Anti-SLAPP Claim Over UC Hastings Name Change Properly Dismissed

A San Francisco trial judge correctly denied an anti-SLAPP motion to dispatch a lawsuit filed by descendants of S.C. Hastings over a decision to remove the name of the founder of the West Coast’s first law school, a state appeals court ruled Monday.

Descendants and alumni of the school—named after California’s first chief justice and the state’s third attorney general—sued the state and the college’s dean and directors to block the school from being renamed “University of California College of the Law, San Francisco.” Legislation (AB 1936) enacted last year allowed removing Hastings’ name after an investigation concluded ...