| | | | |  | | By Will McCarthy and Emily Schultheis | | Presented by |  | | | |  The California Supreme Court's ruling on the Taxpayer Protection Act could have ripple effects on future ballot measures. | Jeff Chiu/AP | TAKE IT TO COURT — The California Supreme Court may have just invited upcoming ballot-measure combatants to put aside television and direct-mail budgets and invest even more in lawyers. A decision last week to remove the Taxpayer Protection Act from the November ballot represents just the second time in a quarter-century that the court has quashed a measure before seeing if it won voter approval. Constitutional lawyers say the ruling’s enduring legacy will likely be a flood of lawsuits aimed at determining whether the court has set a new standard for culling measures, or simply redefined a longstanding line in the sand. “That’s too soon to tell,” said Kurt Oneto, a lawyer specializing in statewide ballot measures. “But if you are opposed to a measure and you can beat it in court, it’s a heck of a lot easier than beating it at the ballot box.” For decades, California courts have been reluctant to cut off democratic debate — but they have made exceptions for extreme circumstances. In 2015, a Sacramento County judge ruled that an initiative calling for LGBTQ+ people to be shot was so patently unconstitutional it didn’t merit a title and summary. In 2018, the Supreme Court removed a measure that would split California up into three states, on the basis that it represented a “constitutional revision.” The governor’s office and Legislature deployed similar logic in suing to block the Taxpayer Protection Act, which would have imposed new hurdles for state and local tax increases. Some of the progressive groups that backed the suit did so ambivalently, fearing a wide-ranging precedent that could empower future opponents. “It was sort of an unusual posture,” said Greg Bonnet, an attorney whose firm often represents organized labor and tenants’ rights groups and drafted a brief in the Taxpayer Protection case. “We run ballot measures, and we were asking the court to keep something from going to the ballot when we use that very process.” The court’s unanimous opinion did not announce any new rule for pre-election review. And it may have only represented an acknowledgment that there are still situations in which the court will take a decision away from voters. “I don’t read this as one of the decisions where it's like ‘oh my gosh, they changed the standard for what it means to be a revision and suddenly it's going to be open season,” said Loyola Law School Professor Jessica Levinson. Oneto said the lack of a new stand for pre-election review won’t stop campaigns from trying to see if they can pry the window open further. A lawsuit, although expensive, will typically cost only six figures, while ballot campaigns cost many times that. “It will probably take a couple of times of the court shooting these challenges down before people lose interest,” Oneto said. “But if this happens again in the next few years, that would be big. Once is a coincidence, twice is a pattern.” NEWS BREAK — Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao after FBI raid: “I am innocent” … President Joe Biden condemns violence outside LA synagogue … Hundreds of positions are expected to be cut from San Francisco schools. Welcome to Ballot Measure Weekly, a special edition of Playbook PM every Monday focused on California’s lively realm of ballot measure campaigns. Drop us a line at eschultheis@politico.com and wmccarthy@politico.com, or find us on X — @emilyrs and @wrmccart.
| | | | A message from Safer Roads for All: A cleaner, safer, and more accessible future starts with autonomous vehicles (AVs). Thousands of Californians already use autonomous vehicle technology for safe and reliable daily transportation, and studies show that AVs can be even safer compared to human drivers. | | | |  | TOP OF THE TICKET | | A highly subjective ranking of the ballot measures getting our attention this week. 1. PROP 47 OVERHAUL: Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic legislators have all but abandoned the prospect of negotiating the tough-on-crime initiative off the ballot by Thursday’s deadline, instead discussing the possibility of putting forward a competing initiative on the ballot themselves. Either way, crime and retail theft will be a driving issue in the lead-up to November. 2. PERSONAL FINANCE: Negotiations around a new high-school graduation requirement are coming down to the wire. But proponents of the initiative say they "continue to be optimistic," and Assemblymember Kevin McCarty’s bill, which appears to be the best vehicle for a deal, has been sent to the Senate Committee on Appropriations ahead of Thursday’s deadline to pull qualified items from the ballot. 3. RENT CONTROL: The AIDS Healthcare Foundation is launching a new digital ad campaign that picks up on a theme typically popular among conservatives: the population exodus from high-cost California. The $600,000 buy, which will run for eight weeks on Facebook and Instagram, makes the case for rent control as a solution, in line with the group’s ballot initiative. 4. ACA 1: The California Association of Realtors agreed to take a neutral position in exchange for some tweaks to the constitutional amendment that are slated to pass the Legislature today. The realtors had been expected to be among the biggest foes of the proposal to lower the voter threshold for local public housing bonds. 5. OIL WELLS: Environmental opponents of a referendum to overturn restrictions on oil wells announced a new $1 million ad campaign last week in a last-ditch show of strength aimed at getting the oil industry to pull its measure. The ad, featuring Jane Fonda and other women involved in the campaign, will run until the ballot deadline. 6. CHILDREN’S HEALTH CARE EXPANSION: Just days after officially qualifying their initiative for the ballot, children’s hospitals could be close to a deal with the Legislature to pull it in exchange for passing trailer bill SB 159, which would provide more state money to such facilities. 7. TAXPAYER PROTECTION ACT: The California Business Roundtable built a formidable coalition to pass an anti-tax constitutional amendment. Now that it’s been booted from the ballot, leader Rob Lapsley says the group will redirect its energies toward other measures — meaning the Roundtable will still be a player on a pair of tax-related constitutional amendments still headed to the ballot.
