Following six weeks of testimony, an Alameda County judge must now decide whether the groups’ promotion of the treatment is protected under the First Amendment, or whether it amounts to false advertising under state consumer protection laws.

The lawsuit, filed by Attorney General Rob Bonta in 2023, targets Heartbeat International, a national anti-abortion organization, and RealOptions Obria, a network of Northern California anti-abortion clinics. Both groups promote a hormone-based regimen they claim can stop a medication abortion already in progress.

State attorneys argue the treatment lacks scientific support and could put patients at risk. They are asking for $20 million in penalties under California’s unfair competition and false advertising statutes.

The defendants maintain that thousands of women have gone on to deliver healthy babies after using their services, and that discussing the treatment is a form of protected expression tied to their religious beliefs. Heartbeat International operates the Abortion Pill Rescue Network, a hotline that connects patients with providers willing to administer high doses of progesterone in an effort to counter the effects of mifepristone, the first drug used in a medication abortion. The organization has more than 90 affiliated sites across California, including RealOptions locations.

Deputy Attorney General Erica Connolly told the court the groups exploit women during a vulnerable moment.

“Those individuals need accurate information, but accurate information is not what the defendants provide,” Connolly said. “Instead, they tout false hope.”

Attorneys for the anti-abortion groups counter that because the reversal services are offered free of charge, false advertising claims don’t apply. Defense attorney Paul Jonna argued the state has failed to show that anyone was actually harmed, describing the lawsuit as “an ideological campaign disguised as consumer fraud prosecution.”

A federal appeals court reached a similar conclusion in a comparable case out of New York, ruling that the reversal claims did not qualify as commercial speech and therefore fell outside the reach of that state’s advertising laws.

Understanding the treatment in dispute

A typical medication abortion involves two drugs — mifepristone, which blocks the hormone progesterone that sustains pregnancy, followed 24 to 48 hours later by misoprostol, which triggers contractions that empty the uterus, similar to a miscarriage. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, medication abortions now account for roughly two-thirds of all abortions performed nationally.

Heartbeat International claims that administering large doses of progesterone after mifepristone but before misoprostol can reverse the abortion process. The organization reports more than 8,000 continued pregnancies nationwide through this method, citing a success rate between 64% and 68%.

Jonna said several women who testified for the defense described feeling grateful for the intervention, not deceived, and noted that no formal consumer complaints have ever been filed against either organization.

But the state contends the treatment’s promoters are making definitive medical claims without solid scientific backing. The handful of studies commonly cited to support “abortion pill reversal” have been widely discredited by major medical organizations, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the New England Journal of Medicine, both of which say the research is deeply flawed.

“They are welcome to talk about it,” Connolly said. “They’re just not allowed to lie about it.”

Research shows that completing both steps of a medication abortion is effective 95% to 98% of the time. Women who take only the first pill and stop there will still carry the pregnancy to term about half the time — without any additional intervention.

A pattern of legal battles over crisis pregnancy centers

RealOptions is what’s known as a crisis pregnancy center — typically a faith-based organization that opposes abortion and may offer services such as ultrasounds or pregnancy testing. These centers vastly outnumber abortion providers in California, by a ratio of more than five to one.

Critics argue the centers often mislead women seeking abortion care, while supporters say they provide a needed option for those facing unplanned pregnancies.

California has long struggled to rein in these centers through legislation. In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a state law that would have required such centers to inform clients about abortion and contraception options, and to disclose when a facility was not licensed to provide medical care. The justices ruled the law violated free speech protections under the First Amendment.

Legal scholar Mary Ziegler, who has no connection to the current case, says the outcome will largely depend on how the court classifies the speech in question.

“Is it political and religious speech? Is it commercial speech, which enjoys less protection? Is it just conduct?” Ziegler said, noting that crisis pregnancy centers occupy a murky legal space — presenting themselves as advocacy groups while sometimes functioning like medical clinics.

In the New York case, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the anti-abortion defendants, ruling that statements about “abortion pill reversal” were constitutionally protected because they stemmed from religious and moral conviction.

Meanwhile, a Kansas state court judge recently struck down several abortion restrictions, including a requirement that providers inform patients about the reversal treatment, ruling that the mandate infringed on patients’ bodily autonomy by forcing them to hear “unproven” medical claims.

Ziegler said that even if California ultimately loses this case, reproductive rights advocates may still view it as a meaningful step forward.

“If the world we live in says, you know, you have a protected right to tell patients things that are potentially dangerous to them, then that’s going to raise public concerns anyway,” she said.

Judge Patrick McKinney is expected to issue a ruling within the next three months.

Original source: CalMatters

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Attorney General Rob Bonta announced Wednesday that California, along with a coalition of Democratic-led states, has filed suit in federal court in Massachusetts to block newly finalized U.S. Postal Service rules tied to President Trump’s executive order targeting mail voting. The move fulfills a promise Gov. Gavin Newsom made to renew legal action as soon as the administration issued concrete regulations.

