California Allows Challenges to Blanket Judge Disqualifications

The California Supreme Court will allow courts to scrutinize systematic attempts to disqualify judges with an opinion that partially overruled nearly 50-year-old precedent.

“Blanket abuses” of the state’s judicial disqualification process can be challenged, Justice Joshua P. Groban said in a unanimous opinion Thursday. The ruling overturns aspects of the state high court’s 1977 ruling in Solberg v. Superior Court of San Francisco, which affirmed that a requested disqualification will be automatically granted so long as the motion is timely and properly presented.

Groban said that such abuses of the procedures that allow for judges to be disqualified ...