LA County cities asks state Supreme Court to take up zero-bail challenge

Attorneys for 22 cities have filed a petition asking the California Supreme Court to review the Los Angeles County Superior Court’s implementation of a zero-bail policy last year that eliminated cash bail for all but the most serious of crimes.

The Petition for Review, filed Sept. 22, alleges zero-bail fails to uphold the Superior Court’s “mandatory constitutional and statutory duties to give paramount importance to victim and public safety in adopting such bail schedules” and is based on “faulty, insufficient data,” according to the filing.

The cities opposing zero-bail include Arcadia, Artesia, Azusa, Beverly Hills, Cerritos, Covina, Downey, Duarte, Glendora, Industry, Irwindale, La Mirada, La Verne, Lakewood, Lancaster, Norwalk, Paramount, Rosemead, San Dimas, Santa Clarita and Santa Fe Springs.

“Rather than meeting statutory and constitutional obligations, LASC capitulated to political and legal pressure, dispensing with all money bail for nearly all misdemeanors and substantial numbers of felonies,” wrote attorney Kimberly Hall Barlow in the petition. “These actions and the resulting schedules thus are a violation of law.”

A spokesperson for the Superior Court declined to comment due to the pending litigation.

The Superior Court implemented its new bail schedule, referred to as the Pre-Arraignment Release Protocol, or PARP, last October. The protocol, commonly described as zero bail or no-cash bail, eliminates the financial requirements for release from custody prior to arraignment for a majority of misdemeanors and some felonies. Police officers instead are instructed to “cite and release” or “book and release” suspects for those offenses and the defendants are order to appear in court later.

Serious and violent crimes, such as murder, kidnapping, robbery and assault with a deadly weapon, are not eligible and still retain previous bail amounts. Law enforcement also can request a bail deviation for certain crimes, where a magistrate will review the case to determine if releasing the individual poses a risk.

Once an arraignment is held — up to 30 days later for released defendants — a judge can remand a defendant to custody or impose monetary bail as usual.

In 2021, the California Supreme Court ruled it is unconstitutional to hold someone solely because of their inability to pay bail. Then, six plaintiffs challenged the use of cash bail locally through a 2022 class-action lawsuit against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the Los Angeles Police Department. A Superior Court judge in that case granted a preliminary injunction in May 2023 requiring the county to revert to the zero-bail policy in place during the pandemic until the case goes to trial.

The opposing cities subsequently sued the Superior Court in an attempt to stop the implementation of the bail schedule, but an Orange County judge, who stepped into oversee the case, ruled against the cities in December and again in May. In his ruling, Judge William Claster determined the case could not move forward because the Superior Court had effectively implemented zero-bail in response to an injunction filed in a separate case.

“The Court does not have jurisdiction to take any action that may interfere with a case pending in another department of the same court,” Claster wrote.

The cities then attempted to take the case to the Court of Appeals, but the appellate court declined to hear it in early September.

The recently filed Petition for Review states the Supreme Court “may be the only manner by which the cities can obtain any review of the (bail) schedules.” It argues LASC used flawed data from a pandemic-era pilot program as the basis for the implementation of PARP. The attorneys also argue the uniform removal of a monetary requirement for bail does not comply with language in the state constitution, according to the petition.

“The safety of a quarter of the state’s population is at stake and justifies at least this court’s full attention,” Barlow wrote.

In a statement, Kathleen Galvin-Surbatovic, the spokesperson for the city of Whittier, said the hope is that the Supreme Court will either review the merits of the case, or transfer the matter to the Court of Appeals for consideration.

“Particularly concerning is the data relied on by the Los Angeles Superior Court for its current implementation of the zero bail schedules; the prior pilot program data showed a failure-to-appear rate of 42% for pre-arraignment release — meaning that those released before they appeared before a judge did not show up in court as promised,” she said in an email.

Last year, the Superior Court released a data dashboard tracking the implementation of PARP as part a transparency initiative, but the dataset does not appear to track key information, such as “failure-to-appear” rates. The data, however, shows that 93% of the cases reviewed by a magistrate in the first year resulted in the individual being held until arraignment. Those reviews happened in about 30% of the total bookings.

In April, the Superior Court touted the policy’s successes, with CEO David Slayton saying at the time that only a few of those booked under the system had recommitted new offenses.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly cited outdated data from the Superior Court’s website.