Justice Carol Corrigan wrote the decision, joined by Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, Justice Kathryn Werdegar and the three judges Brown has appointed in the last five years: Goodwin Liu, Mariano-Florentino Cuellar and Leondra Kruger.

The decision held that changes Brown sought met the Election Code requirement, adopted in 2014, that they be “reasonably germane to the theme, purpose, or subject of the initiative measure as originally proposed.” Even though public comments had been taken on the original version of the measure and could not be sought again before the measure goes on the November ballot, Corrigan found that Brown had acted in good faith and in a manner that didn’t undercut direct democracy.

Ruling allows ballot measures to be ‘hijacked’

But in a sharply worded dissent, Justice Ming Chin questioned whether this would have the effect of turning already-conceived ballot measures that had crossed initial obstacles into much different proposals not subject to public comment — making public review of proposed measures effectively “meaningless.”

The legislative history of the 2014 change to the Election Code shows it was intended to allow for poorly crafted measures to be fixed before being presented to voters, Chin noted. Instead of following that goal, Chin wrote, the majority decision sets “a precedent establishing whether that section [of the 2014 law] can function as a true reform to achieve its intended purpose, or if it is an empty shell — just another rule that can easily be evaded with a little imagination. …

“Under today’s ruling, future initiative proponents can evade the period of public review in the same way the proponents have done here. They merely need to hijack a vaguely similar measure that was in the process of qualifying.”

This parallels the critiques that have been made for decades of the California Legislature’s much-criticized “gut and amend” maneuver in which legislative leaders rewrite bills at the last second and try to adopt them with little review as legislative sessions wrap up each September.

“Dramatically changing the sentencing laws — by permitting early parole for some offenders, contrary to the detailed sentencing scheme currently in effect — is not reasonably germane to changing the treatment of juvenile and youthful offenders in the criminal justice system,” Chin wrote.

DAs: Revisions wipe out two laws approved by state voters

A similar argument was offered in February by Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Shelleyanne Chang when she upheld the California District Attorneys Association’s challenge to Brown’s revisions.

The CDAA depicted Brown’s revisions as anything but minor.

“This initiative effectively repeals Proposition 8, the California’s Victims Bill of Rights law that the voters passed in 1982. It also effectively repeals Marsy’s Law passed by the voters in 2008. The crime victims of this state and the people who voted to protect their rights deserve their due process, at the very least, the statutorily allowed public comment period to express how this would affect them and their families,” said Anne Marie Schubert, Sacramento County district attorney and the official petitioner in the case.

Chin, appointed to the state’s high court in 1996 by Gov. Pete Wilson, is considered a moderate conservative.

He won national attention in December for another dissent. Chin argued that the majority court decision putting up new California Environmental Quality Act obstacles to the massive Newhall Ranch project in north Los Angeles County amounted to a “recipe for paralysis.” He said the decision’s interpretation of CEQA required developers to repeatedly demonstrate they had met mitigation goals, instead of accepting previous clearances as binding and valid.

Recall, anyone? Not of Gov. Jerry Brown — yet.

But of the five California Supreme Court “justices” who voted to revoke your Fourth Amendment right “against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

Absurdly, the court ruled that, if cops arrest you, they can search not only your person, but everything on your cell phone. The Chronicle reports:

The majority, led by Justice Ming Chin, relied on decisions in the 1970s by the nation’s high court upholding searches of cigarette packages and clothing that officers seized during an arrest and examined later without seeking a warrant from a judge.

These “justices” live in California, the world’s high-tech capital, and they don’t know the difference between a pack of cigarettes and a cell phone with more computer power (literally) than was on board the Apollo 11 space capsule that landed men on the moon in 1969.

The dissent:

Monday’s decision allows police “to rummage at leisure through the wealth of personal and business information that can be carried on a mobile phone or handheld computer merely because the device was taken from an arrestee’s person,” said Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar, joined in dissent by Justice Carlos Moreno.

So, you’re pulled over for a DUI and taken to the cop shop. A blood test shows you were below the blood-alcohol limit. So they let you go.

But in the meantime, they downloaded info from your cell phone, including sensitive business information. As Wikileaks has shown, it’s difficult to protect information nowadays. And cop property rooms commonly lose confiscated drugs. It’s a lot easier to steal info by loading it onto a thumb drive. So your sensitive info ends up sold on the black market to a business competitor.

Your competitor uses your info to drive you from business. Your company goes broke, unemploying your 1,000 employees. You’re personally bankrupt and go on welfare.

Welcome to the California Supreme Court’s Tyranny 2011.

Jan. 4, 2011