Enacted in 2018 over the vigorous objections of Silicon Valley tech giants, California’s first-in-the-nation online privacy law took effect Jan. 1, 2020. But with the staff of state Attorney General Xavier Becerra still far short of finalizing an enforcement framework, it’s unclear what effect the California Consumer Privacy Act will have in the short term.

The law’s most important provisions appear straightforward. Californians can ask companies which collect information online what information they have on them. Companies must delete this information upon request. Websites with third-party trackers must make it easy for consumers to opt out of having their information sold by having a visible button allowing them to quickly do so on their home pages.

But echoing the warnings of the California Chamber of Commerce, there’s confusion on how much information companies can retain on their customers – as opposed to information on those who have visited websites or use phone applications. There are also questions about what constitutes the sort of data that consumers should be able to control.

Facebook, Google have different view of law’s scope

“Companies have different interpretations, and depending on which lawyer they are using, they’re going to get different advice,” privacy software executive Kabir Barday told the New York Times.

This is plain in the contrasting plans of California’s two most high-profile tech firms.

Facebook told advertisers in early December that it had no plans to change data-collection policies because it doesn’t believe that “routine data transfers” about consumers fit the definition of selling data contained in the California law, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Google, however, has put up a website that says the company welcomes the California law and will fully adhere to its intent of letting consumers control their personal data. The company is telling advertisers that consumer data can only be used for fraud detection or to measure online views of ads – and never to try to ascertain the buying habits or product searches of individuals.

Meanwhile, the Experian credit-reporting service told Becerra’s office that it strongly objected to having to provide consumers with “internally generated data” about them, arguing that such information is proprietary and isn’t akin to snooping on individuals’ online search habits and histories.

The Evite company that lets people send out personalized online invitations to parties or events has taken a different tack: using its privacy policy page to make the case to users that the information it collects is used in benign ways that benefit users and improves the services Evite offers.

The law does not apply to businesses with annual revenue of less than $25 million that do not buy or sell personal information on at least 50,000 people a year.

Becerra expects to have guidelines finished by summer

Becerra issued draft guidelines for how the law would be implemented in October. His office is now evaluating the complaints and comments it got from privacy activists, affected companies and others. The goal is to have the regulations in place by the middle of the year.

A key question going forward is how hard Becerra will come down on the 100-plus “data broker” firms in the U.S. which accumulate and sell the most personal of information yet have managed to escape much attention. An investigation posted by the Fast Company media website last March detailed how “if you use a smartphone or a credit card, it’s not difficult for a company to determine if you’ve just gone through a break-up, if you’re pregnant or trying to lose weight, whether you’re an extrovert [and] what medicine you take.” Jewelry sellers, for example, can get customized lists of which consumers have a history of buying expensive gifts on Valentine’s Day.

The firms’ ability to provide such detailed, specific information could be widely curtailed if enough consumers opt out of sharing their personal information – at least if they’re based in California or a state or nation with similar rules. But since such data mining can be done about Americans by companies based in nations with no such rules, it’s certain to continue. A likely future policy fight is over whether California companies should be banned from obtaining such personal information from firms that don’t honor online privacy laws like the Golden State’s.

After keeping quiet for more than a year about the investigation, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra confirmed last week that California is suing Facebook after a state probe found it had allegedly violated privacy laws.

In documents filed with the Superior Court in San Francisco, Becerra’s office said the probe began in June 2018 in response to the scandal involving the Cambridge Analytica political consulting firm, which had been given access to the online activities of 87 million Facebook users without their knowledge. The most prominent client of the firm, which closed last year, was the Trump presidential campaign in 2015-16.

“What initially began as an inquiry into the Cambridge Analytica scandal expanded over time to become an investigation into whether Facebook has violated California law by, among other things, deceiving users and ignoring its own policies,” the court filing noted.

The possibility that California was pursuing its own probe was detailed in an Oct. 31 story in the New York Times about Becerra’s absence from a meeting of state attorneys general in September in Washington in which they discussed a coordinated probe of Facebook and Google. Becerra continues to decline to answer if his office is investigating Google.

