Petition For Review Filed In Judicial Salary Case

Here is the petition for review filed by Los Angeles County in Sturgeon v. County of Los Angeles, the judicial salary case. Many amicus letters have been filed in support of the petition, but none that I have seen adds much to the legal arguments made by the petition.

Besides contending that the decision below will lead to calamitous results for the administration of justice, the petition makes two legal arguments about how the decision below erred. First, as discussed in previous posts (here and here), the petition contends that the Court of Appeal wrongly held that the doctrine requiring deference to legislative interpretations of the Constitution applies only when the constitutional provision and the relevant legislation were contemporaneous. There are numerous counter-examples, including the decision in Pacific Legal Foundation v. Brown, 29 Cal. 3d 168 (1981), in which I represented the State Personnel Board. Second, the petition argues that the Court of Appeal misconstrued the nondelegation doctrine in disallowing the Legislature's attempt to give the counties total discretion to supplement the "base" judicial salary.

The plaintiffs did not file an answer to the County's petition for rehearing in the Court of Appeal, because the court did not request one. It will be interesting to see what they say in response to the petition. At that point, we'll evaluate the arguments and make a prediction about the grant of review.

Court of Appeal Modifies Sturgeon Opinion

The Court of Appeal has issued an order (here) changing some of the language in the Sturgeon opinion, but not the result or the essential details of the court's reasoning. Some changes correct typos, while others are (slightly) more substantive. The most significant change is the addition of a new paragraph to the conclusion, which reads like an attempt to minimize the significance of the decision (and presumably decrease the likelihood of Supreme Court review): "As we have noted, there are valid reasons the county provides its judges with generous employment benefits beyond the employment benefits provided by the state. However, the defect we have found in the method by which those benefits have been provided is itself substantial and important. Under our constitutional scheme, judicial compensation is a matter of statewide concern and the Legislature must set policy with respect to all aspects of judicial compensation. As the cases we have discussed demonstrate, the Legislature's obligation to 'prescribe judicial compensation' requires that it set forth standards or safeguards which assure that fundamental policy is implemented. The fact that the Legislature provided counties a credit for judicial benefits when it enacted Lockyer-Isenberg or that it assured the counties that judicial benefits would not be decreased as a result of trial court funding does not meet these requirements. The obligation is not onerous, but does require that the Legislature consider the specific issue and, at a minimum, establish or reference identifiable standards."