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State Chapters => California => Topic started by: corbe on July 30, 2019, 07:30:17 pm

Title: California governor signs bill on presidential tax returns
Post by: corbe on July 30, 2019, 07:30:17 pm
California governor signs bill on presidential tax returns

By KATHLEEN RONAYNE and ADAM BEAM, Associated Press
 
21 mins ago

 
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California's Democratic governor signed a law Tuesday requiring presidential candidates to release their tax returns to appear on the state's primary ballot, a move aimed squarely at Republican President Donald Trump.
 
But even if the law withstands a likely legal challenge, Trump could avoid the requirements by choosing not to compete in California's primary. With no credible GOP challenger at this point, he likely won't need California's delegates to win the Republican nomination.

While aimed at Trump, the law also applies to candidates for governor. Gavin Newsom said California's status as one of the world's largest economies gives it "a special responsibility" to require tax returns from its prospective elected officials.

<..snip..>

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/california-governor-signs-bill-on-presidential-tax-returns/ar-AAF4Ymc?ocid=ientp (http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/california-governor-signs-bill-on-presidential-tax-returns/ar-AAF4Ymc?ocid=ientp)
Title: Re: California governor signs bill on presidential tax returns
Post by: PeteS in CA on August 06, 2019, 07:36:51 pm
Breaking: Trump 2020, GOP Sue California Over Tax-Return Requirement (https://hotair.com/archives/ed-morrissey/2019/08/06/breaking-trump-2020-gop-sue-california-tax-return-requirement/)

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Now we will finally get an answer to this vexing political question — is Jerry Brown wiser than Gavin Newsom? The state of California will now spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend the law Newsom signed after Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and the GOP sued the state today. At issue is whether California can impose requirements for a federal office not contained in the US Constitution:

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The Trump campaign and Republican Party sued California on Tuesday over a new law requiring presidential candidates to release their tax returns to run in the state’s primary.

One of the suits contends California’s law is “a naked political attack against the sitting President of the United States.” …

The lawsuits argue the law violates the U.S. Constitution by creating an extra requirement to run for president and deprives citizens the right to vote for their chosen candidates. The Constitution puts just three requirements on presidential candidates: That they are natural born citizens, 35 or older and a U.S. resident for at least 14 years.

Brown vetoed a similar bill two years ago, noting that it was fairly obvious that it wouldn’t withstand judicial scrutiny. But even if such a law was constitutional, Brown observed at the time, it would still be a bad idea. What else would states require from candidates for federal office if this precedent got set? High school transcripts? Health records? Spotify lists?

I don't ordinarily associate Governor Moonbeam with wisdom, but he was correct in vetoing this stupidity.
Title: Re: California governor signs bill on presidential tax returns
Post by: Elderberry on August 13, 2019, 06:05:59 pm
Trump Is on the Right Side of the Law, for Once

New Republic By Matt Ford August 8, 2019

https://newrepublic.com/article/154711/trump-right-side-law (https://newrepublic.com/article/154711/trump-right-side-law)

California wants to require him to release his tax returns in order to appear on the 2020 ballot. His legal team has a convincing counterargument.

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President Donald Trump is not generally a fan of the rule of law. He is ignorant of constitutional principles. He’s hostile to checks and balances on his power. He’s authoritarian in style and substance. Federal courts have handed his administration setbacks and defeats at a torrid pace. That makes it all the more surprising to find him on the right side of a legal dispute.

The question at hand is whether California can deny Trump a spot on the state’s 2020 election ballot unless he releases his tax returns; the state passed a law last week to that effect. Trump is the first president in 40 years to refuse to release his returns to the public, and Democrats have searched for them ever since, like knights of the Holy Grail. “As one of the largest economies in the world and home to one in nine Americans eligible to vote, California has a special responsibility to require this information of presidential and gubernatorial candidates,” Governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement after signing Senate Bill 27.

Trump and the California Republican Party filed lawsuits this week to block the law from taking effect. The president argues that the bill is a partisan Democratic effort to keep him off the ballot, which is true. More to the point, Trump’s lawyers argue that it violates the Constitution by imposing qualifications for office for presidential candidates beyond what the Constitution itself says. It’s understandable why many Democrats would want Trump to lose this lawsuit, but there are more pressing reasons why they should hope he prevails.

The Constitution itself only prescribes three qualifications for president: he or she must be at least 35 years old, a natural-born citizen, and a resident in the U.S. for at least 14 years. But those aren’t the only qualifications to run for president.