And the attorney general said the Facebook probe would still be unrevealed if it wasn’t for the fact that the Menlo Park-based company had stopped cooperating when given subpoenas. “If Facebook had complied with our legitimate investigative requests, we would not be making this announcement today. But we must move our investigation forward,” he said at a news conference.

The state’s complaints about Facebook not following its own policies and stonewalling investigations echoed those made by officials of the Obama and Trump administrations. These practices were cited in July when the Federal Trade Commission announced it had fined the social media giant $5 billion for privacy violations.

Probe seen as foreshadowing new state online privacy law

Becerra’s announcement was followed closely on tech websites not just because it ended the mystery about what his office was doing about Facebook when so many other states were pursuing the company. It’s also because the Golden State’s lawsuit is seen as a harbinger of how aggressively Becerra will act when the state’s landmark online privacy law – the California Consumer Privacy Act – takes effect on Jan. 1, 2020. The law was signed into law by then-Gov. Jerry Brown in summer 2018.

The state law is similar to a measure adopted by the European Union that took effect earlier in 2018. The EU law says consumers can opt out from having information collected about them. If they don’t opt out, consumers must be told upon request what information has been harvested from their online browsing.

Data companies are deeply worried that California’s standards will become the model for a future federal online privacy law and for measures adopted in other states. But many other firms are worried as well.

This summer, as CalWatchdog reported, the California Chamber of Commerce and the state chapter of the National Federation of Independent Business launched a long-shot bid to get lawmakers to change their minds and either repeal or revise the state online privacy law.

Among the business groups’ complaints: The law is written so broadly that it may prevent businesses from using basic information gathered from repeat customers; and the law is so poorly crafted that it appears to bar businesses from using vast swaths of anonymized data showing online trends from a macro level. Such information is considered a crucial marketing tool.

Lawmakers passed on making any changes.

Appointed to replace newly elected U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris in 2016, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra ran for his own four-year term in 2018 as a supporter of then-Gov. Jerry Brown’s law enforcement and judicial reforms. “California’s Department of Justice has modernized its police force, sponsored state legislation to require an assessment of 2015 and 2016 data related to officer-involved shootings and has explored options for bail reform,” his campaign web page declared. After winning, Becerra made similar claims in a speech at Stanford University.

But to the surprise of many Democrats, the former 12-term congressman has also emerged this year as a persistent, unexpected obstacle to a reform measure that Brown signed before he left office.

Senate Bill 1421, by Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, requires law enforcement agencies to release discipline records related to officers’ excessive use of force, sexual misconduct and dishonest actions. It replaced a previous collection of state laws and court rulings that made it close to impossible for the public to learn about sustained allegations against peace officers.

But even before it took effect on Jan. 1, dozens of police agencies attempted to undercut the law by saying it didn’t apply to misconduct before Jan. 1. Skinner and the legislative record showed that it was her clear intent to make all discipline records that departments had to legally retain available through public record requests.

CHP has produced no records on 7,000-plus officers

Becerra never supported this interpretation of SB 1421. But he initially declined to issue discipline records of state Department of Justice employees on the grounds that the question of the law’s effective date was being reviewed by state courts. Other law enforcement agencies began releasing their own records months before Becerra’s agency starting doing so following a May court ruling by San Francisco Superior Court Judge Richard Ulmer.

Meanwhile, by far the largest state police agency – the California Highway Patrol, which has more than 7,300 sworn officers – had released no records as of June 30, according to the Los Angeles Times. This prompted a complaint from Skinner. “If the state agencies themselves are acting like they’re above the law, that’s absolutely the wrong model and the wrong example to set for the rest of the local government agencies up and down the state,” she told the Times.

Becerra is also appealing part of Ulmer’s May ruling requiring his agency to hand over discipline records it has involving local officers. He wants to limit the parameters of SB 1421 so it only covers the discipline records of officers possessed by their employers. Becerra’s position is that this could lead to the undermining of agencies investigating their officers and potentially lead to the release of incorrect information. 

