The tool, created by a company called Learned Hand, is being piloted in Los Angeles and Riverside counties. It functions as a kind of AI law clerk, drawing on language models from Anthropic, OpenAI and Google to produce research memos, draft orders and assist with tentative rulings.

So far, court officials say the technology is being used mainly in civil and probate matters. But contracts and emails obtained by CalMatters show the courts have discussed or authorized potential testing in criminal, family and probate divisions, raising concerns among judges, public defenders and prosecutors about accuracy, bias and transparency.

In Riverside County, the Superior Court has a $10,000 agreement with Learned Hand to test the program. Seven civil and probate attorneys have access to it, according to court officials, primarily to see whether it can help staff with research and other time-consuming tasks. Riverside court officials said the tool is not being used to draft tentative rulings.

Los Angeles County Superior Court has a much larger contract, worth about $314,000, that includes a plan to evaluate whether the tool could be used beyond civil cases, including in criminal, family and probate court. Los Angeles court officials told CalMatters the program is still in an early testing phase and remains months, if not years, away from broader implementation.

The use of artificial intelligence in courtrooms has become increasingly controversial as generative AI systems have been shown to create false citations, misstate facts and reflect biases found in the data used to train them. Those risks are especially sensitive in criminal cases, where court decisions can affect whether evidence is admitted at trial, whether a conviction stands, or whether a person remains incarcerated.

Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said he is especially concerned that the Los Angeles contract allows the technology to be used for motions to suppress evidence and motions for post-conviction relief — two significant areas of criminal law.

“When you’re dealing with someone’s liberty — as opposed to in the civil setting, which is everything other than liberty — the stakes couldn’t be higher,” Hochman told CalMatters. “I don’t want to take the chance, particularly in a criminal case, that AI happens to get it wrong.”

He said an error could cut both ways: violating a defendant’s constitutional rights or undermining a lawful prosecution.

Court officials in both counties have adopted generative AI policies, as required by the state Judicial Council before courts use the technology. But those policies require disclosure only when a motion, decision or other document is written entirely by generative AI. That means litigants may not be told if AI was used in part to research or draft material connected to their case.

Both Los Angeles and Riverside courts declined to say whether parties are being informed that the tool may be tested on their cases. A Los Angeles Superior Court spokesperson said testing is being done on motions that have already been decided and outside live case environments, though the contract permits testing on active matters.

“It is important to note that even with successful evaluation and thorough testing, the Court remains several months, if not years, away from implementing this type of tool,” the spokesperson said.

In Los Angeles County, six superior court judges and their research attorneys are using Learned Hand primarily to conduct legal research, summarize motions and assist with tentative rulings in civil matters, according to David Slayton, the court’s executive officer. Slayton said the court will not expand the tool into other divisions until court leaders are satisfied it can be used appropriately.

“The court is being very deliberate and careful about how we use technology like this,” Slayton said.

A court spokesperson later said the program is being evaluated under the same standards applied to human law clerks and research attorneys, including accuracy, legal analysis, neutrality and reliability. The court did not provide detailed criteria for how it will decide whether the technology is safe enough for use in criminal or family law matters.

Some judges have expressed alarm about how far the technology could go. One Los Angeles County Superior Court judge, who spoke anonymously because of judicial conduct rules, said colleagues were told during a recent luncheon that the tool might one day assist with petitions filed under California’s Racial Justice Act.

The 2020 law allows people to challenge criminal convictions or sentences if they believe racial bias affected the outcome. Courts across California are now processing a growing number of such claims, many filed by people in state prison.

According to the judge, court leaders discussed the possibility that AI could help generate tentative decisions for judges reviewing whether those petitions should be denied or move forward. The judge warned that such use could shape judicial thinking too early in the process.

“It’s an extremely perilous road to go down,” the judge said. “Putting aside the inaccuracy, which will be a significant concern, it dehumanizes the whole process.”

A second Los Angeles judge also told CalMatters they would not trust the tool to summarize or analyze a Racial Justice Act petition.

Los Angeles court officials and Learned Hand founder and CEO Shlomo Klapper denied that there are current plans to use the program for Racial Justice Act petitions. A court spokesperson later confirmed the contract would allow such use, but said that possibility “has not commenced in any way.”

Klapper said any Racial Justice Act application would need to be developed with the court and tested for bias. He acknowledged that criminal cases require heightened caution.

“It’s a very fraught decision,” Klapper said. “Extremely high stakes — a scenario where I understand people might be very concerned.”

