My most recent filing is my petition for review by the Supreme Court of California. Good summary of the issues as they have developed.

At the California Sixth District Court of Appeals, I filed both an opening brief and a reply brief.

My homepage describes the suit as pressing the first viable guarantee clause claim, but in the briefs, this claim is postponed. The case against the requirement that candidates for sheriff be members of the incumbent regime is first made on well established First and Fourteenth Amendment grounds (equal protection of political rights). Only then do I note that this winning case is also a winning guarantee clause case: that the particular political rights invoked have already been recognized by the Court to be fundamental requirements of republicanism.

In my briefs I for the most part allocate these different halves of the guarantee clause argument to the different briefs. The Opening brief concentrates on the First and Fourteenth amendment grounds for overturning California's sheriff restrictions and only briefly makes the guarantee clause claim. The Reply brief beefs up the First and Fourteenth Amendment arguments, then concentrates on cementing the guarantee clause claim.

In case anyone wants to use my suit as a template for pressing similar suits elsewhere in California, I am also posting my pleadings. Feel free to use any and all case materials. Because the suit is based entirely on appeals to the federal Constitution, my briefs should also be usable by anyone who wants to raise a similar suit in any other state that restricts candidates for sheriff to members of law enforcement. The only other such state I am aware of is Georgia.

Sheriffs in Georgia cannot deny gun rights to law abiding people, hence they have substantially less discretionary power than Sheriffs in California. This would require some alteration to the briefs, but the main argument remains unassailable. The civilian side of the civilian/law-enforcement relationship is one of the two main viewpoints to be represented in races for sheriff. To ban one of the main contending viewpoints from the ballot violates the republican principle that it is the people who choose who is to represent them, not their representatives.

Petition for state supreme review           Opening brief, 6th dist.           Reply brief, 6th           Pleadings, superior court

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