His department also says the language in Skinner’s bill “focused on an employer’s records about its employees” – not such records in the possession of another agency. But Ulmer didn’t go along with this interpretation. 

Last Friday, an appellate court sided with the judge’s decision and rejected Becerra’s challenge on a preliminary basis. But it set a hearing on July 18 to hear further testimony in the case.

Former Rep. Xavier Becerra (pictured), D-Los Angeles, was appointed in 2016 by Gov. Jerry Brown to replace state Attorney General Kamala Harris after she was elected to the U.S. Senate. He won a full term in the 2018 elections.

While Becerra joined Brown in backing measures that made the criminal justice system less punitive, he has come in the cross hairs of activists for his interpretation of Senate Bill 1421, which took effect Jan. 1.

The measure, by state Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, wipes away decades of protections of police discipline records that were adopted by past lawmakers and upheld by courts. It mandates the release of such records if they involve life-threatening or lethal use of force, sexual misconduct and lying in the execution of official duties.

Last year, however, police unions began arguing that Skinner’s law only applies to disciplinary records generated after it took effect Jan. 1 – not to past reports of discipline. However, on Jan. 2, the California Supreme Court denied an emergency request for a delay in implementing the law pending a full review of how the law should be interpreted. This was seen by legal observers as a plain sign that state justices agreed with Skinner, who said the retroactive intent of her law was clear.

Becerra won’t release discipline records of his agents

Nevertheless, police unions representing specific agencies have continued to file lawsuits. In two cases, involving Los Angeles and Richmond police officers, local judges have agreed to a temporary hold on discipline records predating Jan. 1 of this year.

These rulings were cited earlier this month by Supervising Deputy Attorney General Mark Beckington in rejecting a public records request for discipline records of law enforcement agents who work for Becerra.

In an interview with KQED, the Northern California PBS affiliate, the executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition blasted Becerra for his department’s decision, saying it sent the wrong message to local agencies and reflected a failure of leadership.

“This is the highest law enforcement officer in the state. He has decided not to disclose records that I think the new law makes very clear should be disclosed,” David Snyder said.

Skinner told KQED that the attorney general’s decision was “puzzling” given that several state law-enforcement agencies complied with the law once it took effect.

But Becerra has rejected criticism, saying that on privacy issues – especially those involving law enforcement officers – he would err on the side of caution.

The controversy has echoes of criticism facing Sen. Harris, the former San Francisco district attorney, as she has launched her bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

In her new autobiography, “The Truths We Hold,” and in speeches to progressive groups, Harris has depicted herself as an aggressive advocate of the view that the criminal-justice system is overly punitive and particularly harsh on some minority groups.

Harris critics, defenders fight over her record

But University of San Francisco law professor Lara Bazelon says that doesn’t square with her record as San Francisco DA and state attorney general. In a commentary for the New York Times, Bazelon wrote that Harris was willing to use evidence she knew to be tainted to obtain convictions.

Other reformers have focused on her refusal to support Proposition 47, the 2014 ballot measure that limited prison time for nonviolent crimes, and her opposition to legislation that would have mandated her office conduct independent investigations of fatal police shootings.

Harris’ defenders say this amounts to cherry-picking that ignores key parts of her record. They note she supported a pioneering program in San Francisco that provided resources and counseling to keep first-time drug offenders from ending up in a life of crime. They also note that as attorney general, her agency was the first in the state government to require that its law-enforcement agents wear body cameras.

It’s unclear when the dispute over police discipline records will be resolved. But since lower state courts have reached different decisions on how to interpret Senate Bill 1421, that normally means the issue won’t be resolved without a California Supreme Court ruling.

In a Feb. 4 letter to the city of Encinitas, state housing official Zachary Olmstead said the city needed to ”amend or invalidate” a 2013 ordinance approved by voters that said developers had to get voters’ blessing if they wanted to increase the density of their projects or make zoning changes. The letter noted that this law and other city actions had the effect of blocking Encinitas from meeting state requirements that it add 1,141 affordable units. The city of 63,000 has few such units now.

