Preliminary opposition requested in split-California initiative challenge. What further action might the court take?

A writ petition was filed two days ago seeking to dump from the November ballot the qualified initiative that aims to split California into three states.  Yesterday, the Supreme Court asked for preliminary opposition in the case, Planning and Conservation League v. Padilla.

With election deadlines looming, the case is necessarily on a fast track.  The requested preliminary oppositions — from the initiative sponsor and from the state Attorney General — are due Friday.  The petitioner can file a reply on Monday.

There seem to be at least three action options for the court.  It could summarily deny the writ petition, which the court recently did with a challenge to another initiative, and perhaps revisit the petition’s arguments if the initiative passes.  It could decide the case on the merits very quickly to meet the election deadlines, which would probably require a specially set oral argument this summer.  Or, it could agree to decide the case on the merits at a more leisurely pace by taking the initiative off this year’s ballot while leaving open the possibility of having the initiative appear on the 2020 ballot if the court rejects the challenge.

The latter option was the route the court took four years ago on a writ petition to remove from the ballot a proposition encouraging enactment of a federal constitutional amendment to overturn the United States Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) 558 U.S. 310.  The court eventually green-lighted the ballot measure for the 2016 election.

There’s a difference between that measure and the split-California initiative, however.  The anti-Citizens United proposition was placed on the ballot by the Legislature while the split-California initiative qualified for the ballot with hundreds of thousands of citizen petition signatures.  It’s unclear whether the court can — or would be willing to — temporarily strike a citizens’ initiative, especially if it meant requiring the initiative to re-qualify by starting over with signature gathering.  With the anti-Citizens United measure, although approving the proposition, the court said the Legislature would have to pass new legislation to get the measure on the later ballot.  The Legislature did that.  But it’s much more cumbersome to get a proposition on the ballot by petition signatures than by legislation.