California Secretary of State sued after $18 minimum wage fails to make November ballot
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber announced last month that a measure to increase the state’s minimum wage to $18 an hour failed to qualify for the November 2022 ballot. Now, advocates of the proposal are suing her.
Entrepreneur Joseph Sanberg and Orange County Democratic Party Chair Ada Briceno argued in a Thursday filing in Sacramento Superior Court that they received over one million signatures, more than enough to secure a spot on the ballot. California law requires proponents to submit signatures well in advance so that county election officials can verify a random sample by June 30. The $18 an hour proposition missed this mark, instead qualifying for the 2024 ballot earlier this week.
But Sanberg and Briceno allege that COVID-19 conditions impeded their ability to quickly gather signatures. They also blame Weber for failing to communicate to counties, which are tasked with certifying signatures, that the initiative was meant for the 2022 — not the 2024 ballot.
Because petitioners were late presenting their signatures, it wasn’t until May 31 that Weber told county election officials to verify them. At the time, Weber gave officials 30 working days, or until July 13, to complete verification.
That would’ve been fine if the petitioners were trying to put the measure before voters in 2024. Weber neglected to mention, Sanberg and Briceno say, that they were trying for placement on the 2022 ballot, and so their real deadline was June 30.
“The Secretary of State’s erroneous notification to the counties had the effect of confusing several county elections officials into thinking that they had until July 13, 2022 to conduct and report their signature verification findings to allow the Initiative to be certified for the November 8, 2022 General Election ballot, instead of June 30,” the filing reads.
As of now, the minimum wage in California is $15 an hour for employers with over 26 employees, and $14 for smaller employers. Record inflation levels recently triggered a legal increase in the minimum wage to $15.50, which will take effect in January.
“California voters have been clear: people working full time should be able to afford life’s basic needs,” Sanberg said in a statement in May. “Californians simply cannot afford to support a family on the current minimum wage – which amounts to just $31,200 a year for someone working full-time. Raising the minimum wage in the Golden State is a moral imperative.”
Weber cleared initiative proponents to start circulating petitions in February. Business groups like the National Federation of Independent Business opposed the measure, claiming that markets, not laws, should dictate wages.
Sanberg and Briceno claim that while they were able to collect over a million signatures, the pandemic slowed them down.
“In the absence of the COVID-19 crisis, Sanberg and his supporters could have easily collected enough signatures to qualify the measure before May 17, 2022,” the filing reads.
“However, difficulties with hiring and retaining petition circulators, the reluctance of voters to interact with petition circulators, and other difficult conditions made it challenging to collect signatures in public places and the ability to collect signatures was dramatically impeded.”
Seven measures qualified for the November 2022 ballot last month, including competing sports betting initiatives and a proposition to enshrine abortion rights in the California constitution.
This story was originally published July 15, 2022 at 12:05 PM.