Public defenders said those concerns are well-founded. Elizabeth Lashley-Haynes, a deputy public defender in Los Angeles County who specializes in Racial Justice Act litigation, said using AI to review such petitions would be “highly problematic and bordering on unethical.”

She said Racial Justice Act claims often involve subtle context, historical patterns and language with racial meanings that are difficult even for trained legal professionals to evaluate.

“They’re like nothing else in the legal system that has ever really been done,” Lashley-Haynes said.

Concerns about bias are not hypothetical. AI systems can reproduce or amplify patterns found in their training data, including racial and gender bias. Studies and investigations have found bias in large language models, predictive policing systems and criminal risk assessment tools.

Generative AI has also already caused problems in the legal system. Researcher Damien Charlotin has documented hundreds of instances in which litigants, attorneys or judges relied on false or faulty AI-generated information, including nearly 90 cases in California state or federal courts since August 2024. Last year, a Los Angeles-based attorney was fined $10,000 for citing cases that did not exist. More recently, AI-related errors were reported in several cases handled by prosecutors in Nevada County.

Most known incidents have involved lawyers or self-represented litigants, but legal scholars have warned that judges are likely to make similar mistakes as AI becomes more common. In recent months, the U.S. Senate examined apparent AI use by federal judges in Mississippi and New Jersey after rulings contained serious factual errors.

Klapper, a former federal appellate clerk who previously worked for the surveillance technology company Palantir, argues that courts must consider AI because they face growing backlogs and limited staffing. He said the goal is not to replace judges but to give them better support.

“I think the only solution is to give every single judge and staff attorney their own AI clerk,” he said.

He also said AI systems can be tested in ways human decision-makers cannot.

“I’m not saying all machines aren’t biased,” Klapper said. “I’m not saying my machine isn’t even biased. I’m saying we can test it and people have tested it. And that is the benefit over humans.”

In Riverside County, emails obtained by CalMatters show Klapper proposed that the court begin with a routine civil motion and then expand quickly if the tool proved useful. He also suggested court officials identify motions and workflows that were especially burdensome, mentioning the Racial Justice Act as one example.

About two weeks later, Riverside court officials identified labor-intensive areas such as discovery motions and attorney fee motions. For criminal cases, they suggested focusing on matters with large records, including death penalty habeas petitions and parole revocation.

Jason Galkin, Riverside County Superior Court’s chief executive officer, said the court is still in an exploratory stage.

“We don’t even know if expansion is likely,” Galkin said, adding that the immediate question is whether the tool helps staff do their jobs.

Across California, most superior courts now have policies governing generative AI, according to public records obtained by CalMatters. About a dozen of the 51 courts that responded said they are using AI-powered tools from companies such as LexisNexis, Thomson Reuters and Microsoft.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Samantha Jessner, who chairs the Judicial Technology Advisory Committee, said she only recently became aware that the Learned Hand tool could eventually be used outside civil court. Judges are generally not involved in contract negotiations because of ethical limitations, she said.

Jessner said the judiciary has a responsibility to examine whether AI has a useful role in the courts, while also proceeding cautiously.

Hochman said he expects AI will become part of the legal system but believes it is better suited for repetitive, low-level work than for analysis that affects the outcome of a case.

“The only thing I’m 100% sure of is that AI didn’t go to law school,” he said.

Original source: CalMatters

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Deputy Public Defender Derek Dillman “expressed a doubt” that his client, 35-year-old speech pathologist Ivanna Ortiz, was competent to stand trial on charges of attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon after she allegedly opened fire on the singer’s Bevelry Crest property on March 8.

But after a brief closed-door hearing, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Shannon Cooley did not find there was substantial evidence of Ortiz’s mental “incompetence” and ordered criminal proceedings to continue.

A spokeswoman for the public defender’s office declined to comment outside the courtroom, noting Cooley had sealed any discussion of Ortiz’s mental health. Dillman did not offer specifics about his concerns during the portions of the hearing open to the public.

Prosecutors say the shots fired by Ortiz struck Rihanna’s home, a neighbor’s residence and an Airstream parked on the grounds. No one was hit, but Rihanna and her husband — hip-hop and actor ASAP Rocky — were inside the Airstream at the time it was shot.

Ortiz has pleaded not guilty.

Earlier on Wednesday, Ortiz sought to have Dillman fired as her attorney during a closed-door hearing before Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Shannon Cooley, who presumably blocked that attempt as Dillman was still representing Ortiz late Wednesday morning.