While the Encinitas City Council once seemed as strongly anti-growth as the public, state threats under the Jerry Brown administration led the council in 2016 and 2018 to seek voters’ approval of what’s known as a Housing Element plan, failing both times. The plan is a formal document submitted to the state that outlines what projects will be built so that the city meets its commitment to “accommodate the housing needs of Californians of all economic levels.”

Like Huntington Beach, Encinitas could face lawsuit

Encinitas is the only city in San Diego County without a similar state-approved plan. It is among the richest cities in the country. As of the latest Zillow data, the median average home price is $1.05 million, and the latest RentCafe data puts the average monthly rent at $2,056.

While the 2013 city law targeted by the state has already been suspended until 2021 by a Superior Court judge as being pre-empted by state law, that wasn’t viewed as going far enough by state officials. Olmstead’s letter cited the cumulative effect of a “complex set of regulations” that make it impossible for new projects that would help the city comply with state requirements.

If Encinitas officials don’t change course, the letter warned that state grants might be withheld, including for transportation projects funded by the Legislature’s 2017 increase in state vehicle taxes – and that the Newsom administration would ask Attorney General Xavier Becerra to sue the city for defying state law.

In a case involving the same issues, the state and the city of Huntington Beach filed lawsuits against each other last month in Orange County over whether Huntington Beach is breaking state housing laws. Becerra says 2017 legislation passed in Sacramento clearly empowers his office to sue to enforce plainly written state mandates. Huntington Beach City Attorney Michael Gates, however, says as a charter city – one with its own voter-approved de facto constitution – Huntington Beach has the authority to reject some state edicts that infringe on the city’s right to self-govern its “municipal affairs.”

Can charter cities claim exemption from mandates?

A League of California Cities primer on the rights of charter cities offers ammunition for Huntington Beach’s claim. It notes that with “some exceptions,” charter cities control land-use and zoning decisions. But a 1975 Loyola University of Los Angeles Law Review analysis cited by the league said ambiguous language in state law left it unclear precisely when charter city ordinances took precedent on land-use issues.

Encinitas is a general law city not eligible for charter city protections from some types of state interference. But if Encinitas officials proposed and city voters approved a charter city amendment in a special election, Encinitas could become a charter city within months.

Last year, after disputes with the state, officials in Menlo Park in Silicon Valley considered a quick push for charter city status before putting the issue on hold for the time being.

The state’s lawsuit – filed in Orange County Superior Court by Attorney General Xavier Becerra on Jan. 25 at Newsom’s behest – is the first to be filed under a 2017 law that allows the state to pursue legal action against local governments that don’t comply with their housing requirements.

The state wants to compel Huntington Beach to build 533 low-income housing units by Dec. 31, 2021, to meet its state quota. The city has only approved about 100 such units, according to the Southern California News Group.

City attorney sees H.B. singled out for its politics

Huntington Beach City Attorney Michael Gates maintains that as a charter city, his city should be able to set its own housing policies. He also hinted that there were political motives driving the actions of Democrats Newsom and Becerra. “It is noteworthy that Sacramento is suing only the city of Huntington Beach, while over 50 other cities in California have not yet met” their targets, he wrote in a statement. Huntington Beach has been a Republican redoubt for decades.

But state officials said they were motivated by Huntington Beach’s bad faith. Not only did the city refuse to provide a housing plan in compliance with state rules, in 2015, the City Council revised zoning rules to reduce by 2,400 the number of homes allowed in a neighborhood on the eastern edge of the city near Interstate 405.

While the state’s suit got far more attention, Huntington Beach’s suit – filed Jan. 17 in Orange County Superior Court – also involves high stakes. The city is targeting Senate Bill 35, the high-profile 2017 state law crafted by state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, that limits the ability of local governments to block housing projects that meet certain conditions, such as using union labor and including a portion of affordable units.

