“So sue me.”
That seems to be the new motto of government in California. Although we have a state constitution, state and city charters and the U.S. Constitution, all specifying limits on the government’s use of power, in California, that and seven dollars will buy you a cup of coffee.
Sometimes the method is the plain usurpation of power, as when the legislature and governor preeningly enact a law that a court will certainly strike down. Senate Bill 826 in 2018, which mandated women on corporate boards, was ruled unconstitutional by a state judge in 2022 because a gender-based quota system violates the Equal Protection Clause of the state constitution. Of course it does. The government shouldn’t enact obviously unconstitutional laws that force citizens to pay lawyers for four years to keep their rights.
Another method of stealing rights is the abuse of emergency powers.
In 2021, the Los Angeles Unified School District cited the COVID-19 emergency to set an October 15 deadline for all district employees to be “fully vaccinated” against COVID-19 as a condition of employment. A lawsuit followed. LAUSD was sued by the Health Freedom Defense Fund, California Educators for Medical Freedom and individual LAUSD employees. They argued that their right to liberty under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution includes, among other things, bodily integrity and the right to reject medical treatment.
The plaintiffs lost in the U.S. District Court in September 2022, won in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal in June 2024, lost in a rehearing of the case by an en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit in July 2025, and now are likely to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which will take another year or more.
How draining is it to fight for your constitutional rights year after year? The California Educators for Medical Freedom group is holding an event for supporters this Saturday, October 18, at 6:00 p.m. at Pineapple Hill Saloon and Grill in Sherman Oaks. You can ask them.
Also in Los Angeles, the County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 on Tuesday to approve a “Proclamation of a Local Emergency for Federal Immigration Actions.” Only Kathryn Barger voted against it. She noted that a substantial portion of the meeting’s public comment was devoted to the topic of a countywide eviction moratorium, which was not before the board on Tuesday. Only the emergency proclamation was before the board.
Why were members of the public speaking so fiercely about an eviction moratorium? Because the only reason the county is declaring an emergency is to provide a legal path for the government to suspend the rights of the owners of rental properties.
Last September, Supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Hilda Solis introduced a motion titled, “Exploring Options for an Eviction Moratorium.” It cited “numerous stakeholders” who “provided feedback” about the need for a motion to “implement an emergency rent relief program” and for “rent assistance to be paired with an eviction moratorium.”
The reason given: “increased federal immigration enforcement actions” that “have kidnapped thousands of people, disrupted workplaces, schools and neighborhoods, and spread fear in communities throughout the region.”
This would be the third eviction moratorium in L.A. County, following similar decrees in response to COVID and the January wildfires.
But the plan hit a bump last week when county counsel told Horvath and Solis that immigration enforcement doesn’t give them the power to revoke the right of property owners to lawfully evict non-paying tenants.
That is, unless there’s an emergency.
So on Tuesday, the county declared one.
It’s not clear how a tenant’s claim of being affected by federal immigration enforcement will be verified. Possibly non-paying tenants will simply self-certify. State law prohibits landlords from asking about immigration status of a “tenant, prospective tenant, occupant, or prospective occupant of residential rental property.”
The emergency will last as long as the supervisors choose to continue it.
L.A. apartment owners sued the city in 2021 over the COVID eviction moratorium. The litigation lasted for years and ultimately they lost.
If the government can use emergency powers to take your rights, there must be stronger controls on what can legally be “an emergency,” and for how long.
Because this is tyranny.
Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on X @Susan_Shelley