Ortiz continued to bicker with Dillman later in the day when he tried to schedule a future hearing in the case for July, demanding he “do it sooner.”

After Dillman expressed concern about his client’s mental health, Cooley cleared the courtroom so she could question the attorney for evidence of Ortiz’s purported mental illness. Typically, when a defense attorney raises questions about their client’s mental fitness, judges refer such cases to the mental health court in Hollywood. L.A. County Deputy Dist. Atty. Alexander Bott, who is prosecuting the case, said he had never seen anything like what happened on Wednesday.

On the day of the shooting, Rihanna said Rocky was sleeping when she “suddenly heard approximately ten loud sounds like something banging on metal,” according to a police report made public in a court filing in late March.

When the shooting stopped, she grabbed Rocky “out of bed, told him they were being shot at and pushed both of them to the ground,” according to the police report. The couple then ran to their house to check on their children, the police report said.

Ortiz had made a number of disparaging posts about Rihanna on social media in the weeks leading up to the shooting.

When police arrested her in Sherman Oaks an hour after the shooting, Ortiz was carrying a black Springfield Armory rifle and two 30-round rifle magazines, according to the police report. She legally owned the firearm, according to court records.

While Ortiz declined to answer specific questions from police after her arrest, she did make a brief statement to investigators.

“Can I say one sentence?” she asked, according to the report. “I would like to say that I wasn’t attempting murder. But that’s all I wanted to say.”

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NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Biden administration asked a federal appeals court Monday to temporarily block a lower court’s order limiting executive branch officials’ discussions with social media companies about controversial online posts.

The request for an emergency stay was filed at the 5th U.S. District Court of Appeals shortly after U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty rejected an administration motion that he put his own July 4 order on hold. The order came in a lawsuit filed by Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri, as well as a conservative website owner and four individual critics of government COVID-19 policies.

The lawsuit claimed the administration, in effect, censored free speech by using threats of regulatory action or protection while pressuring companies to remove what it deemed misinformation. COVID-19 vaccines, legal issues involving President Joe Biden’s son Hunter and election fraud allegations were among the topics spotlighted in the lawsuit.

Doughty was nominated to the federal bench by former President Donald Trump. His injunction blocked the Department of Health and Human Services, the FBI and multiple other government agencies and administration officials from meeting with or contacting social media companies for the purpose of “encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”

Administration attorneys said in the motion filed at the 5th Circuit that Doughty’s ruling was too broad and vague, and had the potential to chill government officials’ speech on important matters. And they said Doughty failed to point to any evidence that the administration had made threats against social media companies to coerce them to take down posts.

“The district court identified no evidence suggesting that a threat accompanied any request for the removal of content. Indeed, the order denying the stay — presumably highlighting the ostensibly strongest evidence — referred to ‘a series of public media statements,’” the administration said.

They asked that the 5th Circuit block Doughty’s order while the case is pursued at the appeals court in New Orleans or, at minimum, grant a 10-day block of the order so the administration could prepare to go to the Supreme Court to seek a longer stay.

Earlier Monday, Doughty rejected administration requests that he stay his own order pending appeal.

“In essence,” Doughty’s Monday order said, “Defendants argue that the injunction should be stayed because it might interfere with the Government’s ability to continue working with social-media companies to censor Americans’ core political speech on the basis of viewpoint. In other words, the Government seeks a stay of the injunction so that it can continue violating the First Amendment.”

Government lawyers have argued that the companies control their own policies regarding misinformation and that the lawsuit casts officials’ comments on issues and policy as threats. The administration said Doughty’s July 4 order was unclear about who in the executive branch it covers and what they can or cannot say about important topics discussed on social media platforms.

The order could cause “grave harm” by preventing the government from “engaging in a vast range of lawful and responsible conduct,” government lawyers said in requesting the stay Thursday night.

Doughty order said the administration “seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’” The order, which was to remain in effect pending further arguments in Doughty’s court, was hailed by conservatives as a victory for free speech and a blow to censorship. But critics said the order and accompanying reasons, covering more than 160 pages, were broad, unclear and could chill government efforts to fight misinformation on important topics.

The criticisms were echoed in the government’s Thursday night request for a stay. “The potential breadth of the entities and employees covered by the injunction combined with the injunction’s sweeping substantive scope will chill a wide range of lawful government conduct relating to Defendants’ law enforcement responsibilities, obligations to protect the national security, and prerogative to speak on matters of public concern,” the government’s motion said.

