SAN DIEGO (Legal Newsline) - Citing California Governor Gavin Newsom’s harsh criticism of a similar law in Texas aimed at pro-choice advocates, a federal judge struck down a California law designed to make it too costly for gun-rights activists to challenge firearms regulations.
The California law would hold anybody who sued to block state or local gun ordinances liable for the government’s legal costs, in what is known as a fee-shifting provision, unless they won an outright court victory in the case. The law also stripped plaintiffs of any right to obtain costs from the government if they won.
“A state law that threatens its citizens for questioning the legitimacy of its firearms regulations may be familiar to autocratic and tyrannical governments, but not American government,” wrote U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez in a Dec. 19 decision striking down the statute. “American law counsels vigilance and suspiciousness of laws that thwart judicial scrutiny.”
The California law was modeled on a similar Texas statute intended to discourage plaintiffs from challenging that state’s anti-abortion law. Gov. Newsome called the Texas law “an abomination,” “outrageous and objectionable” and said “there is no doubt it raises serious constitutional questions.” Yet his office defended the California statute after Attorney General Rob Bonta refused.
Judge Benitez struck it down on constitutional grounds, ruling the fee-shifting provision violated the First Amendment right to petition the government and had no purpose other than to discourage plaintiffs and their lawyers from suing to enforce their Second Amendment rights. The law imposed joint and several liability on lawyers to cover the government’s legal costs if they lost in court or dismissed their cases. The AG’s office said it paid expert witnesses in other Second Amendment cases as much as $1,050 an hour, all of which it could collect from unsuccessful plaintiffs if they challenge firearms restrictions.
The California law actually went further than the Texas law Gov. Newsom criticized, the judge wrote, by making it impossible for plaintiffs to ever recover their legal costs from the government. That also violated the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, since it would “nullify” a federal fee-shifting statute designed to encourage plaintiffs to mount civil-rights challenges against unconstitutional laws.
“Without meaningful access to the courts to peacefully resolve questions about the validity of state laws, frustrated citizens are left to civil disobedience or self-help, neither of which bodes well,” the judge wrote. “A state statute clothed with such power has no clothes at all."