Initiative to block law phasing out money bail qualifies for ballot

A referendum to overturn a new law phasing out cash bail in California has become the first initiative to qualify for the 2020 ballot.

Secretary of State Alex Padilla announced late Wednesday the measure had met its signature threshold. SB 10, which was to go into effect in October, will now be on hold at least until the November 2020 election.

This gives a reprieve to the move than 6,000 bail agents and support staff in California.

“We knew with the momentum against this law from people on all sides of the issue, getting on the ballot would not be the problem,” said Jeff Clayton, executive director of the American Bail Coalition, in a press release. “Now we can move on toward defeating this reckless law.”

SB 10’s author, Senate Majority Leader Robert Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys, said he was “confident” the referendum would fail.

“The bail industry has shown that they will say, do, or pay whatever it takes to protect their antiquated, ineffective scheme,” Hertzberg said in an emailed statement. “We know that private equity firms poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into this campaign — not to protect public safety, or decrease the number of innocent people in jail, but to protect their bottom line.”

The group formed to back the repeal effort, Californians Against the Reckless Bail Scheme, raised $3 million within days of SB 10 being signed in August. Nearly $1.8 million came from surety providers outside California that underwrite in-state bail companies.

The effort spent just $648,000 on signature gathering and is still sitting on $2.3 million. A random sample of the 576,822 signatures showed 409,505 were valid. This is well above the 365,880 needed to qualify.

In press releases, the American Bail Coalition has frequently mentioned that traditionally liberal groups like the ACLU and Black Lives Matter also opposed SB 10. These organizations have said the alternative system laid out for allowing judges to decide which offenders to release could also be prone to racial bias and inconsistent application across jurisdictions.

The ACLU released a statement last year clarifying it opposes the existence of the cash bail industry and efforts to connect its name to the referendum effort.

The state Supreme Court has multiple cases before it challenging different aspects of the constitutionality of cash bail. Another case has been working its way through a federal court in Oakland.

A trade group, the California Bail Agents Association, got a limited right to defend cash bail in that case after the Attorney General Xavier Becerra and others refused to do so. Buffin et al. v. City and County of San Francisco, 15-CV4959 (N.D. Cal., filed Oct. 28, 2015).