The lawsuit’s plaintiffs countered with a weekend filing opposing a stay. Among the arguments are that the July 4 injunction carves out exemptions allowing officials to contact social media companies about postings involving criminal activity or public safety threats; national security threats; election-related issues including voter suppression attempts, voting infrastructure threats and illegal campaign contributions; and saying officials can continue “exercising permissible public government speech promoting government policies or views on matters of public concern.”

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes appears to be soon bound for prison after an appeals court Tuesday rejected her bid to remain free while she tries to overturn her conviction in a blood-testing hoax that brought her fleeting fame and fortune.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling comes nearly three weeks after Holmes deployed a last-minute legal maneuver to delay the start of her 11-year prison sentence. She had been previously ordered to surrender to authorities on April 27 by U.S. District Judge Edward Davila, who sentenced her in November.

Davila will now set a new date for Holmes, 39, to leave her current home in the San Diego area and report to prison.

The punishment will separate Holmes from her current partner, William “Billy” Evans, their 1-year-old son, William, and 3-month-old daughter, Invicta. Holmes’ pregnancy with Invicta — Latin for “invincible,” or “undefeated” — began after a jury convicted her on four counts of fraud and conspiracy in January 2022.

Davila has recommended that Holmes serve her sentence at a women’s prison in Bryan, Texas. It hasn’t been disclosed whether the federal Bureau of Prisons accepted Davila’s recommendation or assigned Holmes to another facility.

Holmes’ former lover and top lieutenant at Theranos, Ramesh “Sunny’ Balwani, began a nearly 13-year prison sentence in April after being convicted on 12 counts of fraud and conspiracy last July in a separate trial. Balwani, 57, was incarcerated in a Southern California prison after losing a similar effort to remain free on bail while appealing his conviction.

The verdict against Holmes came after a 46 days of trial testimony and other evidence that cast a spotlight on a culture of greed and hubris that infected Silicon Valley as technology became a more pervasive influence on society and the economy during the past 20 years.

The trial’s most riveting moments unfolded when Holmes took the witness stand to testify in her own defense.

Besides telling how she founded Theranos as a teenager after dropping out of Stanford University in 2003, Holmes accused Balwani of abusing her emotionally and sexually. She also asserted she never stopped believing Theranos would revolutionize healthcare with a technology that she promised would be able to scan for hundreds of diseases and other potential problems with just a few drops of blood.

While pursuing that audacious ambition, Holmes raised nearly $1 billion from a list of well-heeled investors that included Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Those sophisticated investors all lost their money after a Wall Street Journal investigation and regulatory reviews exposed dangerous flaws in Theranos’ technology.

Holmes’s lawyers have been fighting her conviction on grounds of alleged mistakes and misconduct that occurred during her trial. They have also contended errors and abuses that biased the jury were so egregious that she should be allowed to stay out of prison while the appeal unfolds — a request that has now been rebuffed by both Davila and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Niara Thompson couldn’t shake her frustration as the Supreme Court debated President Joe Biden’s student debt cancellation. As she listened from the audience Tuesday, it all felt academic. There was a long discussion on the nuances of certain words. Justices asked lawyers to explore hypothetical scenarios.

For Thompson, none of it is hypothetical. A student at the University of Georgia, she grew up watching her parents struggle with student loans and will graduate with about $50,000 of her own student debt.

“It felt like people who could never understand why we would want something like this,” she said. “I wanted to be like, ‘Y’all don’t understand. Y’all are focusing on this, but there’s people out here who are struggling to find food for their families.’”

Much of the discussion in Tuesday’s hearing centered on whether states had the legal right to sue over Biden’s student loans plan. But the justices also were scrutinizing whether Biden had the authority to waive hundreds of billions of dollars in debt without the explicit approval of Congress, which decides how taxpayer money is spent.

It’s not unusual for Supreme Court cases to hang on legal technicalities, even in cases of great public interest. Yet to borrowers following Tuesday’s arguments, it felt isolating to hear such a personal subject reduced to cold legal language.

Opponents of the plan to wipe away debt held by millions of Americans have denounced it as an insult to those who have repaid their debt and to those who didn’t attend college.

Thompson was among a few dozen borrowers who camped out in drizzle overnight to get seats at the court for Tuesday’s hearing. Some of the court’s liberal justices sought several times to turn the arguments back to the people who would benefit from the program, pointing out their need for relief. In response, conservatives asked if those who passed up college should pay for those who borrowed money to attend.

For Thompson’s family, years of payments hang in the balance. Student loan payments have been on hold since the start of the pandemic, but they are set to restart 60 days after the court cases resolve — regardless of the outcome.

