SAN JOSE — A judge Friday dealt a blow to the campaign to unseat embattled Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky by temporarily halting efforts to gather signatures on petitions aimed at putting his recall on the June ballot.

The petitions were approved earlier this week by Shannon Bushey, Santa Clara County’s registrar of voters, clearing the way for the campaign to begin collecting signatures.

But Persky sought a restraining order, which retired Orange County Judge Marjorie Laird Carter granted Friday afternoon, barring the campaign from continuing to collect signatures for the next 12 days, until an Aug. 23 hearing.

In court documents, Persky argued that because he is a state officer, California’s secretary of state, not the county registrar, should have decided whether the campaign’s signature-gathering effort could proceed. At the next hearing, Laird Carter will consider Persky’s request to order the county to withdraw its certification of the recall petitions. That would force proponents to start over with the secretary of state.

Friday’s ruling was a rare victory for Persky, who became a national pariah last summer after giving a relatively lenient sentence to former Stanford athlete Brock Turner, who sexually assaulted an unconscious, intoxicated woman outside a campus fraternity party.

Turner’s six-month county jail sentence and the victim’s powerful statement ignited a national outcry, prompted new state laws in California, and touched off the ferocious recall movement, which forced Persky to stop hearing criminal cases.

“We’re really pleased,” said Elizabeth Pipkin, one of the judge’s attorneys after Friday’s ruling. “It’s very important that the rule of law be respected.”

Stanford law professor and recall campaign chair Michele Dauber said she was disappointed but determined not to give up.

“The recall is going forward no matter how much taxpayer money Judge Persky decides to waste on frivolous lawsuits,” she said. “He cannot stop this movement of women who are upset he doesn’t take sexual violence against women seriously.”

But Persky has also mounted an attack on another legal front, arguing that if he winds up losing his seat, the governor should fill the vacancy — not voters. As it stands now, the question of who would replace the judge would appear on the same ballot as the recall. If the courts allow the recall to proceed, the campaign has until Jan. 16 to gather 58,634 signatures to qualify for June’s ballot.

However, even if the county registrar and by extension recall advocates win the case, any further delays would shorten the window for collecting more than the required number of signatures to ensure the measure qualifies.

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Persky’s lawyers were first in line early Friday at the court clerk’s office in downtown San Jose. Their request for a temporary restraining order against Bushey’s office was first assigned to local Judge Peter H. Kirwan. But Kirwan, who has endorsed Persky’s effort to keep his job, recused himself.

“My guess is most judges here, if not all, will recuse themselves,” the judge told lawyers involved in the case.

Late Friday morning, the presiding judge tapped retired Laird Carter to hear the case.

In 2014, a visiting judge was brought in from Alameda County to hear an election-related legal dispute between then-Judge Diane Ritchie and challenger Matt Harris. Ritchie was subsequently voted out of office.

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If the recall succeeds, voters in June would be able to immediately pick Persky’s replacement, just as they did when they ousted Gov. Gray Davis in 2003 and chose Arnold Schwarzenegger to replace him out of 134 other candidates. Whoever is elected would serve out the rest of Persky’s six-year term, which ends in 2022.

Only four judges have been recalled in California history, one in San Francisco in 1913 and three on the same ballot in Los Angeles in 1932. The ballots included the simultaneous election of successors. In 1986, three state Supreme Court justices were removed from office, but it was during a general election, not a recall.

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