to new or false evidence as factors that defense counsel could cite upon filing a writ of habeus corpus. The new bill was introduced on…
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday formally appointed Alex Padilla, California’s secretary of state, to fill the state’s U.S. Senate seat vacated by Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. To fill the secretary of state post vacated by Padilla, Newsom nominated state Assemblymember Shirley Weber (D-San Diego). Padilla, 47, will be the first Latino U.S. senator for California, whose population is 39 percent Hispanic or Latino. Weber, 72, will be the state’s first Black secretary of state if confirmed to the post. “It is fitting that on the same day we celebrate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — a civil…
Asian parent teaching homework to children and participate e-learning online education class group activity from school teacher at home. Mother explaining knowledge in computer laptop to daughter.
Parenting plans attempt to provide stability and consistency for children and their families. A well-crafted parenting plan encourages flexibility but provides certainty for circumstances when parents disagree. In 2020, a global pandemic created extraordinary challenges, and rendered many parenting plans obsolete. The pandemic closed many courts, and left the rest with very limited calendars and unable to respond to the rapid changes the pandemic produced. No parenting plan can anticipate disruptions of this scale and duration, but there are some practical lessons emerging from the pandemic 1. Especially in the first months of the pandemic, many lawyers and judges viewed…
Dissenting from a Friday decision, a Ninth Circuit judge asked the U.S. Supreme Court to clarify whether and in what circumstances federal appellate courts can take up an interlocutory appeal when the district court denies a summary judgment motion based on qualified immunity. “Johnson strikes again,” Judge William Fletcher wrote, referring to the high court’s decision in Johnson v. Jones (1995) 515 U.S. 304, and going on to call the law in this area “extraordinarily confused.” The case here arises from the 2012 shooting of Wayne Steven Anderson by California Highway Patrol Officer John Marsh in the Fresno area.…
Answering a question certified by the Ninth Circuit, the California Supreme Court held Thursday that its landmark decision in Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court (2018) 4 Cal.5th 903 applies retroactively, subjecting California employers to what could potentially be years of liability for improperly classifying workers under a test that didn’t yet govern in the state. “Particularly because we had not previously issued a definitive ruling on the issue addressed in Dynamex, we see no reason to depart from the general rule that judicial decisions are given retroactive effect,” Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye wrote for the unanimous court. “Moreover,…
The defendant held responsible in the Ghost Ship warehouse fire in Oakland that killed 36 people in 2016 has been offered a plea deal for nine years in prison. Derick Almena, the founder of the arts collective dubbed the Ghost Ship, will take the plea deal instead of facing 36 counts of involuntary manslaughter, according to relatives of the victims of the fire who were told the news on Wednesday morning. Dec. 2, 2020, marked the four-year anniversary of the blaze, which is considered one of the deadliest fires in California history. Prosecutors accused Almena of extreme negligence as the…
In its first abortion-related decision with a newly cemented majority of conservative jurists, the U.S. Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision on Tuesday stayed an injunction of a Food and Drug Administration regulation requiring women seeking the abortion pill to pick up the drug in person rather than receiving it in the mail. The injunction of the rule, issued by a Maryland district court, prevented the FDA from enforcing the in-person dispensation requirement for mifepristone, used to end an early pregnancy or manage a miscarriage, for the duration of the COVID-19 public health emergency. The American College of Obstetricians and…
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) announced on Tuesday that it is filing a legal challenge to the constitutionality of Proposition 22, the $200 million ballot measure that California voters approved in November to keep gig drivers independent contractors rather than employees. The petition for a writ of mandate, filed in the California Supreme Court, alleges the measure unconstitutionally limits the power of elected officials to govern. Along with the SEIU, the petitioners are the SEIU California State Council, three rideshare drivers, and one rideshare app user. The respondents are the State of California and the California Labor Commissioner. “Every…