HB392 (District Court Amendments)

The original version of HB392 would have created an entirely new court, called the “Constitutional Court,” to hear cases challenging the constitutionality of state laws. The judges on the court were to be chosen by a commission selected by the Governor and then approved by the Legislature.

• After much negotiating, the final version of the bill instead created a new three-judge panel to hear selected cases against state actors. It allows the Attorney General, Legislature, and the Governor to reassign cases against them to a three-judge panel, effectively giving the state actor party two bites at the apple when it comes to the forum that will hear their legal case. The other parties to the case cannot reassign their case to this panel.
• Additionally, the bill gives the Legislature, Attorney General, or Governor the ability to reassign pending cases, no matter the stage of litigation, to the three-judge panel, including high-profile cases currently proceeding against the Legislature, including the abortion trigger ban case and redistricting case involving Prop. 4. Given the Legislature’s recent losses in the courts, its meddling into the structure of our court system gives the appearance of creating new rules that will favor the Legislature when courts weigh whether the laws it passes are constitutional.
• As soon as HB392 passed in the middle of the legislative session, Governor Cox signed it into law, allowing the state to move several lawsuits to the new panel. After these parties challenged the creation of the panel and the reassignment of their cases, the Legislature passed an additional law, HB366, providing that, if the courts find the new three-judge panel unconstitutional, the Constitutional Court outlined in the original version of HB392 will be created instead.