On Thursday morning, the Supreme Court will file its opinions in Legislature v. Weber and Himes v. Somatics, LLC. (Briefs here and here; oral argument videos here and here.) Usually, notice of Thursday opinion filings are given on Wednesdays, but the court is closed tomorrow for the Juneteenth holiday, so we’re getting notice a day early.
The Legislature opinion is one you’ll hear about in many more places than just this blog. The much-watched case — an original writ petition seeking to prevent November’s ballot from including an initiative that would make it more difficult to enact new taxes — raises the issues: (1) Does the proposed Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act constitute an impermissible attempted revision of the California Constitution by voter initiative? (2) Is this initiative measure subject to invalidation on the ground that, if adopted, it would impair essential government functions? The court issued an order to show cause on the petition in November 2023. More about the case here, here, here, and here.
In Himes, the court in June 2022 agreed to answer these questions posed by the Ninth Circuit: “Under California law, in a claim against a manufacturer of a medical product for a failure to warn of a risk, is the plaintiff required to show that a stronger risk warning would have altered the physician’s decision to prescribe the product? Or may the plaintiff establish causation by showing that the physician would have communicated the stronger risk warnings to the plaintiff, either in their patient consent disclosures or otherwise, and a prudent person in the patient’s position would have declined the treatment after receiving the stronger risk warning?” More about the case here and here.
Himes will be the fourth of six opinions for cases argued in April. The opinions in the other two cases are expected by July 1. The Legislature opinion will be the first for the nine cases on the early-May calendar. Opinions in the other eight are expected by August 5. The Legislature case is being decided more quickly than normal. (See here.) Additional argued but undecided cases are the nine on the late-May calendar (opinions expected by August 19, except for the opinion in Castellanos v. State of California, which, because of post-argument briefing, isn’t expected until August 29), and the seven on the June calendar (opinions expected by August 29).
The Legislature and Himes opinions can be viewed Thursday starting at 10:00 a.m.