In “Billionaire gives up campaign to split California into three states,” Bob Egelko reports in the San Francisco Chronicle that the proponent of the initiative seeking to split California into three states has submitted a letter to the Supreme Court saying he will not further oppose the legal challenge to the initiative’s validity.
The court removed the initiative from this November’s ballot, but said it would rule later on the merits of the challenge, meaning the initiative could have been put to a vote at a later election if the court rejected the challenge. That’s what happened with a different ballot measure several years back. The split-California initiative’s proponent, however, now says he only wanted a vote this year.
The I-give-up letter — which does not yet appear on the court’s online docket for the writ proceeding, Planning and Conservation League v. Padilla — confirms what the proponent told Bloomberg last month.
The proponent’s surrender could lead to a dismissal as moot of the writ petition challenging the initiative. Before dismissing the challenge, however, the court will probably also want to hear from the California Secretary of State, who is the respondent in the writ petition. The Secretary earlier took no position on the merits of the challenge, but might want to advocate on behalf of the nearly half-million California voters who signed the petition to qualify the initiative for the ballot now that the proponent won’t be.