California bill holding fast food companies liable for worker safety is down but not out
BILL HOLDING FAST FOOD ACCOUNTABLE SLOWS DOWN
Via Mathew Miranda...
Is the latest bill aimed at improving conditions in the fast food industry dead for this year? Not quite.
AB 1228 was pulled from the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday morning, but supporters are holding out hope for a future hearing. In most cases, the legislation would have to wait until next year as it will miss the July 14 deadline to pass out of a policy committee.
But the committee chair, Senator Tom Umberg, D-Santa Ana, said he would push for a waiver to hold a special hearing in August or September. The Senate Rules Committee grants these waivers.
The request to reschedule came from the bill’s supporters, giving them more time to workshop the controversial legislation.
“In the meantime - my expectation is that both sides of the issue must get to the table, stop posturing and negotiate a global agreement,” Umberg said.
AB 1228, authored by Assemblyman Chris Holden, D-Pasadena, would make fast food corporations liable for any health and safety violations of their California franchisees.
Holden said Tuesday he views the rescheduling as “positive.”
“I respect the space that is being provided for deeper vetting and look to serve as a resource for clarity,” he said, in a statement.
Advocates argue that the current franchise model protects companies from legal and financial liability and leaves independent owners to fend for themselves. Those in opposition contend the bill would decrease the number of franchisees.
“AB 1228 is a terrible bill that would undermine the rights of small restaurant owners,” said a statewide coalition of restaurant owners, in response to the postponement.
EMOTIONAL PLEAS AS SEX TRAFFICKING BILL DIES IN COMMITTEE
A bill that would make sex trafficking of minors a “serious felony,” adding it to the list of crimes that can earn an offender a strike under the Three Strikes law, failed to pass the Assembly Committee on Public Safety Tuesday. The bill, SB 14, which has bi-partisan sponsorship, cleared the Senate with unanimous support in May.
The six Democratic abstainers objected to the bill’s linkage to the Three Strikes law. A person who commits three serious crimes as defined under the statute receives a sentence of 25 years to life. Crimes including homicide, rape, kidnapping and robbery currently earn offenders a strike.
Over half of inmates sentenced under the three strikes law, however, are serving life sentences for nonviolent crimes, a statistic opponents of the measure point to.
“I want to want to be able to make sure it’s right before it leaves here,” said Chair Reggie Jones-Sawyer, D-Los Angeles. “We’ll be able to make sure that the Three Strikes law doesn’t become a problem in the community that I represent and a lot of members on this committee represent.”
Trafficking victims who had testified at the hearing sobbed after the bill vote.
A MOVE TO STOP JUDGE SHOPPING
Via Gillian Brassil...
California Sens. Alex Padilla and Dianne Feinstein are among Senate Democrats who want to stop judge shopping, the practice of plaintiffs steering cases toward judges that seem most likely to be sympathetic to their causes.
In a letter to Judge Robin L. Rosenberg, chair of the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules, 19 senators wrote that some federal district courts essentially allow plaintiffs to pick who presides over their case because only one or two judges cover a geographic area. Judges are assigned at random in most judicial districts.
“It is a complete perversion of the intent of the judiciary to leave open this glaring loophole that allows plaintiffs to effectively choose their judges,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said.
The letter cites the Northern District of Texas, where civil cases are assigned to the same judge or judges based on the courthouse a plaintiff files in. There are 16 judges but it is a vast jurisdiction — covering 96,000 square miles and eight million people. Plaintiffs can choose which of the district’s courthouses in which they file their case, allowing them to effectively select a judge.
“The State of Texas itself has sued the Biden Administration at least 31 times in Texas federal district courts, but it has not filed even one of those cases in Austin, where the Texas Attorney General’s office is located,” the senators wrote. “Instead, Texas has always sued in divisions where case-assignment procedures ensure that a particular preferred judge or one of a handful of preferred judges will hear the case.”
The senators pointed to U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, the only judge who hears cases filed in Amarillo, Texas. In April, he ruled to suspend the decades-old FDA approval of abortion drug mifepristone, in response to a lawsuit brought by a conservative Christian legal advocacy group. Later that month, the Supreme Court blocked the order to restrict sales of mifepristone while the case continues in a federal appeals court.
Padilla and Feinstein, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, both condemned Kacsmaryk’s mifepristone ruling.
“This is another far-right attack on reproductive rights—and Democrats will continue to stand up against them,” Padilla wrote at the time.
Appointed by former President Donald Trump, Kacsmaryk was previously an attorney for a conservative religious liberty group. Since joining the bench in 2019, he has ruled against the Biden administration many times on issues related to LGBTQ rights and immigration.
In the senators’ letter to the committee, which is charged with recommending changes to federal judicial procedures, they wrote there may be “good-faith reasons” for districts to assign judges to certain divisions, such as reducing travel time. But, they wrote, “any logistical inconveniences must be balanced against unfairness in judicial process.”
Congress does not regulate how district courts assign cases. In the wake of the abortion-drug ruling, several congressional Democrats proposed legislation to curb judge shopping.
“Without reforms, these activist judges will continue to impose their will on the country and offer flawed and chaotic rulings on abortion access, LGBTQ+ protections, legal immigration, and climate legislation,” Schumer said.
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This story was originally published July 12, 2023 at 4:55 AM.