Cantil-Sakauye hails progress in State of the Judiciary speech

SACRAMENTO -- Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye emphasized the positive during her annual State of the Judiciary speech Tuesday, touting the increased presence of women on the bench and in political office, even as the court grapples with the state's bail system, sexual harassment settlements and pending allegations against an appellate justice.

Several past addresses dwelt on insufficient court funding during the years the state spent digging out of a budget hole. This year's speech focused instead on hot-button topics, such as sexual harassment and policing.

Cantil-Sakauye also praised former Gov. Jerry Brown's judicial picks. During his last year in office, more than half were women and 41 percent were non-white. But she added that while California's judiciary is now "more representative of the local communities we serve," it is also relatively inexperienced.

"A third of our jurists are relatively new to their positions," she said. "Governor Brown breathed new life in to the judiciary when he appointed 600-plus jurists, 200 of those in his final year in office." The rising status of women in Sacramento was on clear display as Cantil-Sakauye was introduced by the first female lieutenant governor in state history, Eleni Kounalakis, followed by the first female Senate President Pro Tempore, Toni Atkins, D-San Diego.

Cantil Sakauye's speech also focused on rolling out new court technology and improving access to justice.

"Thanks to your funding of our innovation grants program, local courts serve as incubators for 50 new projects, including new technology to better access and understand the courts," she told legislators, citing a mobile app, multilingual self-help site, video hearings and video remote interpreters.

Much of this work has focused on online self-help tools and other efforts to help the "four million self-represented litigants" who come into California courtrooms each year. Cantil-Sakauye also cited the need to address racial disparities in policing and gender inequities in the workplace.

Cantil-Sakauye laid out several related challenges facing the court: making sure "income inequality does not translate into a two-tier justice system;" addressing the toll of fines and fees on the poor; and ensuring "workplaces are safe from discrimination and harassment."

The courts themselves are reckoning with years of harassment within their own ranks. The Commission on Judicial Performance has charged Justice Jeffrey W. Johnson of the 2nd District Court of Appeal, Division 1, with misconduct and sexual harassment, including of colleagues on the bench.

After the Judicial Council voted last year to make public the names of judges who settled harassment and discrimination suits with public dollars, it came out that the courts had paid out $600,000 since 2012. On Friday, the council got its first report from a task force Cantil-Sakauye convened to assess the courts' sexual harassment policies.

Cantil-Sakauye also touched on pretrial detention, following several legal challenges to aspects of the state's bail system and the passage of SB 10 last year. That bill to phase out cash bail in the state is on hold pending a referendum on the 2020 ballot.

Earlier this month, a federal judge declared the state's bail schedule unconstitutional, though she declined to enjoin it. Buffin et al. v. City and County of San Francisco, 15-CV4959 (N.D. Cal., filed Oct. 28, 2015).

Another Judicial Council workgroup is looking at pretrial assessment and other issues the courts must grapple with if voters approve the law. Cantil-Sakauye closed by thanking new Gov. Gavin Newsom for his "vision and resolve and commitment to fairness and safety" in proposing $75 million in his budget for courts to develop pretrial detention decision-making tools.