California Business & Industrial Alliance v. Becerra
Annotate this CasePlaintiff California Business & Industrial Alliance appealed dismissal after a trial court sustained the demurrer of defendant Xavier Becerra, in his official capacity as Attorney General of the State of California, without leave to amend. Plaintiff, a lobbying group for small and midsized businesses in California, filed this action seeking a judicial declaration that the Labor Code Private Attorneys General Act of 2004 (PAGA) was unconstitutional under various theories, and an injunction forbidding defendant from implementing or enforcing PAGA. On appeal, plaintiff asserted a single theory: that PAGA violated California’s separation of powers doctrine by allowing private citizens to seek civil penalties on the state’s behalf without the executive branch exercising sufficient prosecutorial discretion. The Court of Appeal rejected this theory for two reasons: (1) the California Supreme Court found in Iskanian v. CLS Transportation Los Angeles, LLC, 59 Cal.4th 348 (2014), that “PAGA does not violate the principle of separation of powers under the California Constitution;” and (2) even if Iskanian did not require this result, the Court would reach it anyway through application of California’s preexisting separation of powers doctrine.
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