Thompson and her father are each eligible for $10,000 in relief, she said. It would move her a step closer to financial stability, Thompson said, and it would eliminate the rest of her dad’s loans.

“It just hurt my feelings a bit,” she said of Tuesday’s arguments. “I just want better for us, you know?”

The mood inside the court — quiet and ceremonious — was a contrast to the atmosphere outside as dozens of activists rallied in support of cancellation. Crowds chanted and listened to speeches from members of Congress, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

Advocates took to the podium to share stories about family sacrifices and life milestones deferred because of heavy student debt.

Ella Azoulay, a 26-year-old who lives in Washington, visited the rally to join the push for debt relief, which she calls a “family issue.” A 2018 graduate of New York University, Azoulay has $40,000 in student debt, while her dad has more than $400,000 taken out on behalf of her and her two siblings.

“I can’t really think about my future without thinking about this huge debt,” she said. “My dad has no plans to retire. He’s in his 60s and he has said for my whole life that he will never be able to retire. And that’s really upsetting to hear.”

During the hearing, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor said it would be a mistake for her fellow justices to take for themselves, instead of leaving it to education experts, “the right to decide how much aid to give” people who will struggle if the program is struck down.

Others justices also have shown a grasp of borrowers’ plight. Justice Clarence Thomas, the court’s staunchest conservative, has written about the “crushing weight” of his own student loans, which he paid off after reaching the nation’s highest court.

Kayla Smith, 22, joined Thompson at the overnight campout for a seat inside the court. A recent graduate of the University of Georgia, she also felt the discussion missed the bigger picture.

Smith’s mother borrowed more than $20,000 in federal Parent Plus loans to help her pay for college. Smith sees it as the result of a broken system that forces people into debt for a shot at social mobility.

“They were focused on small, minuscule details,” Smith, of Atlanta, said of the justices. “I even saw some of them laughing during the hearing, which was odd to me because people’s lives are being affected. It’s not a laughing matter to us, at least.” ___

The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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NEW ORLEANS (AP) — In a reversal for President Joe Biden, a federal appeals court in New Orleans on Monday agreed to reconsider its own April ruling that allowed the administration to require federal employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

The new order from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans vacates an earlier ruling by a three-judge panel that upheld the mandate. The new order means a block on the mandate imposed in January by a Texas-based federal judge remains in effect, while the full court’s 17 judges take up the appeal.

Biden had issued an order Sept. 9 requiring that more than 3.5 million federal executive branch workers undergo vaccination, with no option to get regularly tested instead, unless they secured approved medical or religious exemptions.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown, who was appointed to the District Court for the Southern District of Texas by then-President Donald Trump, issued a nationwide injunction against the requirement in January. At the time, the White House said 98% of federal workers were already vaccinated.

Brown’s ruling was followed by back-and-forth rulings at the 5th Circuit.

In February, a 5th Circuit panel refused to block Brown’s ruling pending appeal.

But after hearing arguments in March, a different panel ruled 2-1 that Brown did not have jurisdiction in the case. The panel said those challenging the requirement could have pursued administrative remedies under Civil Service law. Although the ruling was issued in April, it was not to officially take effect until May 31.

Judges Carl Stewart and James Dennis, who were nominated to the 5th Circuit by Democratic President Bill Clinton, were in the majority. Judge Rhesa Barksdale, a senior judge nominated by Republican President George H.W. Bush, dissented, saying the relief the challengers sought does not fall under the Civil Service Reform Act cited by the administration.

Barksdale is a senior judge, meaning he has a reduced case load and is no longer on active status at the court. Because he was part of the ruling panel he can participate in the reconsideration with the active judges. Of the 17 judges currently listed as active judges at the 5th Circuit, 12 are appointees of Republican presidents, including six nominated to the court by Trump.

When the case was argued before the three-judge 5th Circuit panel in March, administration lawyers had noted that district judges in a dozen jurisdictions had rejected a challenge to the vaccine requirement for federal workers before Brown ruled.

The administration argued the Constitution gives the president, as the head of the federal workforce, the same authority as the CEO of a private corporation to require that employees be vaccinated.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruling to overturn its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision is unpopular with a majority of Americans — but did that matter?

The relationship between the public and the judiciary has been studied and debated by legal and political scholars. The short answer: it’s complicated. There’s evidence that the public has an indirect role in the judiciary, but that might be changing.

In the final opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the court “cannot allow our decisions to be affected by any extraneous influences such as concern about the public’s reaction to our work.”