“It’s one thing to have more basic housing laws come out of Sacramento; it’s another to have Sacramento try to micromanage cities’ zoning and attempt to approve development projects in spite of the city,” Gates told the San Francisco Chronicle. “It’s really nothing more than the city trying to maintain its local control.”

Can charter cities defy state’s housing edicts?

Wiener blasted Huntington Beach in a statement given to his hometown paper. “Huntington Beach’s dismissive approach to housing – claiming there is no problem and that the state should just mind its own business – is Exhibit A for why we have a crisis in this state.”

When SB35 was discussed in 2017, there is no indication from a Nexis news search that Wiener or any lawmaker saw charter cities as being exempt from the bill’s requirements.

But lawyers for the League of California Cities have used language similar to that in Huntington Beach’s lawsuit to assert that there are limits to state power over charter cities. “The benefit of becoming a charter city is that charter cities have supreme authority over ‘municipal affairs,’” states the league’s legal primer on the topic. “In other words, a charter city’s law concerning a municipal affair will trump a state law governing the same topic.”

About one-quarter of California’s 478 cities have charter status. If Huntington Beach wins its challenge to SB35, general law cities that want to regain greater control over local planning could craft proposed charters and ask their voters to approve them under a process laid out in the state Constitution.

Seven months after her office released sweeping recommendations for reform of California’s bail system, state Supreme Court Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye may have a chance to force changes without going through the Legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown.

Last week, the state Supreme Court agreed to take up a January appellate court ruling that took dead aim at a bail system that some say turns county jails into “debtor prisons.” More than half of jail inmates are there not because of convictions but because they can’t raise bail, which usually requires providing a bail bonds office with cash or property worth 10 percent of the total bail sum. California has the highest cash bail rates of any state, according to Human Rights Watch.

“A defendant may not be imprisoned solely due to poverty,” Presiding Justice J. Anthony Kline said in a 3-0 decision of the 1st District Court of Appeal that ordered a new bail hearing for Kenneth Humphrey, a retired maintenance worker living in San Francisco who was accused of threatening a neighbor, stealing a bottle of cologne and $5, and demanding more money. Humphrey said he was seeking payment of a debt. But a judge followed a standard bail schedule that took note of Humphrey’s previous felony convictions and set his bail at $600,000, which was later reduced to $350,000.

San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision to take up the case, which he had requested after state Attorney General Xavier Becerra chose not to appeal the appellate ruling. “We’re pleased,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle. “I’ve made it very clear that I’m not a proponent of money bail. But getting rid of money bail doesn’t entail that we will never have pretrial detention. There are still some people that are going to be either a flight risk or dangerous, and what we have now is a state of the law that is unclear, and the standard in terms of dangerousness may be way too high.”

Cantil-Sakauye urged bail changes in 2016 speech

While the appellate ruling was stayed pending the state high court’s ruling, criminal justice reformers were hopeful that Cantil-Sakauye’s history hints at the court’s eventual decision.

The chief justice conveyed her support for bail reform in her 2016 State of the Judiciary speech. A task force she convened issued a report in October that said the state’s system “unnecessarily compromises victim and public safety because it bases a person’s liberty on financial resources rather than the likelihood of future criminal behavior” and was “unsafe and unfair.” It called for pretrial assessments that would help judges gauge the risk posed by each defendant and for “pretrial programs [that] would also give judges more tools to supervise defendants, such as drug testing, home confinement, and text reminders for court dates.”

This approach was used with Humphrey, 64, after the appellate court ruling overturned his $350,000 bail. He was released from jail after agreeing to supervised around-the-clock detention at a substance abuse facility and to wearing an ankle monitor.

Despite lobbying from Cantil-Sakauye, Gov. Jerry Brown and progressive and civil rights groups, the Legislature has so far been mostly cool to two years of efforts led by Sen. Bob Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys, and Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Oakland, to scrap the state’s money bail system. Their legislative proposals mirror the recommendations of the chief justice’s task force. One version passed the state Senate last year on a party-line vote before stalling; another was rejected by the Assembly.

