David A. Carrillo(L) and Brandon V. Stracener(R) California Constitution Center at Berkeley Law.. Courtesy photos Citizen Enforcement Laws Are a Pandora's Box
"If these laws survive, someday soon California will see a citizen enforcement law on the ballot as an initiative. It will be a grave threat to a minority group, who will fail to defeat the proposition because (as a minority) they lack the votes," say David A. Carrillo and Brandon V. Stracener of the California Constitution Center at Berkeley Law.
July 29, 2022 at 03:22 PM
6 minute read
California recently passed a law that allows private citizens to enforce the state's gun regulations (SB 1327), adapting a Texas law that allows private citizens to enforce that state's abortion restrictions (SB 8). Both laws will serve as test cases for whether citizen enforcement laws can serve their chief aims: avoiding judicial review and permitting the government to indirectly do things it is prohibited from doing overtly.
The U.S. Supreme Court's preliminary decision on the Texas law in Whole Woman's Health v. Jackson suggests that citizen enforcement laws indeed can evade federal court review. If such laws cannot be meaningfully challenged in federal court, states can use them to escape an important limit on their powers, leaving only state courts as the last bulwark against delegating police powers to citizens. This scenario risks undermining the nation's federalist design and poses a dire threat to individual liberty in every state.
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