Polls following the leaked draft of the opinion show approval of the Supreme Court — which was already suffering — slumped even further, driven by those who supported keeping Roe.

The court and public opinion have clashed at times, but they’ve entered into a “symbiotic relationship” over the last 60 years, Barry Friedman suggests in his 2009 book “The Will of the People.” The court doesn’t stray too far from popular opinion.

How that happens and whether it remains true are harder to know for certain. “We don’t have a viewfinder that shows us what the justices are doing,” said Maya Sen, political scientist and professor at the Harvard Kennedy School. “It’s a complicated chicken-and-egg situation where we can try to disentangle these forces, but it’s very hard to do.”

IS PUBLIC OPINION ON ABORTION CLEAR?

Public opinion on abortion is nuanced, but polling shows broad support for Roe and for abortion rights. Seventy percent of U.S. adults said in a May AP-NORC poll that the Supreme Court should leave Roe as is, not overturn it.

Roe is one of “a handful of cases” that people recognize, Sen said, and it’s “recognized as important Supreme Court precedent.”

Only 8% in the May poll said abortion should be illegal in all cases, but many Americans support some restrictions. An AP-NORC poll last year showed majorities of adults say abortion in the second and third trimesters should be illegal in all or most cases, and opinions were closely divided over whether a pregnant woman should be able to obtain a legal abortion for any reason.

“I think many Americans believe that there should be some sort of kind of sliding scale where the right is protected and then as the pregnancy continues, then the interests of the potential life become more significant,” Sen said, adding that Roe allowed for that nuanced thinking.

DOES PUBLIC OPINION FACTOR DIRECTLY IN COURT DECISION-MAKING?

Researchers have found — and some of the justices themselves have acknowledged — that court decisions and public opinion are often aligned, but some experts say it’s probably not a direct link.

The most important thing in decision-making is justices’ “set of political and judicial philosophies that give them preferences over the outcomes of the cases,” said Joseph Ura, political science professor at Texas A&M University. “Everything else is kind of marginal around that.”

Justices themselves experience the same things that everyday Americans do, which makes it harder to assess causality.

“It’s really hard to decipher: was it public opinion that’s driving these decisions or is it just that the justices have preferences and they’re exposed to the same thing that most of us are exposed to?” said Elizabeth Lane, assistant professor of political science at Louisiana State University.

DOES PUBLIC OPINION INDIRECTLY INFLUENCE THE COURT?

Scholars point to judicial appointments and court legitimacy as potential ways that the public has indirect influence on the court.

For one, voters elect a president, who nominates justices, and senators, who confirm them.

“Over the longer run, assuming there’s kind of a reasonable rotation of the justices leaving office for whatever reason that aligns with the party’s historical alternation in power, the court can preserve its alignment with public opinion,” said Ura.

That’s been undermined recently, experts say. By chance and by political maneuvering, a larger number of sitting justices — six of them — were appointed by Republican presidents.

In their dissent, the court’s liberal justices wrote: “The Court reverses course today for one reason and one reason only: because the composition of this Court has changed.”

Justices may also consider how the public will receive a ruling, though the new abortion ruling makes clear some on the court don’t believe that’s an important consideration.

While the court can issue its ruling, it has to rely on other actors — the public, politicians and even lower courts — to accept and implement it, said Charles Franklin, professor of law and public policy and director of the Marquette Law School poll.

“I doubt that the justices wake up every morning and check the polls to see if people agree, but over the long haul, the court does need a level of public support as a mechanism for their rulings being enforced,” Franklin said.

The threshold of support that the court needs might be changing. A reaction from the public or elected officials has “less currency” than it used to because of deepening political polarization, Ura said. A controversial or unpopular decision won’t necessarily raise the ire of a bipartisan coalition.

DOES IT MATTER IF THE PUBLIC’S FAITH IN THE COURT IS LOW?

The court has historically enjoyed consistently positive views among the public. But polling showed confidence in and approval of the court began to dip last year, and it has worsened since the leaked draft. Does it matter if the public’s faith in the court is low?

“The idea of the legitimacy of the court was a way it could sustain itself when it ruled counter to the majority opinion,” Franklin said.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor recently emphasized the need for public faith in the court system. Justice Elena Kagan in 2018 spelled out why: “You know we don’t have an army. We don’t have any money. The only way we can get people to do what we think they should do is because people respect us.”

