Law school name change should not be retroactive

Your 3/10/23 article entitled "How should renamed law schools appear on bar?" fails to mention that the change back to UC Hastings College of the Law from UC College of the Law, San Francisco, occurred after several alumni - including those who are suing the law school and the State to reinstate the "Hastings" name and hereditary Hastings family seat on its Board of Directors - objected to having the State Bar website asserting that they graduated from UC College of the Law, San Francisco. That litigation is currently before the Court of Appeal.

One of those alumni, retired Contra Costa County Superior Court Judge Richard Flier, was told on the phone by the State Bar that the initial change in the State Bar's listing to UC College of the Law, San Francisco, was ordered by the California Supreme Court, which supervises the State Bar.

However, the information on the State Bar website about members' law school alma maters is from "information obtained from applicants through the admissions process ..." (Sander v. State Bar, 58 Cal.4th 300, 305 (2013). See Cal. Bus & Prof. Code §6060(e)(1) (that information may include the ABA accredited law school that conferred a J.D. degree).

Besides listing the law school's new name as applicable to graduates up to and including the Class of 2022 being an inaccurate statement of fact (no one has yet graduated from UC College of the Law, San Francisco), the new law enacting the name change (AB 1936) does not clearly indicate that it is meant to be retroactive. See generally City of Emeryville v. Cohen, 233 Cal.App.4th 293, 308 (2015).

And the State Bar's statements quoted in your article make no mention of whether its Board of Trustees will consider what to do when ongoing litigation in California's courts challenges the constitutionality of the name change.

Should such a judicially contested legislative name change be automatically implemented by a body that is an administrative arm of the California Supreme Court?

Members have a right to have their information that is publicly posted by the State Bar accurately reported (see Sander v. State Bar, supra, 58 Cal.4th 300. See generally Sander v. Superior Court, 26 Cal.App.5th 651, 657 (2018) (some applicant information "shall not be disclosed pursuant to any state law,..."); Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code §6026.11), and they should not have their current personal, employer, and/or law firm media rendered inaccurate, without prior notice, by the summary action of the licensing agency whose duty it is to report the name of the law school from which they actually graduated.