California Supreme Court strikes down law seeking release of Trump's tax returns

Gabrielle Canon , Sam Metz | The Desert Sun

Show Caption Hide Caption Trump eyes SCOTUS to decide income tax case After a federal appeals court ruled that President Trump's tax returns can be turned over to investigators, the matter may come before the Supreme Court. (Nov. 8)

The California Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a new law that would have required President Donald Trump to release five years of his tax returns in order to appear on the March 2020 primary ballot in California, delivering a setback to Democrats nationwide who’ve spent years fighting for the financial documents.

Writing that it exceeds the Legislature's authority and is "unenforceable," the court ruled the new law violates provisions of the California Constitution guaranteeing voters can choose freely from nationally recognized candidates.

"This additional requirement, however, is in conflict with the constitution’s specification of an inclusive open presidential primary ballot," California Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye wrote in the ruling. "The Legislature may well be correct that a presidential candidate’s income tax returns could provide California voters with important information," she added, but according to the state's constitution, "ultimately, it is the voters who must decide."

Democrats nationwide have pursued Trump’s tax returns since the 2016 election, when he became the first major-party nominee to not release the documents since President Gerald Ford didn’t in 1976.

The ruling blocks Senate Bill 27, a new law signed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom in July. Republican lawmakers unanimously opposed the bill in both the state Senate and Assembly. It requires all presidential and gubernatorial candidates to file copies of at least five years of their tax returns with the secretary of state in order to appear on the state’s primary ballot. It was written to go into immediate effect to impact the upcoming presidential primary in March 2020.

The court’s decision comes less than a week before the deadline the bill had imposed. If it hadn’t been struck down, all candidates for president – including Trump and the more than a dozen still running in the Democratic primary – would have been required to send copies of their returns by Nov. 26.

Rather than release his returns, Trump’s lawyers said he would likely choose not to appear on the ballot if the law was implemented.

Nearly a dozen states have considered legislation to compel the president to release his tax returns, but California became the first to revise their state election code to require candidates release their tax returns to appear on the ballot.

The California Republican Party later filed challenges to the law in both state and federal court, arguing the law violated both the state and U.S. Constitutions.

The Trump campaign’s challenge to the law was among five cases subject to the ruling, including a similar suit filed by the Republican National Committee and the Republican Party of California arguing the bill would strip voting rights from Californians who support the president.

In his ruling in October, U.S. District Judge Morrison C. England of the Eastern District of California blocked the law on constitutional grounds, writing that the court “understands and empathizes with the motivations that prompted California” to take up the issue, but had raised concerns about the dangerous precedent that could be set by the law.

The argument echoed similar concerns raised by former California Gov. Jerry Brown when he vetoed a similar bill in 2017.

In their appeal of his decision, Newsom and California Secretary of State Alex Padilla emphasized that financial disclosure requirements are essential to protect democracy. Advocates of the legislation, including authors Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, and Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, also argued that the bill did not violate the constitutional requirements and that the law was not intended to target Trump.

“This was never about any single candidate, but about maintaining and strengthening the norms of our democracy," Wiener said in July, adding that candidates should be required to show they will not use the highest office for personal gain.

Harmeet Dhillon, an attorney working on the federal challenges to the California law, welcomed the California Supreme Court’s ruling.

“We would have a Tower of Babel and a cacophony if we allowed individual states to mandate additional requirements beyond those imposed by the United States Constitution,” she said.

Dhillon, who is also the RNC National Committeewoman representing California, said the courtroom battles over the law were a waste of state resources and taxpayer dollars. She chided Democrats for defending a law she said was “clearly unconstitutional.”

“The further compounding of this bad law by the attorney general and the secretary of state seeking to defend, enforce and require it just shows California lawmakers and California Democrats having no concern over the constitutionality of their actions,” she said.

Dhillon said Trump’s efforts to fight against the release of his tax returns don't raise questions about the content, but are a “matter of principle.”

“The president, like many, doesn’t think he should legitimize illegitimate actions by the government,” she said.

Calling the ruling "a defeat for democracy and transparency," Sen. Wiener said Tuesday he thinks the court got it wrong. "I think the court has taken an extreme interpretation of the state constitution," he said, adding that the tax-disclosure requirements should have been viewed as administrative filing necessities, similar to things like a candidate's address and phone number.

"The court has spoken so we will respectfully disagree," he said but emphasized though this case has reached its conclusion, the national battle over Trump's returns is not over.

"Other states should absolutely pass these laws and try to enact them," he said. "All it takes is one state to prevail." Despite the setback, Wiener said the legislative process still allowed the public to see how far the president and his supporters were willing to go to stop the release of his returns.

"This legislative process exposed everyone as either supporting government transparency or not supporting gov transparency," he says. "I don’t know what they are afraid of, but they are afraid of something – so we just have to keep fighting."