Michael Salamone, political science professor at Washington State University, explained that “specific support” for the court — what’s measured in polls — can easily fluctuate with reactions to court decisions. But “diffuse support” — faith in the institution’s role in democracy — is historically resilient. It remains to be seen whether that diffuse support will suffer because of the decision to overturn Roe.

“Just based on the amount of rhetoric and the high-profile nature of so many of these decisions,” he said, “I’m wondering if we’ve perhaps reached our limit to that resilience.”

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A 67-year-old Riverside man accused of sexually abusing two girls more than a decade ago is slated to be arraigned Wednesday on more than a dozen felony charges.

Kenneth Donald Callahan was arrested in April following a two-month-long investigation by the Riverside Police Department’s Sexual Assault-Child Abuse unit.

Callahan is charged with two counts of statutory rape and a dozen counts of lewd acts on a minor, with sentence-enhancing allegations of targeting multiple victims in a sex crime.

The defendant, who is being held without bail at the Byrd Detention Center in Murrieta, is slated to be arraigned Wednesday before Riverside County Superior Court Judge Sean Crandell at the Riverside Hall of Justice.

According to Riverside Police Officer Ryan Railsback, Callahan allegedly sexually molested the two victims, whose identities were not disclosed, in the mid-2000s, though the circumstances weren’t specified.

Railsback said the victims, now adults, came forward with the allegations in February, culminating in the SACA investigation.

Detectives aren’t certain whether the defendant had illicit contact with other minors, but he “has been affiliated with Little League baseball in Riverside for many years as a coach and website designer,” the police spokesman said.

Callahan has no documented prior felony or misdemeanor convictions in Riverside County.

Anyone with information about the case or other potential victims was asked to contact the SACA squad at 951-353-7945.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Little doubt remains about what the Supreme Court plans to do with Roe v. Wade. But uncertainty abounds about ripple effects as the court nears a final opinion expected to overturn the landmark 1973 case that created a nationwide right to abortion.

A leaked first draft of the majority opinion in the case, authenticated Tuesday by the Supreme Court, suggests that a majority of justices are poised to toss out Roe. The draft’s provocative rhetoric also is generating concern that LGTBQ advances and other matters based on the right to privacy could be vulnerable in a newly hostile political environment.

“This is about a lot more than abortion,” President Joe Biden warned Wednesday, saying the court’s draft opinion could jeopardize same-sex marriage, access to contraception and LGBTQ rights.

“What are the next things that are going to be attacked? Because this MAGA crowd is really the most extreme political organization that’s existed in recent American history,” Biden said.

Court opinions can change in ways big and small throughout the drafting process. So while the eventual ruling in the abortion case appears all but assured, the written rationale — and its implications — may still be a hotly debated subject inside the court’s private chambers.

The draft’s potentially sweeping impact could be tempered by the other justices, or it could emerge largely unchanged — with what advocates and Biden say could bring even more severe consequences.

The draft opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, a member of the court’s 6-3 conservative majority, argues that unenumerated constitutional rights — those not explicitly mentioned in the document — must be “deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and traditions.” And it says abortion doesn’t meet that standard.

Biden and others are sounding alarms that the same logic could be used to toss out other protections.

The president said he believed the conservative justices on today’s court would, like failed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork in 1987, disagree with the court’s ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut, which said that a right to privacy exists that bars states from interfering in married couples’ right to buy and use contraceptives.

Cases like Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down sodomy laws criminalizing same-sex intimacy, and Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized gay marriage, are based at least in part on that same right to privacy.

Alito, in the draft opinion, explicitly states that the court is only targeting the right to abortion, not those other matters.

“We emphasize that our decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right,” the draft states. “Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”

Obergefell is different from Roe in that hundreds of thousands of same-sex couples have relied on it to wed and created legal bonds, like shared property, inheritance rights and “settled expectations about the future,” said Teresa Collett, a professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law and director of its Prolife Center.

Courts are usually loath to undo that kind of precedent. It stands in contrast to abortion, which is usually “a response to unplanned circumstances,” Collett said.

Obergefell, moreover, relies on the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause as well as the right to privacy.

The current Supreme Court abortion case specifically concerns a Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks — before the “viability” standard set in the 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which itself moved beyond Roe’s initial trimester framework for regulating abortion.

At arguments in December, all six conservative justices signaled they would uphold the Mississippi law, and five asked questions suggesting they supported overturning the right to abortion nationwide, leaving the issue up to individual states.

Only Chief Justice John Roberts seemed prepared to take the smaller step of upholding the 15-week ban, in essence overturning the court’s ruling in Casey, while leaving in place the right to an abortion in Roe.

