court battle

California Supreme Court justices hammered Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco over his seizure of hundreds of thousands of Proposition 50 ballots in a pair of back-to-back hearings on Monday, appearing poised to order the ballots returned and sharply limit the sheriff’s power to snatch similar election materials in the future.

Bianco, a Republican who came in fourth in this spring’s crowded California gubernatorial primary, carted off truckloads of ballots from the Riverside County Registrar of Voters in February, after securing a warrant based on claims that the office allowed fraudulent votes in the special election to redraw California’s congressional districts last fall.

According to a sworn declaration by one of Bianco’s sergeants, armed deputies from Riverside County’s Special Investigations Bureau, Emergency Response Team and SWAT unit were sent to sweep up pallets of sealed votes and bring them to the Moreno Valley Sheriff’s Station on Feb. 26 — a day after California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and Secretary of State Shirley Weber ordered Bianco to stand down.

In the days that followed, deputies began their own ad hoc recount — an activity they’d never been trained for, and which state officials and civil liberties groups say flies in the face of the plain language of the state’s election law that says “in no event shall ballots be moved.”

Voters sued. So did Bonta. In oral arguments on both cases Monday morning, California‘s seven Supreme Court justices appeared at times flabbergasted by claims that the move was not only permitted but blessed under state law — and that California’s top cop had no power to block it.

“I’m just wondering … why didn’t the sheriff’s office contemplate the available routes under the elections code for resolving the alleged disparity?” asked Associate Justice Goodwin H. Liu. “Isn’t there a procedure for resolving this?”

“Certainly there are other paths,” said Bianco’s attorney, Bradley W. Hertz.

Hertz, who argued the sheriff’s case after Riverside’s county counsel largely sided with the plaintiffs, said Bianco simply exercised his legal discretion.

“This wasn’t come in with guns blaring and take the documents,” Hertz said.

The dispute began over handwritten notes made as part of an experimental program to increase voter confidence in the county’s election procedures. That informal tally fell about 46,000 votes short of the official count, prompting accusations of fraud.

Officials contend the discrepancy between the computer count and the paper tally is “a good deed that went punished” — the result of exhausted officials being handed an extra-credit project they couldn’t quite execute.

“It was a pilot program that the registrar implemented at the request of the public, on top of all their other duties, to do these handwritten logs to try to track 350,000 pieces of mail that come in,” said Dale Larson, who represented Riverside County Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco at the hearing.

Both times it was attempted, the hand tally produced a significant undercount, prompting officials to cancel the pilot, Larson said.

Bianco and his allies insist the difference is evidence of maleficence, and that criminal law authorizes the sheriff to sidestep the state’s detailed election code and the attorney general’s sweeping authority to get to the bottom of it.

The justices repeatedly pressed on Hertz to explain how the general authority conferred to the sheriff under criminal law could trump the specificity of the state’s election rules — a position that would seem to upend foundational rules of American law.

They also cast doubt on Bianco’s “counterintuitive” claim that Bonta’s “supervisory” role over the state’s elected sheriffs was merely advisory and did not carry the authority of law.

“It’s not just counterintiitive — again, we’ve said a million times, we’ve got to just look at the plain language,” said Associate Justice Joshua P. Groban. “Nobody would think that’s what ‘supervised’ means, so why should we think that here?”

The court battle has played out with the UCLA Voting Rights Project bringing the suit on behalf of voters, and the Riverside County district attorney’s Office and the California State Sheriffs’ Assn. backing many of Bianco’s claims.
But it has also pitted the sheriff against the registrar, who was named as a co-defendent in the UCLA suit despite siding with plaintiffs in all but a narrow subset of its claims.

In court filings, Riverside County Counsel Minh C. Tran co-signed claims that Bonta and the voters had it right, carving out a narrow disagreement over whether Tinoco should have ignored the sealed warrant and faced arrest rather than allow ballots to be taken. They also questioned whether he was obligated to go to court himself to stop the seizure.

UCLA hit back at that claim, saying it was “the responsibility of the registrar to go to jail rather than hand over the ballots.”