More at link.
Title: Re: California governor signs bill on presidential tax returns
Post by: Elderberry on August 13, 2019, 06:10:22 pm
Why Challenges to California’s Tax-Return-Disclosure Law Should Fail (Putting Aside Whether They Will)

Verdict -Justia 2 Aug 2019 by Vikram David Amar

https://verdict.justia.com/2019/08/12/why-challenges-to-californias-tax-return-disclosure-law-should-fail-putting-aside-whether-they-will (https://verdict.justia.com/2019/08/12/why-challenges-to-californias-tax-return-disclosure-law-should-fail-putting-aside-whether-they-will)

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Republican Party leaders and President Trump’s legal team have gone to court to block implementation of California’s newly enacted law that denies ballot access to presidential candidates who have chosen not to release their tax returns. Many commentators expected such litigation, and some—such as Berkeley Law Professor John Yoo and St. Thomas Law School Professor Thomas Delahunty in a recent LA Times piece—have asserted that such challenges will, and should, prevail.

I make no claim (as a predictive matter) about what the courts (including the Supreme Court) will ultimately do with this matter, but I am quite convinced (as a normative matter) that the arguments of those who are predicting and advocating for invalidation of California’s law are misplaced or at the very least overly simplistic.

At the outset, let me make clear I do not think enactment of laws like California’s is a good idea. When I wrote about this topic almost three years ago soon after legislative proposals along these lines were first proposed, I noted that if states pursue presidential ballot access requirements in different ways, the concept of a true national election for President (something I support) moves farther away from, rather than closer to, reality. But whether opening, as Professors Yoo and Delahunty put it, “a Pandora’s box of state electoral meddling” violates the Constitution is a far different matter. The reason—and the deep historical and structural flaw in facile arguments about the unconstitutionality of California’s law—is that the Constitution doesn’t provide for (even though it also doesn’t foreclose, assuming a sufficient number of states agree) a national presidential election free from state-level selfish manipulation. So, for example, when a state decides to move from a winner-take-all allocation for its electors to a district-by-district approach (or vice versa) because of electoral-college-outcome consequences, that may be bad business, but it isn’t necessarily bad (i.e., unconstitutional) law.

Challengers to California’s law make a few big legal arguments. First is that laws like California’s violate First Amendment freedoms to form and operate political parties. According to Professors Yoo and Delahunty, “allowing California to restrict who can appear on primary ballots interferes with the right of the parties to choose their leaders.” Second, challengers invoke U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, a 1995 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down an Arkansas law that prevented congressional candidates who had already served a certain number of terms in Congress from appearing on congressional election ballots in the state. The Court reasoned that states had no authority to impose additional requirements beyond those mentioned in the Constitution for the office of U.S. representative or senator and that preventing the names of long-serving federal legislators from appearing on the ballot amounted to an additional requirement for congressional officeholding. The same kind of argument, detractors say, applies to California’s tax-return-disclosure law; it reflects an impermissible attempt by a state to add qualifications, beyond those mentioned in the Constitution, to the office of President.

One narrow distinction of Thornton might also be that there was no way for someone who had served in Congress to undo that past service so as to qualify for the Arkansas ballot, whereas any candidate who wants to can comply with California’s tax-return-disclosure requirement.

More at link.
Title: Re: California governor signs bill on presidential tax returns
Post by: PeteS in CA on August 13, 2019, 10:15:41 pm
The writer of the Justia.com article, Vikram David Amar, has proposed a plan to end-around the Electoral College (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact#Interstate_compact_plan), another obvious anti-Trump measure. Amar is a very partisan commentator. The webpage bio of Amar gives no indication of his bias:

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Vikram David Amar is the Dean and Iwan Foundation Professor of Law at the University of Illinois College of Law on the Urbana-Champaign campus. Immediately prior to taking the position at Illinois in 2015, Amar served as the Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and a Professor of Law at the UC Davis School of Law. He has also had teaching stints at three other law schools affiliated with the University of California: the UC Berkeley School of Law; the UCLA School of Law; and UC Hastings College of the Law.

As for Matt Ford, well the tone of his article pretty much reveals he is very far from being a Trumpster.

That is not to say who is correct. But Amar is the one who did not self-reveal his bias and who is heading up an effort to frustrate the US Constitution's design of of the Electoral College. The EC was designed to make difficult what Amar wants to enable, a few populous states or cities oppressing and exploiting less populous states and rural regions.