Until now, the court has allowed states to regulate but not ban abortion before the point of viability, around 24 weeks. The court’s three liberal justices appeared certain to be in dissent.

Still, the language and tone Alito uses overall could encourage more challenges, said Jason Pierceson, professor of political science at the University of Illinois, Springfield. “If the right to privacy is deconstructed or is hollowed out, or is minimized, then those cases in particular have less standing,” Pierceson said.

A challenge to same-sex marriage could come before the high court on religious liberty grounds, for example, such as someone arguing their religious faith prevents them from recognizing same-sex marriage. Cases along those lines have been mostly about exceptions to anti-discrimination laws so far, Pierceson said, “but one could see potentially a broadening of the argument to the fact that maybe same-sex marriage laws are unconstitutional in the first place.”

LGBTQ rights have made rapid progress over the past decade, and public opinion overall has become much more supportive. But especially over the past year there has been a wave of bills in state legislatures aimed at transgender youth sports and healthcare, as well as talking about LGBTQ issues in certain classrooms. Backers of those bills generally argue they’re needed to protect kids and the rights of parents.

Against that backdrop, the draft opinion, if finalized, could “send up a flare” to conservative activists, said Sharon McGowan, legal director at Lambda Legal.

“Overturning Roe will be most dangerous because of the signal it will send lower courts to disregard all the other precedents that exist,” she said.

“It’s starting with abortion. It’s not going to end with abortion,” said Mini Timmaraju, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. “So everyone needs to be very vigilant.”

Critics could also take a page from the anti-abortion playbook, which involved multiple measures over the decades that tackled the issue from different angles, imposed limits rather than sweeping prohibitions and employed unusual strategies like the civil-enforcement mechanism that’s already essentially allowed Texas to ban abortion, said Alison Gash, a professor at the University of Oregon.

“It opens the door for all sorts of stuff that I think we’re probably going to see now that we’ve got a court that seems willing to support that kind of creativity,” she said. “It’s all speculation, but it seems perfectly plausible for us to see Republican experimentation on a whole bunch of policies that could be affected by this.”

Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said that “what comes through loud and clear in the draft” is that the agenda “is not just to get rid of abortion but to ban contraception, to eliminate all the important progress that we’ve made about LGBTQ rights, about the rights of trans children, and also about racial equality.”

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NewsLA | Contributed

A 55-year-old motorist who allegedly struck and killed a woman trying to help an injured wild burro just north of Moreno Valley is due to be arraigned Tuesday on a second-degree murder charge.

Martin Joel Ramirez Hernandez of Mecca was arrested Jan. 5 following a three-week investigation by the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.

Hernandez was slated to make his initial court appearance over a week ago but was not transported to the Riverside Hall of Justice for unexplained reasons. Riverside County Superior Court Judge O.G. Magno scheduled his arraignment for Tuesday.

The defendant is being held on $1 million bail at the Robert Presley Jail in Riverside.

He had been hospitalized for several weeks following the wreck, and during that time, sheriff’s investigators gathered sufficient evidence to obtain an arrest warrant for him.

According to sheriff’s Sgt. Robert Grmusha, the deadly crash happened along Redlands Boulevard, just north of Ironwood Avenue, in an area known as Big Horn Canyon about 11:20 p.m. on Dec. 15.

Grmusha said the chain wreck began when a 2013 Toyota Corolla hit a donkey crossing the two-lane corridor, fatally injuring the animal, which was left lying in lanes.

“The driver of the Toyota moved his vehicle from the roadway and was in the process of calling for assistance when the driver a 2007 Chevy Trail Blazer (stopped and) angled her vehicle in front of the burro in an apparent attempt to prevent a secondary collision,” the sergeant said.

The concerned motorist, 52-year-old Jacqueline Morgan of Moreno Valley, exited her SUV “and was standing near the driver’s side door when she was struck” by a 2007 Nissan Altima driven by Hernandez, according to Grmusha.

“Upon impact, the Nissan pushed the Chevy into the parked Toyota, then careened across the roadway, where it overturned in a nearby drainage ditch,” he said.

Morgan was found severely injured on the road and taken to Riverside University Medical Center. She died four days later.

Hernandez suffered extensive injuries, none of which were life-threatening. He also received treatment at the county hospital, Grmusha said.

The Toyota driver, whose identity was not released, escaped injury, the sergeant said.

According to court records, Hernandez has three driving under the influence cases, all originating in the Coachella Valley, going back a decade. None have been resolved, records show.

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