The timing traces back to the Supreme Court’s ruling earlier this week, which found that California’s original lawsuit had been filed prematurely — before the administration had actually put formal rules in place. That gap closed late last week when the Postal Service published final regulations requiring states to hand over lists of eligible mail voters, redesign ballot envelopes to meet federal approval, and add new tracking barcodes to ballot mail.

Trump’s executive order goes further, directing the Postal Service to withhold delivery of ballots to any voter not listed in a federal database the administration intends to create, and to cut off ballot delivery entirely in states that refuse to comply with the new requirements.

Bonta argues the Postal Service’s rules trample on constitutional boundaries that leave election administration primarily in the hands of states, not the federal government.

“President Trump doesn’t get to rewrite our voting system on a whim,” Bonta said during a virtual news conference Wednesday. “And the United States Postal Service cannot sidestep the laws that govern the postal service just to carry out the president’s agenda.”

The coalition of states contends that neither the president nor the Postal Service has the legal authority to dictate how elections are run, and warns that the new requirements threaten to disrupt mail voting on a broad scale. In California alone, more than 89% of voters cast ballots by mail during the state’s most recent primary in June, according to the Secretary of State’s office.

Trump has long criticized mail-in voting, repeatedly making unsupported claims that it fuels fraud, even though he has used mail ballots himself in past elections. Last year, he said on social media that he wanted to “lead a movement to get rid of mail-in ballots” altogether.

With the case now working its way through the courts, it remains uncertain whether the Postal Service’s new rules will be resolved — or enforced — in time to have any impact on this November’s elections.

Original source: CalMatters

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The lawsuit, filed last week by Tower Bridge Property Management and its owner, Tom Manning, targets a 2020 California law that bars landlords from turning away renters simply because they use a Section 8 voucher to help cover their rent. The program, formally known as the Housing Choice Voucher Program, is designed to help low-income tenants afford housing on the private market — though funding has never stretched far enough to serve every eligible household.

Tower Bridge, which oversees roughly 300 rental units in the Sacramento region, contends that the inspection and paperwork requirements tied to accepting voucher payments violate the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches. Under the law, landlords who rent to voucher holders must first allow local housing authorities to inspect their units for health and safety issues, then submit documentation to both local and federal agencies.

The case, filed with backing from the libertarian-leaning Pacific Legal Foundation, mirrors arguments that have gained traction elsewhere. Earlier this year, a New York appellate court sided with a similar challenge and struck down that state’s ban on voucher discrimination. A conservative legal group in Virginia has raised a comparable argument there as well.

California is one of 15 states, along with Washington, D.C., that explicitly prohibit landlords from refusing tenants based on their use of housing vouchers. Since the law took effect, tenant advocacy groups have filed a string of civil rights lawsuits against landlords accused of skirting the requirement — often using undercover “testers” who pose as voucher holders to document rejections.

The issue drew national attention last month when a nonprofit watchdog organization accused Greystar, the country’s largest apartment landlord, of systematically denying housing to voucher holders nationwide, including in California properties.

The Pacific Legal Foundation, which is representing Manning, has previously challenged other California housing policies, including developer impact fees and inclusionary zoning requirements that mandate affordable units in new construction.

It remains to be seen how the case will play out in California courts, but housing advocates are watching closely, given the precedent set in New York and the broader legal momentum against similar tenant protection laws in other states.

Original source: CalMatters

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The administration has hailed the project by Houston-based Sable Offshore Corp. to restart production in waters off Santa Barbara damaged by a 2015 oil spill as the kind of project President Donald Trump wants to increase U.S. energy production.

The state oversees the pipelines that run through Santa Barbara and Kern counties, said Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta.

“The federal administration has no right to usurp California’s regulatory authority,” he said at a news conference. “We’re taking them to court to draw a line in the sand and to protect our coast, beaches and communities from potentially hazardous pipelines.”

But the U.S. Transportation Department agency that approved Sable’s plan pushed back on the lawsuit.

“Restarting the Las Flores Pipeline will bring much needed American energy to a state with the highest gas prices in the country,” said a spokesperson with the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

Sable did not respond for comment on the lawsuit.

Trump signed an executive order on the first day of his second term to reverse former President Joe Biden’s ban on future offshore oil drilling on the East and West coasts. A federal court later struck down Biden’s order to withdraw 625 million acres of federal waters from oil development.

The federal administration in November announced plans for new offshore oil drilling off the California and Florida coasts, which the oil industry has backed for years.

But critics say the plans could harm coastal communities and ecosystems.

Bonta said one of the pipelines Sable wants to restart burst in 2015, spilling oil along the Southern California coast. The event was the state’s worst oil spill in decades. More than 140,000 gallons (3,300 barrels) of oil gushed out, blackening beaches for 150 miles (240 kilometers) from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles. It polluted a biologically rich habitat for endangered whales and sea turtles, killing scores of pelicans, seals and dolphins, and decimating the fishing industry.

The drilling platforms were subsequently shuttered.

Sable has faced a slew of legal challenges but has said it is determined to restart production, even if that means confining it to federal waters, where state regulators have virtually no say. California controls the 3 miles (5 kilometers) nearest to shore. The platforms are 5 to 9 miles (8 to 14 kilometers) offshore.

