Appeals Court to hear challenge to Gov. Newsom’s orders April 20

(The Center Square) – The Third District Court of Appeals in Sacramento will hear a case on April 20 brought against California Gov. Gavin Newsom by two state legislators.

Newsom is appealing a Superior Court ruling where a judge said that he abused his emergency powers. The judge ordered the governor to stop issuing additional executive orders. Newsom ignored the ruling and continued to issue executive orders.

“In November, we defeated Newsom at trial, handing him his first loss in court,” state Assemblyman Kevin Kiley, one of the two legislators who sued the governor, said. “The Superior Court ruled that his one-man rule violated the Constitution and restrained him from further unconstitutional orders.”

State Assemblyman James Gallagher and Kiley, the two northern California Republicans who won one of the first court victories against Newsom, filed a 13,986-word brief in their appeal to the court in early December.

In it, they argued, “This case concerns a limited point of law: whether the California Constitution countenances a dictatorship. Gavin Newsom is no Caesar, but his legal theory in this case and ruling philosophy this year are that of dictator legibus faciendis. The Executive can make laws at will, and the participation of the Legislature is at his discretion.

“Given the modern multiplication of ‘emergencies’ and their cascading effects across the landscape of California life, a mandate for executive lawmaking would confer unbridled control over the economic and social character of the state. It would be a reversion to the Roman model, destroying the separation of powers as we know it.”

Newsom’s lawyers argue the Superior Court’s ruling “called into question vast swaths of the state’s emergency response” and threatened to invalidate “dozens of other executive actions.”

They asked the Court of Appeals to reverse the Superior Court’s decision, which it rejected. Instead, the court established a rapid briefing schedule and ultimately will make the first precedent-setting decision in California history on the limits of a governor’s emergency powers.

“With everything that’s happened over the last few months, the wait has been frustrating to say the least,” Kiley said. Another California court has acknowledged the case could set precedent for ending Newsom’s ongoing color coded/tiered lockdown.

Newsom recently declared that California was “not going back to normal,” stating the lockdown was an “opportunity to reshape the way we do business and how we govern.”

A recall campaign against the governor ensued.

Last week, the campaign announced it had reached 2,117,730 signatures, well above the 1.47 million signatures needed by law to prompt a recall vote. Newsom then launched an anti-recall campaign in a national media blitz, calling on the support of former Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders, I-VT, Elizabeth Warren, D-CT, and Cory Booker, D-NJ, to back him.

As part of the ant-recall national television blitz, Newsom made several claims that were later refuted by Kiley, the California Policy Center and others.

Newsom claimed, “I’ve been living through Zoom school,” even though his children have been attending a private school in-person while the majority of children in California remain in remote instruction. California ranks 50th for having students back in school.

As of Feb. 23, 74 percent of elementary students are still attending classes online only, with 7 percent of elementary students fully in-person. In Los Angeles, schools are planning on reopening for hybrid instruction, and LAUSD schools may not go back to in-person instruction until late April.

Newsom claims that “47 out of our 58 counties have reopened,” but only four are in the orange tier and only one is in yellow, critics note, meaning the rest are at least partially closed. California has the second-highest unemployment rate in the country.

Newsom claimed in his recent state of the state address that California has “lower death rates than the vast majority of states … much lower than Florida,” but its excess mortality rate is 7th-highest in the U.S. Its COVID-related mortality rates exceed Florida’s in direct age group comparisons. The California Policy Center says, “It’s misleading to say we are ‘one of the lowest in the nation.”

Newsom refers to the recall as the “Republican Recall” driven by “right-wing militia groups,” even though Democratic billionaires have donated money to the campaign and to potential opponents, and hundreds of thousands of Democrats, Independents and people who have never voted before registered to vote to sign the petition, according to recall organizers.

“With his lies and smears, Gavin Newsom is trying to divide us in order to stay in power,” Kiley said in an email to supporters. “That’s one more reason he needs to be removed. By breaking free of America’s most divisive governor, we can come together again as a state.”

The case before the Appeals Court, Kiley argues, will “lay to rest Newsom’s autocratic designs once and for all, along with those of any future governor who would exploit ‘emergency powers’ to shred our Constitution and destroy our way of life.”

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