The Trump administration is on the brink of what could prove its most consequential legal battle with the state of California, with EPA chief Scott Pruitt expected this week to 

Last week saw confirmation of months of White House and EPA leaks that President Donald Trump would throw out a 2012 Obama administration edict that required average miles per gallon to nearly double to 54.5 for automakers’ fleets of new cars and trucks by 2025. Trump’s skepticism about climate change made him particularly open to the argument from General Motors, Ford and Chrysler that out-of-touch regulators under the previous president were trying to force them to sell vehicles that U.S. consumers didn’t want to buy.

But as The New York Times reported over the weekend, Trump and Pruitt went further than automakers wanted both by rolling back mileage standards more than expected and by signalling their readiness for a court fight over the deference that federal regulators have traditionally shown to the California Air Resources Board.

The Golden State’s problems with smog in the Los Angeles Basin – visible in the 1973 EPA photo shown above – led to the first state law in the U.S. targeting air pollution being adopted in 1947, among many other precedent-setting regulations. The air board continued California’s role as a pioneer in setting vehicle emission standards after it was launched in 1968 under then-Gov. Ronald Reagan. Its vehicle emission and safety rules often end up being copied by Congress and federal regulators and by nations around the world. The state’s present rules are followed by 12 other states, including New York and Pennsylvania – meaning the Golden State dictates what automakers must provide in about one-third of all new cars sold in the U.S. each year.

California’s special status may be only state carve-out in federal law

But with California’s pollution problems beginning to look more like the rest of the nation’s in recent decades, Republicans have increasingly chafed at the idea that CARB and not the EPA should have the dominant policy-making role on vehicle fuel and emissions standards.

An analysis in The Atlantic laid out how unusual the state’s status is:

“California is written into the Clean Air Act by name: At any time, it can ask the EPA administrator for a waiver to restrict tailpipe pollution more stringently than the federal government. If its proposed rules are ‘at least as protective of public health and welfare’ as the EPA’s, then the administrator must grant the waiver.

“This power is reserved alone for California, and it only covers pollution from cars. No other state can ask for a waiver. (In all of federal law, this might be the only time that a specific state is given special authority under such a major statute.)”

The administration of President George W. Bush became the first to challenge California’s special status when it rejected the state’s request to expand its definition of what substances in the atmosphere it could regulate to include non-polluting greenhouse gases. That prompted the filing of a lawsuit in January 2008 by then-Attorney General Jerry Brown that was backed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. But it became moot after Barack Obama succeeded Bush in the White House and the EPA resumed treating California’s proposals with deference.

Over the past 14 months, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has filed 28 lawsuits against the Trump administration, according to a tally kept by the Washington Post. But even before Becerra began his litigation, Gov. Brown anticipated the upcoming CARB-EPA fight and emphasized its importance. In comments made in December 2016 – a month after Trump’s election – Brown framed the dispute as having consequences for the “survivability of our world” because of the threat posed by global warming.

At an American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco, according to a Sacramento Bee account, the governor said, “We’ve got the scientists, we’ve got the lawyers and we’re ready to fight. We’re ready to defend. …. And, if Trump turns off the satellites, California will launch its own damn satellite. We’re going to collect that data.”

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is making the formal announcement Wednesday during remarks at the Annual Law Enforcement Legislative Day hosted by the California Peace Officers’ Association in Sacramento.

“The Department of Justice and the Trump administration are going to fight these unjust, unfair, and unconstitutional policies that have been imposed on you,” Sessions said in released excerpts ahead of the address. “We are fighting to make your jobs safer and to help you reduce crime in America. And I believe we are going to win.”

The lawsuit focuses on three separate California laws: Senate Bill 54, Assembly Bill 450 and AB103 – a trio of legislation making up the state’s “sanctuary” policy.

The suit asks the federal court to block the enforcement of these laws statewide.

“Sanctuary jurisdictions” have dominated the national dialogue on immigration in recent years, with critics saying it creates a safe haven for criminal aliens, while proponents arguing it provides a safer environment for the undocumented to come forward and report crimes without fear of deportation.