“It’s crazy that we are even talking about restarting this pipeline,” said Alex Katz, executive director of the Environmental Defense Center, a Santa Barbara group formed in response to a catastrophic 1969 California oil spill.

The federal government’s approval to restart the pipelines ignores painful lessons the community learned from the 2015 oil spill, said California Assemblymember Gregg Hart, a Democrat representing Santa Barbara.

“California will not allow Trump and his Big Oil friends to bypass our essential environmental laws and threaten our coastline,” he said in a statement.

California has been reducing the state’s production of fossil fuels in favor of clean energy for years. The movement has been spearheaded partly by Santa Barbara County, where elected officials voted in May to begin taking steps to phase out onshore oil and gas operations.

The post California sues the Trump administration over plans to restart oil pipelines along the coast appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

World War Fee President Trump’s reign of tariffs has been challenged on the left and right by the State of California and the Liberty Justice Center.

On April 2, 2025, the White House announced a broad set of tariffs on goods imported into the States, a tax that generally gets passed on to buyers.

The rates [PDF] range from 11 percent, for Cameroon and Democratic Republic of the Congo, to 145 percent to 245 percent for China, depending on the type of products at issue.

Last week, President Trump paused his retaliatory levies for three months and offered to lower the numbers, China excepted, amid a stock and bond market meltdown triggered by his global trade war. This week, the tariff situation remains in flux, leaving businesses and folks in a fog of uncertainty and facing recession if not depression.

The White House argued the tariffs are necessary to, in part, encourage more manufacturing on American soil and reduce the reliance on foreign factories. The Wall Street Journal called the President’s tariffs “the dumbest trade war in history.”

Rob Bonta, California Attorney General, announced a lawsuit [PDF] Wednesday seeking relief from the President’s allegedly unlawful use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) to justify the imposition of his import taxes.

Bonta argues the tariffs will wreak havoc on California’s economy.

“The President’s chaotic and haphazard implementation of tariffs is not only deeply troubling, it’s illegal,” said Bonta. “As the fifth largest economy in the world, California understands global trade policy is not just a game.”

California Governor Gavin Newsom added, “President Trump’s unlawful tariffs are wreaking chaos on California families, businesses, and our economy – driving up prices and threatening jobs. We’re standing up for American families who can’t afford to let the chaos continue.”

The California Office of the Attorney General claims the tariffs, at the very least, will shrink the US economy by $100 billion annually and increase inflation by 1.3 percent, at a cost to the average American family of $2,100.

The Tax Foundation, a non-profit think tank, estimated “Trump’s tariffs will reduce long-run US GDP by 0.8 percent” before any foreign counter-tariffs are considered.

California’s lawsuit, filed in a federal district court in the north of the state, argues the IEEPA does not give the President the power to impose tariffs.

“In the nearly 50-year history of IEEPA, no President has ever used IEEPA to impose tariffs, prior to the unprecedented actions of President Trump in 2025,” the California complaint reads. “IEEPA further provides that ‘[t]he President, in every possible instance, shall consult with the Congress before exercising any of the authorities granted by this chapter and shall consult regularly with the Congress so long as such authorities are exercised.'”

And no such consultation took place, the legal filing insists.

The Liberty Justice Center (LJC) describes itself as “a nonprofit, nonpartisan, public-interest litigation firm that seeks to protect economic liberty, private property rights, free speech, and other fundamental rights.” Source Watch calls the LJC as a right-wing organization, citing ties to the conservative Illinois Policy Institute.

Nonetheless, the LJC makes similar arguments to those raised by California’s lawsuit in its complaint [PDF] against the White House’s drive to make Americans pay more for their foreign-made stuff, filed with the US Court of International Trade.

“The President of the United States claims the authority to unilaterally levy tariffs on goods imported from any and every country in the world, at any rate, calculated via any methodology – or mere caprice – immediately, with no notice, or public comment, or phase-in, or delay in implementation, despite massive economic impacts that are likely to do severe damage to the global economy,” the LJC complaint argues.

“If actually granted by statute, this power would be an unlawful delegation of legislative power to the executive without any intelligible principle to limit his discretion.

“But Congress has not delegated any such power. The statute the President invokes — the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) – does not authorize the President to unilaterally issue across-the-board worldwide tariffs.”

The LJC lawsuit has been filed on behalf of five businesses allegedly harmed by the tariffs: Beverage importer VOS Selections, e-commerce biz FishUSA, plastic pipe maker Genova Pipe, educational electronics kit maker MicroKits, and cycling apparel firm Terry Precision Cycling.

“No one person should have the power to impose taxes that have such vast global economic consequences,” said Jeffrey Schwab, LJC senior counsel, in a statement. “The Constitution gives the power to set tax rates – including tariffs – to Congress, not the President.”

Both California and the LJC have sought relief from the judicial branch of the US government, which appears to be unable to compel the executive branch to return a man unlawfully deported to El Salvador and imprisoned without charge or trial.

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