Action likely tomorrow on challenge to anti-tax initiative

The Supreme Court is likely to take some action at its conference tomorrow on an original writ petition filed by California’s Legislature and its Governor seeking to prevent next year’s November ballot from including an initiative that would make it more difficult to enact new taxes. The petition — in Legislature v. Weber — is on the list of matters to be considered at tomorrow’s conference.

The court last month asked for a preliminary opposition to the writ petition. It could have simply summarily denied the petition without requesting the opposition. (Rule 8.487(a)(4).)

The court has a number of action options tomorrow. They include:

• 1. Summary denial of the writ petition without comment. (E.g., here and here.)
• 2. Summary denial of the petition without prejudice to re-filing it in a lower court. (E.g., here and here.)
• 3. Summary denial with an explanatory statement by the court and/or a separate statement by one or more justices.
• 4. Issuing an order to show cause, returnable in a lower court, thereby requiring a decision on the merits in the lower court. (E.g., here.)
• 5. Issuing a straight order to show cause, setting an expedited briefing and oral argument schedule to have an opinion issued before June 27, 2024, which the petition identifies as when the Secretary of State will place the initiative on the November 2024 ballot absent action by the court. (E.g., here, here, and here.)
• 6. Issuing a Palma notice to enable an expedited opinion without oral argument. (See here and here.)
• 7. Issuing a straight order to show cause, setting a non-expedited briefing schedule, but ordering the initiative not to appear on the November 2024 ballot, leaving open the possibility of the initiative appearing on a later ballot. (See here and here.)
• 8. Issuing a straight order to show cause, setting a non-expedited briefing schedule, allowing the initiative to be placed on the November 2024 ballot, and leaving open the possible dismissal of the petition as moot if the initiative is defeated by the voters.

My guess is that the court is most likely to choose either option 3 or 5 (not having looked into the merits, I’m not going to guess as to which one of those two is more likely) and that option 6 is the least likely.