In response to Sessions’ actions, California Democratic leaders swiftly responded, condemning the lawsuit as a political stunt.

“At a time of unprecedented political turmoil, Jeff Sessions has come to California to further divide and polarize America,” Gov. Jerry Brown tweeted.

“Trump and Sessions think they can bully California – but it won’t work,” U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., added.

But the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen praised the decision.

“California has chosen to purposefully contradict the will and the responsibility of the Congress to protect our homeland,” Nielsen said in a statement. “I appreciate the efforts of Attorney General Sessions and the Department of Justice to uphold the rule of law and protect American communities.”

The decision by the Justice Department is perhaps the boldest yet in taking aim at the alleged obstruction of federal law, going on offense after a series of suits filed against the administration from California’s attorney general Xavier Becerra on issues like immigration and climate change.

“No matter what happens in Washington, #California will stay the course and enforce all our laws and protect all our people. That’s how we keep our communities safe. #Immigration,” Becerra wrote in response to the news.

More recently, Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf grabbed national headlines after she warned area residents of upcoming ICE raids, with agency officials accusing her of promoting lawless and undercutting federal authority.

Continuing a longstanding bipartisan tradition, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra came

Assemblyman Travis Allen, R-Huntington Beach, is sponsoring a measure to repeal the fuel tax and vehicle fee hikes approved this spring. The description given to Allen’s proposal by Becerra’s office didn’t mention taxes or fees. Instead, it said the measure “eliminates recently enacted road repair and transportation funding by repealing revenues dedicated for those purposes.”

Allen’s lawyers said the description was fundamentally deceptive. Last week, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Timothy M. Frawley agreed: “The Attorney General’s title and summary … must be changed to avoid misleading the voters and creating prejudice against the measure,” he wrote.

The revision Frawley ordered: “Repeals recently enacted gas and diesel taxes and vehicle registration fees. Eliminates road repair and transportation programs funded by these taxes and fees.”

The perception of attorneys general using ballot language to manipulate voters has been common for decades.

When Becerra’s predecessor, fellow Democrat Kamala Harris, was attorney general before her election in November to the U.S. Senate, Republicans alleged she was particularly ready to put her thumb on the scale. The ballot description for 2016’s successful Proposition 58 made it seem as if it reinforced English-learning standards in state public schools when its primary intent was to repeal mandatory English-only immersion programs required by 1998’s Proposition 227. In 2015, Harris was trashed by the San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial board for effectively killing pension reform measures with what the board called ballot descriptions that sounded like “union talking points.”

When Gov. Jerry Brown was attorney general before Harris, his office also courted controversy. Two of his ballot descriptions were castigated by state judges in the same week in August 2010.

One was for Proposition 23, an unsuccessful measure which would have suspended implementation of state climate-change pollution rules. The initial ballot language was condemned as prejudicial and misleading by Frawley, the same judge who recently ruled against Becerra.

Two days after Frawley’s ruling, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Patrick Marlette rejected ballot language for Proposition 25. The successful ballot measure’s key change was to allow the state Legislature to approve a state budget on a simple majority vote. The ballot language Brown approved made it appear as if the measure’s main intent was to reinforce the requirement that the Legislature could only approve tax increases on a two-thirds vote of both the Assembly and the Senate.

Republican attorneys general also accused of voter manipulation

But in the 20th century, when it wasn’t unusual to have Republicans holding statewide office in California, GOP attorneys general drew fire as well for their perceived ballot language machinations.

The most famous example was in 1978, when California voters approved Proposition 13 to put sharp limits on how much property taxes could increase annually. Neither the ballot title or summary approved by GOP Attorney General Evelle Younger mentioned that it also would raise the threshold for raising taxes in the Legislature to a two-thirds vote.

In 1996, Republican Attorney General Dan Lungren also drew fire over the ballot language he approved for Proposition 209, a successful measure limiting the use of racial preferences by state government. In 2012, Chronicle editorial page editor John Diaz revisited criticism first made in 1996, arguing that Lungren used “loaded words” to sell opposition to affirmative action.