The Brief

Pasadena, Sierra Madre and Los Angeles County on Wednesday announced that they had filed separate lawsuits in L.A. County Superior Court against Southern California Edison for its alleged role in the deadly Eaton Fire.

The lawsuits accuse SoCal Edison’s equipment of starting the fire in Eaton Canyon, citing reports that the utility filed with the California Public Utilities Commission that a “fault was detected” at or near the same time.

The cities and county also point to photos and videos that show fire near the base of SoCal Edison transmission towers.

The lawsuits are looking to cover damages from the Eaton Fire, which burned more than 14,000 acres, destroyed more than 9,000 structures, and killed at least 17 people in January. L.A. County alone estimates that damages will total hundreds of millions of dollars or more.

Sierra Madre Mayor Robert Parkhurst said in a statement that the fire devastated irreplaceable wilderness areas that are central to the city’s identity and character.

"What makes this disaster particularly troubling is its preventability," Parkhurst said in a statement. "The documented weather warnings provided Edison with ample notice of the dangerous conditions developing in our community."

A spokesperson for SoCal Edison told LAist that they “are reviewing the lawsuits that were recently filed and will address them through the appropriate legal process.”

The details

The cities and county are looking to cover costs for destroyed infrastructure, parks, road damage, cleanup efforts, overtime for employees and lost taxes, among others.

“We are committed to seeking justice for the Altadena community and the taxpayers of Los Angeles County,” Dawyn R. Harrison, the county counsel who filed the case, said in a statement.

All three lawsuits accuse SoCal Edison of having “negligently failed” to safely inspect and maintain its equipment — and the vegetation around it.

They also allege that SoCal Edison didn’t de-energize all of its electrical equipment in and around Eaton Canyon, despite being warned of the destructive windstorm and extreme fire weather conditions days in advance by the National Weather Service.

“Despite its knowledge of extreme fire risk, [SoCal Edison] deliberately prioritized profits over safety,” the lawsuits allege.

The utility is accused of having a “history of safety failures,” with the lawsuits pointing to at least eight other wildfires, including the 2017 Thomas and 2018 Woolsey fires, which burned more than 370,000 acres altogether.

Lisa Derderian, public information officer for Pasadena, said in a statement that the city has a responsibility to pursue appropriate compensation for the costs of rebuilding the public infrastructure the community relies upon.

The legal aid organization that was denied a tenant aid contract last year by the Los Angeles city attorney now appears set to receive the contract after all.

On Tuesday, the L.A. City Council voted 12–1 to approve a nearly $107 million eviction defense contract with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, or LAFLA, which oversees the Stay Housed L.A. program.

The vote had been previously scheduled but delayed twice. Last week, council members said they wanted to put off the vote because of a last-minute confidential memorandum sent to council offices by the L.A. City Attorney’s Office.

LAist obtained screenshots of the memo, which show City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto warning the council against awarding the contract to the foundation. The memo argues the city should “reconsider the award of such a large contract to a frequent litigant against the city.”

Sources with knowledge of the contract dispute told LAist that Feldstein Soto opposes LAFLA’s selection in part because the legal aid nonprofit has joined lawsuits in which the city is a defendant. In one case, the city was accused of failing to adequately respond to its homelessness crisis. The city ended up agreeing to a settlement deal requiring nearly 13,000 new shelter and housing beds.

LAFLA leaders said lawsuits against the city are handled independently from the tenant defense work the city has contracted the organization to do.

“There is no conflict of interest here, because Stay Housed L.A. and any affirmative litigation LAFLA brings against the city are entirely separate,” said Barbara Schultz, LAFLA’s director of housing justice. “We do not use Stay Housed L.A. funds for anything except for Stay Housed L.A. services.”

The backstory 

With rents spiking faster than wages for many Angelenos, tenants can quickly find themselves on the brink of homelessness. The city’s elected leaders have tried to stop more renters from becoming unhoused by connecting them with rent relief and free legal defense against eviction.

LAFLA has headed the city-funded program Stay Housed L.A. since 2021. The program brings together legal aid providers to offer attorneys and legal advice to renters facing eviction.

Such legal representation is rare. One study found that 95% of landlords have an attorney in eviction court while the vast majority of tenants do not.

Last summer, the City Council and mayor approved a new five-year contract with LAFLA and its partners. But Feldstein Soto refused to sign it, arguing the contract should have gone through a competitive bidding process.

The city responded by putting out a request for proposals. After reviewing submissions, the city’s Housing Department recommended that eviction defense services continue to be overseen by LAFLA. The council approved that recommendation Tuesday after deliberating in closed session.

In addition to the $107 million award to LAFLA, the council voted in favor of giving $42 million to the Housing Rights Center for emergency rental assistance. The council approved nearly $22 million for the Liberty Hill Foundation to oversee tenant outreach and education.

