The Brief

Third grader Lenny Rodriguez enjoys playing and reading in his school’s yard, but it can get extremely hot outside.

“Sometimes, I’ve experienced heat waves. My feet were burning even when I had my shoes on,” Rodriguez says. “The playground is missing some shade.”

A dire need

Rodriguez’s school, Beachy Avenue Elementary, is in Arleta, near Pacoima and Panorama City. The temperature in these neighborhoods can hit highs well over 100 degrees during different parts of the year. The asphalt in the San Fernando Valley has registered 142 degrees on its surface. But schools all over the Los Angeles Unified School District are feeling the effects of rising heat.

According to the Los Angeles County Climate Vulnerability Assessment, extremely heat-prone regions of L.A. could see 30 or more additional days with temperatures above 90 degrees by 2050.

And that hot weather could stretch further into the school year, says V. Kelly Turner, associate professor of urban planning and geography at UCLA and associate director of the Luskin Center for Innovation.

“That's just going to be how it is in the future,” Turner says.

Turner and her colleagues have studied extreme heat and the role design plays in how people experience it. They found that “schools are some of the hottest places in communities” as a result of how they’ve been built.

Campuses all over the district, from West Hollywood to Watts, are asphalt jungles, and fixing it, says Turner, is “not just as simple as putting up trees.”

The indoors are a problem too: Many schools still lack air conditioning.

Turner says it’s important to think about schools as community resources, especially for kids who come from historically disinvested and disadvantaged communities.

“If kids live in a home without air conditioning or a cool place to go on hot days, then come to school, which also lacks cooling inside and shade outside, their core body temperatures are never getting down to safe levels,” Turner explains. “That's going to cause them to have difficulty concentrating … and it's going to be very, very hard for a child to learn in that context.”

Research shows that heat can negatively impact students’ ability to learn, which results in lower academic performance. Conversely, other studies have found that students benefit from time spent in green spaces and that exposure to nature can help kids focus better.

The demand for cooler schools

Parent groups and climate advocates have been trying to bring attention to this issue for years — and many say action has been a long time in coming.

Robin Mark, the L.A. program director for Trust for Public Land, says it’s important for people to understand that greening schools is not a landscaping project, it’s about school infrastructure that supports student learning, well-being and climate resilience.

“It’s not a nice-to-have,” Mark says, “It’s not really cool that the yard is so pretty. That’s not what we’re going for. What we’re going for is that we’re creating environments for students to thrive.”

First graders at Brainard Elementary demonstrate the very lengthy process of lining up, socially distanced, outside.

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The district's efforts so far

Last year LAUSD took a big step forward in addressing concerns. In June 2022, district officials allocated $58 million to outdoor education initiatives, including greening. A few months later, then-LAUSD board president Kelly Gonez authored a resolution calling for Superintendent Alberto Carvalho to develop a plan to ensure school campuses are at least 30% green by 2035.

But Gonez says she is still waiting. The plan was supposed to be given to the board in February.

"We need a systemic approach from the district," Gonez says. "Not to do this in a piecemeal fashion, because we know that's far from sufficient. It requires a really significant transformation in most cases because of the way the playgrounds have been set up. It's not aligned to the 21st century environment our kids live in.”

According to a district spokesperson, the Green Schoolyards For All Plan will be given to the board members in the coming weeks. It will include a prioritized list of the highest-need schools.

Since the pledge to green schools, district officials say they’ve met with stakeholders and experts, updated their data systems to include a pollution indicator and surveyed 349 people about what they think should be prioritized.

District officials say that there have been various greening projects underway that include modernizing campuses, creating school gardens and planting new trees. But the reality is that it will take a lot of money and a lot of time to reach the goals outlined by the Green Schoolyards initiative.

The funding challenge

More than 600 LAUSD campuses do not meet that 30% threshold. Even if the district prioritizes elementary schools, as promised, more than 200 of those campuses are less than 10% green. And some of the schools require infrastructure upgrades before greening can even happen.

LAUSD secured $400 million from Measure RR to modernize schools, including green efforts, and collected $100 million in other funds.

Funding has also come through partnerships with nonprofit groups and state grants, but it's nowhere near enough. District officials say it’s going to take an additional $4 billion to ensure all schools have enough green space and students are kept cool.

Officials say additional funding might have to come from another bond, which will require voter buy-in.

But even if LAUSD had all the money it needed, it would take decades to complete all of these projects. During a recent school board meeting, member Nick Melvoin estimated it could take up to 15 years to green the top 50 highest-need campuses, based on a district calculation that it would take about three to four years to update around a half-dozen schools.

“We are by no means mission accomplished,” Mark says. “There's a lot of learning on all of our sides about what we can do on a school campus, so that everybody's needs are being met, particularly the students and the teachers."

'Cool' pavement v. trees

While district officials have yet to provide the school board with a final plan for how they will achieve these green goals, some advocates have already questioned how the money is being spent.