“I know that’s strong medicine,” said Chad W. Dunn of the UCLA Voting Rights Project. “The registrar has a duty to announce publicly and get into court immediately, or at least allow the public to get into court immediately to contest the movement of ballots before it occurs.”

The decision looms as the Trump administration has moved to restrict mail-in voting and signaled it could contest results of the upcoming midterms — partisan flash points UCLA urged the court to address.

“This is bound to be repeated again,” Dunn said. “These are the public’s ballots, that’s why the election code is crafted the way it is, so that the public have a right to weigh in.”

Paramount Skydance’s top antitrust attorney told a judge Friday that David Ellison’s company would voluntarily delay its proposed $111-billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery at least until mid-August amid a legal challenge brought by 12 state attorneys general.

The states, led by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, have asked a judge to issue a temporary restraining order that would prevent Paramount from finalizing its deal as the court battle ramps up. Paramount made the pledge in hopes of avoiding such a ruling that would tie its hands — and give the states an early win in the litigation.

Federal District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín said she would decide by Wednesday whether to issue a restraining order.

Tech scion David Ellison has been a regular in Washington D.C. this year as he races to consolidate Warner Bros. Discovery — less than a year after his family bought Paramount.

(Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)

Friday’s hearing in Oakland opened the first chapter in the fight over the blockbuster deal that both sides agree would dramatically reshape Hollywood. Two century-old film studios — with rights to Harry Potter, Batman, “Top Gun,” “The Big Bang Theory” and “Game of Thrones” — would be combined, and HBO and CNN would come under new ownership.

Antitrust attorney James H. Weingarten, of the Washington law firm Milbank, represents California and the other states. He told the judge it would be impossible to untangle the two companies if they are allowed to combine.

“If this merger is allowed to close … the harms begin,” Weingarten said. “The job losses, the synergies — that’s the fancy word for ‘we’re going to save money and there might be job cuts.’ All of that process starts rolling.”

Bonta filed the suit Monday, alleging the proposed merger — the largest in Hollywood in decades — would violate the U.S. Clayton Antitrust Act, a 112-year-old law to prevent mergers that weaken competition and raise costs for consumers.

The lawsuit alleges antitrust violations in three markets where the two companies currently compete: wide-release films, potential blockbuster movies and cable television, where the combined entity would own more than 50 cable channels.

Paramount shares fell 4.3% to $8.75 on Friday. Warner stock slipped 1.5% to $26.87 — below Paramount’s offer of $31 a share.

More than two dozen lawyers attended Friday’s hearing, including from Colorado, Oregon, Washington and New York who came to support California, which is leading the case.

Paramount, represented by antitrust lawyer Jeffrey L. Kessler, argued a temporary restraining order was not necessary. The two sides should instead focus on the next big step — whether the judge issues a preliminary injunction, he said. Such a ruling could delay the deal for months.

Kessler said Paramount should be allowed a hearing to defend against a preliminary injunction by the end of August. The company wants to wrap up the litigation by late September to avoid a higher payout to Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders.

In a show of confidence earlier this year, Paramount offered Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders a “ticking fee” of 25 cents for every quarter after Sept. 30 — until the deal was done. Such payments would cost Paramount more than $7 million a day, which Kessler called a “massive injury.”

California Atty Gen. Rob Bonta is leading a coalition of 12 state attorneys general to try to halt Hollywood’s biggest merger in decades.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

Paramount would also have to pay Warner a $7-billion breakup fee should the deal fall apart.

Kessler argued the states had not made a sufficient case that competition would be harmed. “We don’t think they’ve come close to jumping through that hurdle,” Kessler said.

Earlier this year, Kessler represented the state attorney generals in their winning case against Live Nation Entertainment. A jury found that Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, operated as a monopoly. This time, Kessler is representing corporate interests.

Prominent Los Angeles litigator Daniel Petrocelli is representing Warner Bros. Discovery.

Paramount hired attorney Jeffrey Kessler to lead its antitrust defense.

(Noah Berger / Associated Press)

The case was assigned to Martínez-Olguín Wednesday after Paramount requested an earlier judge be removed because he formerly worked as a labor attorney.

Martínez-Olguín said she inherited the case because she was already overseeing another lawsuit dealing with the merger — not because Paramount had agitated for a change.