| | | | A message from Safer Roads for All:   | | | | | DOWN BALLOT | | ON OTHER BALLOTS — An anti-abortion group in South Dakota has sued to block a qualified measure enshrining the right to a first-trimester abortion in the state’s constitution, alleging various types of wrongdoing in the proponents’ signature-gathering process … Volunteers for an abortion rights ballot measure in Arkansas have faced harassment and threats after a conservative group leaked a list of their names online … A similar abortion rights constitutional amendment in Montana looks likely to move forward after supporters submitted nearly twice the necessary signatures … The “Oregon Rebate” movement, a measure that would raise corporate taxes to provide all state residents with a $750 tax rebate, has submitted signatures to appear on the ballot this November … A law to increase renewable energy production in Switzerland will take effect next year after voters backed the legislation in a referendum earlier this month.
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| … SANTA ANA — Opponents of a measure to let noncitizens vote are seizing on seven words that they say are biased enough to skew the November vote in Orange County’s second-largest city. The Santa Ana City Council last fall referred to the ballot a question asking whether the city charter should be amended to allow noncitizen residents of the city, “including those who are taxpayers and parents,” to vote in all municipal elections. Noncitizen voting for presidential and congressional offices is already illegal, but federal law says nothing about local elections. Various efforts to give noncitizens the right to vote in local-level contests — including in San Francisco in 2016 and Oakland in 2022 — have put increased focus on the issue, leading Republicans on both the state and national level to seek to curtail the process. In Santa Ana, where noncitizens make up nearly a quarter of the population, conservative organizations including the California Public Policy Foundation challenged the ballot wording in court, saying it would unfairly influence voters in favor of the proposal. James Lacy, an attorney and activist involved in the suit, told Playbook he’s not opposed to the issue appearing on the ballot in general, even though he is personally against the idea of letting noncitizens vote. “What they’re doing, without a question, is sugarcoating the ballot in favor of a vote for it by making a statement that is positive,” he said. “That is advocacy — you can't do that and have a fair election.” A county judge ruled in favor of Lacy and other opponents earlier this month, ordering the city to update the language to make it more neutral. The council stood firm last week, voting to stick with the controversial phrasing. “The language I find to be unbiased: It is simply describing who noncitizens are,” city council member Johnathan Hernandez said during a council meeting last week. “Noncitizens pay over $145 million in taxes in Orange County today.” | | | BLAST FROM THE PAST | | | This November, Californians will vote on a measure that would banish the dormant language of Proposition 8, the 2008 constitutional amendment blocking same-sex marriage in California. In the past, the number has been used for measures to: Allow elected officials to be recalled (1911, passed) ... Uphold a law regulating the amount of cocaine doctors could prescribe (1920, passed) ... Give attorneys general the power to write the title and summary of ballot measures (1932, passed) ... And reduce kindergarten class sizes (1998, failed).
| | | | A message from Safer Roads for All: All AVs are required to adhere to strict safety requirements and reporting issued by federal and state regulators focused on road and passenger safety. The data to date indicates that AVs make roads safer by avoiding injury-causing and fatal crashes better than human drivers.
Californians deserve safer roads and accessible transportation – and AVs are a solution. Visit saferroadsforall.org to learn more. | | | | | THE Q&A | | WITH JANE KIM — There’s been little progressive enthusiasm for an initiative sponsored by tech investor Joe Sanberg that would raise the statewide minimum wage floor from $16 to $18 an hour. Meanwhile, other labor priorities have been disappearing from the ballot. The California Working Families Party’s state director, former San Francisco mayoral candidate Jane Kim, spoke about what all this means for the minimum-wage initiative. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. What does the death of the Taxpayer Protection Act mean for you? It freed up a ton of resources. This was a priority ballot measure on both sides and would have taken up millions and millions of dollars. Now everyone can have a new discussion on how to spend down resources, and for the left, we can focus dollars on being more offensive than defensive. Why do you think more labor organizations weren’t interested in the $18 initiative before? I have not heard any opposition to raising the minimum wage. There’s general agreement that minimum wage workers can't afford to rent an apartment in any county in California. The concerns I have heard are that: one, it's not high enough, folks would like to see a higher number. The second concern I've heard is that there were so many competing ballot measures. What goes into those calculations about how to prioritize? It's often the question of resources. So we have to really think about our limited budgets and our limited human power. How many ballot measures can we realistically campaign on? It’s the most populous state in the country, and that makes it far more expensive to run pro and opposed campaigns in California. And we saw that in 2020 with Prop 15, 16 and 22 on the ballot. Those generally rose to the top, and then you saw a measure like rent control — a huge priority for so many of our groups — not get the resources. People have to make smart choices. Do you see any way this is coming off the ballot in the next few days? There's an argument, “Oh, let's pull it and try in 2026.” But who knows what the priorities in 2026 will be? And also who knows what the business community will put forward? | | | | Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook family Playbook | Playbook PM | California Playbook | Florida Playbook | Illinois Playbook | Massachusetts Playbook | New Jersey Playbook | New York Playbook | Ottawa Playbook | Brussels Playbook | London Playbook View all our political and policy newsletters | | Follow us | | | | |