Another tenant rights organization, Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, was approved to receive $6.6 million to strengthen awareness and enforcement of the city’s ordinance against tenant harassment.

Much of the funding comes from Measure ULA, the city’s so-called “mansion tax” on real estate selling for more than $5.3 million.

Calls for more transparency

In a statement emailed to LAist, City Attorney spokesperson Karen Richardson said the amount of funding being awarded exceeds the budget of some city departments.

“The eviction defense program is a City program and is in zero jeopardy,” Richardson said. “What is in question is a $177 million blank check to LAFLA and its partners without the reports and invoice review that is required by law.”

After rejecting the contract last year, the City Attorney’s Office launched an audit of LAFLA. LAist asked for details about the audit’s findings but did not receive a response.

In a statement after last week’s vote was delayed, Schultz said LAFLA has provided the city with ongoing reports about Stay Housed L.A. operations.

She said Stay Housed L.A. “has consistently provided anonymized detailed data on the individual case level to the city, without compromising client identities, along with detailed invoicing.” The program has “never refused to provide any data or invoicing information requested by the Los Angeles Housing Department,” she said.

Stay Housed L.A. leaders said the program currently retains about 160 tenants each month for legal representation and provides legal advice to another 575 tenants per month. They said about 55% of the tenants they’ve represented have remained in their homes and another 40% have settled cases on favorable terms.

During Tuesday’s meeting, some City Council members expressed frustration over how much information the program has reported on its outcomes.

“The transparency requirements in these contracts, when I look at them, does not meet the level of what we as a body should be requiring of organizations that we are giving money to,” said Councilmember John Lee, who cast the lone vote against awarding the contract.

Tuesday’s meeting included voting on a flurry of amendments. Among the amendments that passed, there were calls for new reporting requirements and annual funding renewals to be withheld pending performance reviews.

What it all means for renters

LAFLA is currently overseeing the Stay Housed L.A. program through a temporary contract extension set to expire March 31. If the council hadn’t approved the new contract this week, program leaders said they would have needed to quickly stop offering eviction defense services.

The program already has had to be judicious about taking on new clients, Stay Housed L.A. leaders said. They said they didn’t want to commit to defending tenants in months-long eviction cases if the city could abruptly pull funding.

“When [the previous] contract was disrupted, it did impact our ability to serve more and more vulnerable tenants,” said Joanna Esquivel, Stay Housed L.A.’s program manager at the Legal Aid Foundation. “We are really excited to continue doing this critical work.”

The City Council passed a “right to counsel” program last year, aiming to provide low-income tenants with the right to a free attorney in eviction court. The program does not yet guarantee an attorney to all qualified renters but is trying to expand access in phases by building up the Stay Housed L.A. program.

A California appeals court this week sided with state utility regulators in a case seen as crucial to the spread of solar panels on the rooftops of California homes.

Three appeals court judges ruled that the California Public Utilities Commission was justified in reducing the rate utilities pay customers for excess energy the customers’ solar panels generate.

Environmental advocates who brought the case say the decision will exacerbate California’s energy affordability crisis. Regulators believe it vindicates a decision they took “to ensure that rooftop solar programs remain fair, sustainable and aligned with California’s clean energy goals,” CPUC spokesperson Terrie Prosper said Tuesday.

The case centered on the state’s “net energy metering” program, which governs how much solar customers are paid for excess power from their panels. Earlier versions of the program guaranteed customers the retail rate, which is how much utilities charge other customers when they resell the energy.

But a 2022 commission decision reduced this payment by about 75%. The commission’s decision backed utilities’ position, which was that those who have rooftop panels don’t pay their fair share of costs such as maintaining the grid, shifting the expenses disproportionately to non-solar customers. The decision resulted in a significant drop in new customers signing up for rooftop solar.

Advocacy groups sued over the decision, including the Center for Biological Diversity, The Protect our Communities Foundation, and the Environmental Working Group. They argued that commissioners didn’t properly take into consideration the benefits to disadvantaged communities and customers of having local energy generation.

The case reached an appeals court, which applied, in a decision siding with commissioners, a legal standard granting them significant deference. The Supreme Court of California then unanimously ruled last August that the lower court should not have applied this standard and must delve more deeply into the substance of the arguments.

Roger Lin, senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said this week’s decision is “disappointing” and the groups are “evaluating all of our options.” They can appeal again to the state supreme court.

“The whole reason the utilities created the ‘cost shift’ narrative was to preserve their profits,” Lin said. Under state law, utilities can earn a rate of return on everything they build, which amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars from ratepayers every year. They can’t earn that return on customers’ rooftop solar.

