Cal. Apartment Assn. v. City of Pasadena (2025)

Citation: Cal. Apartment Assn. v. City of Pasadena (2025)
Parent Document: Cal. Apartment Assn. v. City of Pasadena (2025)
Jurisdiction: California (state)
Effective Date: 2025-12-18
Original Source: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/10761039/cal-apartment-assn-v-city-of-pasadena/ ↗

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revisions. (See Weber, supra, 16 Cal.5th 237; Raven, supra,
52 Cal.3d 336.) In Raven, the court considered a provision of the
initiative measure known as the “Crime Victims Justice Reform
Act,” which stated, in part, that numerous fundamental rights of
criminal defendants “shall be construed by the courts of this state
in a manner consistent with the Constitution of the United
States” and that the California Constitution “shall not be
construed by the courts to afford greater rights to criminal
defendants than those afforded by the Constitution of the United
States.” (Raven, at p. 350.) The court explained the provision
was qualitatively devastating to the preexisting constitutional
scheme because its practical effect was to “vest all judicial
interpretive power, as to fundamental criminal defense rights, in
the United States Supreme Court.” (Id. at p. 352.) The provision
“unduly restrict[ed] judicial power” by leaving the state courts
with no authority “to interpret the state Constitution in a
manner more protective of defendants’ rights than extended by
the federal Constitution, as construed by the United States
Supreme Court.” (Id. at pp. 352-353.) This “severely limit[ed]
the independent force and effect of the California Constitution”
and directly contradicted “the well-established jurisprudential
principle that, ‘The judiciary, from the very nature of its powers
and means given it by the Constitution, must possess the right to
construe the Constitution in the last resort . . . .’ ” (Id. at pp. 353-
354.)
       In Weber, the court considered a proposed initiative that
would require all revenue-raising measures at the state and local
levels to secure voter approval before enactment. (Weber, supra,
16 Cal.5th at pp. 249-251, 277.) The court concluded the
initiative would “fundamentally restructure the most basic of

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