5 ms·
Seems like an odd move to undercut the checks and balances courts are supposed to have over legislation. Enacting a law solely to undercut a court's decision se
by falcolas 5y ago
Seems like an odd move to undercut the checks and balances courts are supposed to have over legislation. Enacting a law solely to undercut a court's decision seems spurious, and may blow back on both the legislation and the school.
- jeffbee 5y agoI've seen this take a lot in the last half a day and it makes no sense at all. The court rules on the law. It's an ordinary statute, and the legislature changed it. There is no checks-and-balances conflict here. The statute says whatever the legislature says it says.
- rablackburn 5y agoYeah, from what I understand this is exactly how the separation of judicial and legislative powers is _meant_ to work. The court's power is to interpret what is written. The legislature's power is to write the words. If the legislature doesn't like how the court interpreted the statute they're meant to rewrite it so that the intention is clearer.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y agoThe exact opposite. The legislature (which passed this unanimously) AND the governor passed this legislation as a check on the power of the court. This happens all the time, e.g. famously when the US passed the 16th amendment to allow income tax.
- colinmhayes 5y agoReally they're just undoing a law that has had many unintended consequences. The court was just ruling based off this CEQA, so the legislature fixed the it.
- falcolas 5y agoThey're interfering with a private lawsuit, and changing laws with retroactive effect to do so. That's what's so odd about this.
- gamblor956 5y agoNo, they're addressing a private lawsuit that was only permitted to proceed because of the court's erroneous (but reasonable) interpretation of the prior law. So the legislature changed the law to make it explicitly clear that these types of lawsuits were never intended by the law.
- thaumasiotes 5y agoBut the new law explicitly contemplates these types of lawsuits. It doesn't say you can't sue this way. It says colleges and universities who are sued this way can't be compelled to do anything for 18 months. (Which invalidates the court judgment ordering UC Berkeley to stop enrolling students.) It is logically necessary, for this law to exist at all, that the original lawsuit was valid, and that the "remedy" was also valid. It's just that the remedy can't be imposed yet.
- gamblor956 5y agoNo, the law clearly states that enrollment increases are not, on their own, subject to CEQA: From TTOTFL itself: "This bill would delete the provision requiring the environmental effects relating to changes in enrollment levels be considered in the EIR prepared for the long-range development plan. The bill would provide that enrollment or changes in enrollment, by themselves, do not constitute a project for purposes of CEQA." https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB118 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...
- thaumasiotes 5y agoIt doesn't look like the relevant law is actually changing. There is a provision being deleted: > Environmental effects relating to changes in enrollment levels shall be considered for each campus or medical center of public higher education in the environmental impact report prepared for the long range development plan for the campus or medical center. This already doesn't say that enrollment levels require their own reviews; it says they have to be considered in the university's long-range development plan, which it must file for other reasons. (The bill also amends all instances of "long range development plan" to "long-range development plan". Not sure why.) There are also two provisions being added. The one that looks good is: > Enrollment or changes in enrollment, by themselves, do not constitute a project as defined in Section 21065. Here's the other one: > If a court determines that increases in campus population exceed the projections adopted in the most recent long-range development plan and analyzed in the supporting environmental impact report, and those increases result in significant environmental impacts, the court may order the campus or medical center to prepare a new, supplemental, or subsequent environmental impact report. Only if a new, supplemental, or subsequent environmental impact report has not been certified within 18 months of that order, the court may, pursuant to Sections 525 and 526 of the Code of Civil Procedure, enjoin increases in campus population that exceed the projections adopted in the most recent long-range development plan and analyzed in the supporting environmental impact report. This pretty clearly requires the university's long-range development plan to consider the environmental impact of projected enrollment levels. What did we gain by moving that requirement from subsection (b) to subsection (e)?
- stjohnswarts 5y agoExactly, this was the result of an overly activist judgement. Signalled by a unanimous vote (how often does that happen in any state?) that the court overstepped it's bounds and gave it definitive statutes to rule by and reign it back in.
- xadhominemx 5y agoThe court didn’t have a personal opinion on the matter. They interpreted the statute. So the legislature changed the statute.