The decision comes amid renewed attention on California’s energy affordability crisis. Golden State residents pay the second highest rates in the country for energy after Hawaii, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Ratepayers routinely admonish state utility regulators for their high bills at public meetings. And Gov. Gavin Newsom recently announced an upcoming replacement of the head of the utilities commission as part of a move to focus on bill affordability.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Not long after Steve Clarke found out there was a push to require voter ID at the polls, he began canvassing for signatures in Sacramento.

Many of the residents he encountered were angry, Clarke said. He began volunteering for Reform California, the group behind the initiative, last year after feeling frustrated with homelessness and the cost of living.

“They want the same things: Integrity back in our elections,” he said.

Clarke and his wife are among the thousands of activists pushing for a Republican-backed voter ID ballot initiative that supporters are working to put on the November ballot. Organizers last week said they’ve submitted more than the nearly 875,000 signatures required to qualify the measure — 1.3 million in all. As officials work to verify the signatures, opponents are organizing a campaign built around President Donald Trump and his push for a similar nationwide proof-of-citizenship voter requirement.

Voting rights groups say voter ID laws unfairly disadvantage poor people and Black and Latino voters who are less likely to have official identification, and that creating more requirements is a way to make it harder for people who typically support Democrats to vote. They also point to the history of poll taxes, a fee that Southern states used to prevent Black and poor white Americans from voting after the Reconstruction era.

Recent polling has found popular support for some voter ID laws nationwide and in California. A 2025 poll from the UC Berkeley Institute of Government Studies showed a majority of Californians surveyed support voter ID at the polls — 54% overall approved of showing proof of citizenship each time a vote is cast.

The poll numbers underscore the need for the initiative, supporters say.

“We’ve structured this initiative based on what voters across the political spectrum would want,” said Assemblymember Carl DeMaio, a Republican from San Diego who is leading the initiative.

Under the proposal, mail-in voters would be required to provide the last four digits of a government-issued ID, such as a driver’s license number. The initiative would also require the secretary of state and county election offices to verify voters’ registration for each ballot cast.

Currently, voters are only required to provide an ID and Social Security number when they register to vote, but not when they cast a ballot. Most states, however, require or recommend that voters present an ID when voting, according to a report by the National Conference of State Legislatures, though only 10 states are considered strict about it.

Experts agree that voting fraud is rare. A 2021 investigation by The Associated Press found fewer than 475 potential cases of voter fraud out of 25.5 million ballots cast in six battleground states in the 2020 presidential election, after Trump touted false claims the election was stolen.

Opponents of the proposed initiative have stressed the rarity of voter fraud.

“California elections are already incredibly secure,” League of Women Voters of California Executive Director Jenny Farrell said. “There is no evidence of widespread noncitizen voting that would justify adding these strict requirements.”

Voting rights groups also claim the initiative would pose needless barriers and suppress voter turnout. League of Women Voters and other organizations plan to form a campaign committee to oppose the initiative.

Labor gears up for voter ID fight

Another potential opponent is organized labor, which is expected to campaign heavily against the initiative. That messaging will also likely focus on Trump’s support for similar legislation currently stalled in Congress that would require voter ID in federal elections.

California Labor Federation President Lorena Gonzalez told CalMatters that unions will argue the measure is unnecessary.

“The California GOP in this situation are just taking Trump talking points,” she said. “I assume that it will be very clear that it’s a Trump fantasy.”

Popular support for some new voter requirements could complicate Democrats’ response to the California measure, said Mike Gatto, a former Democratic assemblymember who authored a failed ballot initiative on homelessness. He said messaging that’s centered on Trump, rather than voter suppression, would likely play better with voters.

“There’s always going to be that inconvenience of somebody, but I don’t know if that will be enough in the minds of voters to counter the positive messaging on this,” Gatto said.

Gonzalez said she could not say how much unions will spend campaigning against the initiative.

“It’s hard to tell because we don’t know what the initiative will look like. But again, this is a priority for us,” Gonzalez said.

A separate union-supported ballot initiative that seeks to tax the state’s billionaires could make it difficult for labor unions to prioritize a campaign against a voter ID initiative.

If voters were to approve it, California’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates the new voter ID requirements would cost the state and local governments tens of millions of dollars to implement.

Initiative supporters started gathering signatures in September and have raised $10 million from wealthy and small-dollar donors, according to DeMaio. It’s primarily been funded by Julie Luckey, who chairs the initiative committee and is the mother of tech billionaire Palmer Luckey. The committee, Californians for Voter ID, raised $8.8 million in 2025. The committee worked with DeMaio’s political organization, Reform California, one of the state’s biggest grassroots fundraising groups for conservative causes.

Last year, DeMaio unsuccessfully introduced a bill proposing similar voter requirements but it had little chance of success in the Democratic-controlled Legislature.

In general, it’s much harder, and more expensive, to pass an initiative than to defeat one in California. Since 1912, voters approved just 35.5% of ballot initiatives, according to the secretary of state’s office.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.