Last month the Santa Monica City Council fired six city officials without cause, tossing aside the councilmembers’ commitment to transparent governance when it got in the way of scoring political points. But their actions didn’t take place in a vacuum, and they reflect what’s increasingly happening in Sacramento.
Democratic state leaders point with rightful outrage at the creeping authoritarianism in Washington, but they seem to be as jealous as they are offended. So instead of prioritizing the fortification of our Constitution, they are also taking aim at it.
There’s a little known Assembly bill, 1079, making its way toward becoming law. The bill aims to let the legislature dictate to the judiciary branch how appeals can be handled. AB 1079 doesn’t aim to stifle all appeals, just cases regarding the California Voting Rights Act.
The bill is sponsored by Assembly Member Anamarie Ávila Farías, and her purpose seems sincere. She wants to prevent injustice in the implementation of minority voters’ rights, and she has determined that subjecting those voters to our country’s lengthy legal processes is a form of injustice.
There’s nothing nefarious or necessarily unadmirable about her proposed legislation. It’s simply unconstitutional.
Our system of government is based on having three equal branches, and as Assembly Member Rebecca Bauer-Kahan stated in an Assembly committee hearing on the bill, the right to appeal “is fundamental to the justice system.” Bauer-Kahan then voted for the bill. At the same hearing, Assembly Member Rick Chavez Zbur said that “it was bad precedent to deprive people of the right to seek appeal.” He also voted for the bill.
Though Chavez Zbur initially opposed the bill, once he succeeded in getting a carve-out for Santa Monica and its current litigation, he pledged his support. “Given that the bill was likely to pass, my most important objective was to protect Santa Monica’s election system,” he said in a statement.
There’s admittedly little benefit in fighting something that has unanimous party support. But why does a bill that potentially violates fundamental democratic principles have unanimous support? Because it has been identified as fighting injustice, and who wants to be on the side of injustice?
It’s not just polarization that’s pulling at the fabric of our country, but the moral certitude of each side. This is what the far right and far left have in common—they’re both convinced of their own righteousness. When you know that your goals are righteous, you don’t need to worry about democratic norms. You can even argue that the only way to protect those norms is to temporarily subvert them by passing flawed legislation or purging opponents. Both in California and in Washington.
But with Republicans marching in lockstep with the President, from the sanctification of January 6th to the militarization of our cities, the judiciary has become a crucial bulwark for democracy.
“We obviously lost the legislative branch to Trump and Trumpism,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said after the deployment of troops in Los Angeles. “We pray that the courts are still holding firm.”
So it’s astounding that Democrats would do anything at this moment to jeopardize our judicial system. The cognitive dissonance is deafening.
Fortunately, there are some elected officials willing to challenge the consensus. Sen. Ben Allen voted for AB 1079 in committee, but it was a procedural vote and he remains conflicted about it.
“The appellate system can be frustrating to people,” he said, explaining some of the motivation for the fervor on the topic in his caucus. In a statement, he emphasized that the state’s voting rights laws are “important parts of our current system, and it’s fair to want them to be enforced.”
However, he made it clear that as a lawyer and legislator he wasn’t comfortable voting for a law like 1079 that could shortcircuit the judicial process. In a lengthy conversation, he grappled with the complexities and contradictions that groupthink precludes. I’m not quoting what he said, because he wasn’t speaking in sound bites but as a public servant wrestling with the messiness of democracy and the desire to do more good than harm.
As a journalist, I like a pithy quote. As a citizen, I’d like our elected leaders to do more wrestling and less crusading.
Devan Sipher can be reached at Unmuted.SMDP@gmail.com