- 0xcde4c3db 5y agoI think what we're seeing is the checks and balances in action. The courts can only "interpret" so forcefully before they're essentially usurping the authority of the legislature, so courts will sometimes make a "bad" ruling as if to say "we're just applying your crappy law; if you don't like it, amend it" (particularly sassy judges might be more direct about this).
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- gamblor956 5y agoSeems like an odd move to undercut the checks and balances courts are supposed to have over legislation. Enacting a law solely to undercut a court's decision seems spurious, and may blow back on both the legislation and the school. That is literally how the legislature is supposed to act when it feels that the court has erred in interpreting legislation.
- scotuswroteus 5y agoYeah and the sun may not come out tomorrow. This doesn't undercut a court's decision. The court interpreted the rules that the state legislature passed, and now that an unintended consequence of the prior passed rule manifested, the state changed the law. That's actually how it's supposed to work.
- paxys 5y agoMore like – legislature passed a law, a certain group of people took advantage of the law in ways the general public didn't intend, the courts said "we have to rule by the letter of the law", legislature amended the law, now most people happy again. This is exactly how the process should work.
- throw_nbvc1234 5y agoThis 1000%. The check that courts have over legislature is constitutionality. If a law is not what the legislature intended (or if the intention has changed) then they have the power to change their minds. Courts do not make laws, they interpret them. Problem is that legislature has (in general) stopped doing their job so the "functional" court system is forced to re-interpret older and older laws; increasing their power relative to the other branches.
- maerF0x0 5y agoAlso it's good when courts enforce poorly written laws as a forcing function to have law makers (legislature) write useful laws. Sometimes the laws as written are nearly useless
- dolni 5y agoI don't agree. That's an overly-simplified, idealistic view. Real people suffer real harms from the unintended consequences of poorly written laws. Our courts should help serve as a last line of defense against that, when appropriate.
- SllX 5y agoServing as a “last line of defense” is a policy choice. That turns courts from legal institutions to political institutions, and we don’t want them to be political institutions because policy is arbitrary and why we have legislatures in the first place: they’re functionally power-sharing forums, and the constitutions instituting them power-sharing agreements.
- 5y ago
- howinteresting 5y agoThe way the American system works is that the legislature has the final say over statutory law, while the courts have the final say over constitutional law (modulo amendments).
- bhupy 5y agoThat's not true, the legislature has final say over both statutory and constitutional law; it's just that the barrier to amending the constitution is higher than amending / passing statutory laws. The Court's job is to interpret the law of its jurisdiction. If the legislature doesn't like the Court's ruling on some statutory law, it would then go through the process of amending the law. If the legislature doesn't like the Court's ruling on some constitutional matter, it would then go through the process of amending the Constitution. The latter process usually requires sufficiently more political will that sometimes a Court's ruling on a Constitutional matter is "final" from a practical standpoint.
- vkou 5y agoCourts can only serve as checks and balances in three things: 1. Determining whether an executive action is consistent with legislated law. 2. Determining whether a piece of legislature is consistent with a more important piece of legislature (Constitutionality.) 3. Determining how two contradictory pieces of legislature are to be interpreted in practice. (A superset of #2.) A court rules on the current state of law. Based on that ruling, the legislature can change the law as it sees fit, within the constraints that it operates under. They are not a back-door way for people to subvert the power of legislature to draft laws those people don't like. If they were, they would be utterly absurd, because without the power to draft legislature, nobody would have a check or balance over the courts.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago4. When two laws are actually in disagreement on a situation, they can prefer one over the other.
- WalterBright 5y agoNot odd at all. The legislature changing the law to override a ruling is yet another of the checks and balances. hammer-paper-scissors
- TaylorAlexander 5y agoMy understanding is that courts have to interpret existing law and “if you don’t like the court’s decision, change the law” is exactly how legislature is supposed to respond. Courts are not supposed to set policy, legislature is.
- jimbokun 5y agoNo that is exactly how it is supposed to work. The judiciary rules on laws as written. And the legislature can then pass new laws to alter existing ones.