California’s largest law enforcement union, PORAC, has launched a campaign urging voters to oust Supreme Court Justice Kelli Evans ahead of a retention election. The union argues that Evans is reopening criminal cases that should remain closed. The campaign echoes the 1986 retention election when voters removed three California Supreme Court justices over their death penalty rulings.
Evans, appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2022, is running for a 12-year term in a retention election. PORAC leaders acknowledge the campaign is unlikely to sway enough voters to reject Evans. Instead, the union aims to signal its attention to how judges interpret recent laws that expand parole and release opportunities for incarcerated individuals.
“This is a warning shot that, hey, we’re paying attention,” said Ben Therriault, the union’s vice president. Evans declined to comment on the PORAC ads.
Legal scholars view the campaign as a threat to judicial independence. “To me it sets a dangerous precedent and it is not something that I would hope to see expanding,” said Mary-Beth Moylan, an associate dean at the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law.
Unlike federal judges, California judges do not receive lifetime appointments. Appointees to the Supreme Court and appeals courts are vetted by the state bar and statewide officials, including the attorney general, before taking office. The state constitution requires them to stand for retention elections, although they generally do not participate in political campaigns.
Many voters typically skip judicial questions on their ballots because they are not familiar with the judges. “I suppose the idea is to root out any malfeasance or bad actions in office, but I think the fact that we have judges on the ballot is confusing to a lot of people,” Moylan said.
The 1986 election when voters rejected Brown’s Supreme Court appointees was a different story. The court under then-Chief Justice Rose Bird had angered the state’s business community with rulings against employers, leading businesses to bankroll a campaign against Bird and Justices Cruz Reynoso and Joseph Grodin. Republican Gov. George Deukmejian campaigned against the justices, too, characterizing them as showing a “lack of impartiality and objectivity” in death, according to CalMatters’ contributing columnist Jim Newton’s biography of Gov. Brown.
PORAC does not have anything close to that kind of political firepower in its digital messaging against Evans. “Thankfully (the PORAC campaign) hasn’t gotten traction and it certainly hasn’t gotten attention. There’s no reason to believe it’s going to have any effect,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of Berkeley Law.
The website PORAC created for its campaign against Evans draws on data originally compiled by the At the Lectern blog, which follows the California Supreme Court. The blog last year reported that Evans and Justice Goodwin Liu dissented dozens of times when their colleagues declined to review criminal cases. “Justice Evans puts criminals ahead of victims and their families,” the PORAC website reads.
Evans joined the Supreme Court after serving as a judge in the Alameda County Superior Court and earlier as chief deputy legal affairs secretary to Gov. Newsom. She has worked as a special assistant