For example, some of the ongoing bond investments include $300 million for "playground and campus exterior upgrades" that include the use of "cool pavement" coating that is designed to bring down surface temperatures. But parent advocates like Angelenos for Green Schools co-founder Aleigh Lewis argues that natural spaces should be prioritized.

She says understands the need for pavement for sports and other play but believes trees, grass and other natural surfaces should be prioritized over repaving surfaces with a reflective coating.

“You have all this money and you could do so much more for every school and cool them down,” Lewis says.

A community survey shared with the LAUSD school board in mid-October showed that stakeholders, including parents, teachers and students, want to prioritize trees and shade structures over other cooling efforts.

Gonez says there is room for all of it. Some schools have asked for the specialized cool pavement as part of much needed repaving but she agrees that the district “can't just do that alone.”

One small step to a greener school yard

Beachy Avenue Elementary, where Lenny Rodriguez goes to school, now has a new “reading garden” where students can sit outside in a cool, natural space. There are two blue circular platforms with a stretch of grass in between, and new trees that, once they are full grown, will offer shade for students.

Beachy Avenue Elementary's new reading garden is one of the first initiatives toward greening the school to meet the district's 30% goal by 2035.

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“I think this project is really helping our schools get better with shade on global warming,” Rodriguez says. “So, overall, I think this is a good thing for us in this district. We’re going to grow up with it.”

But that garden was five years in the making, notes Beachy Principal Lisa Dachs-Ornelas. She says she called on Gonez, her district board member, to help secure more than $100,000 for the reading garden.

And, still, there’s so much more that needs to be done. According to the district’s Greening Index, Beachy is almost 80% asphalt.

“It is very hot out here and the kids sometimes don't play," says Dachs-Ornelas. “They'll go under a shade and then they'll just socialize with a friend because it's too hot to play kickball on the asphalt.”

Gonez acknowledges the district is coming late to the climate crisis. Though some LAUSD schools might have been able to add a garden or plant some trees, green campuses haven’t been a district priority, she says, largely due to other issues officials had to handle: overcrowding, aging facilities and the pandemic.

But now that there is some collective attention on the issue from the state and local officials, Gonez emphasizes: “I think we need to do more, and I think we need to do more faster.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom claimed a major victory for his signature mental health court on Thursday, but critics say his math appears more than a little fuzzy.

Posting on X, Newsom wrote the CARE Court program “has now helped 10,000+ Californians get the lifesaving support and care they need and deserve – reaching (his administration’s) goal of 7,000 to 12,000 ‘initially served.’”

The administration’s most recent data on the program, which Newsom introduced with much fanfare in March of 2022, says CARE Court has reached just 1,470 people with treatment agreements or plans as of June. The data describes an additional 4,887 people who didn’t receive a formal CARE agreement or plan, but ended up getting services outside of the program. CARE is short for Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment Court.

The number of people included in treatment agreements or plans continues to fall far short of the administration’s initial projections, which estimated that 7,000 to 12,000 people would qualify for the program.

The figure is up from September 2025, when a CalMatters investigation found that only 528 people had been enrolled in CARE agreements or plans, and that many of those enrollees continued to struggle. A new in-depth report from the state, which provides detailed data on CARE Court participation, also shows that people who use CARE Court are experiencing better housing outcomes and increased access to mental health treatment and medication.

“I’ve had clients say, ‘This is the longest I haven’t been arrested,’ and that gives me goosebumps,” Katia Benthale, deputy public defender for Ventura County, said in a news release from the governor’s office touting CARE Court.

The governor’s office referred CalMatters’ questions to the state’s Health and Human Services Agency. Rodger Butler, a spokesperson for the agency, said CARE Court has reached more than 10,000 people – a conclusion the administration came to by adding together the 5,484 petitions filed as of June, plus the 4,887 people who first engaged with CARE Court but ended up getting services elsewhere.

But he acknowledged that math could double-count people, as some individuals may have been the subject of a petition and then received services elsewhere. And he acknowledged that it includes people who had their petitions dismissed without receiving services, and those whose petitions are still being processed and have yet to receive services.

Even so, the state stands by its framing of CARE Court as a success.

“Taken together, the picture is clear: thousands of Californians living with serious mental illness have been connected to care because of CARE,” Butler said in an email.

Advocates — both those who want more people ordered into treatment and those who view involuntary treatment as a violation of someone’s civil liberties — continue to criticize the program.

‘I though it would be the answer’

Family memberswhose loved ones live with untreated serious mental illnesses were once among CARE Court’s biggest cheerleaders. As the years pass, these families have increasingly voiced frustration with the program.

“The governor, I don’t know what county he’s seeing these results in,” said Gigi Crowder, chief executive of NAMI Contra Costa.

Crowder said the families she knows whose loved ones most need the help — unsheltered with severe mental illnesses — are not being served by CARE Court.

“Those family members are still pretty frustrated because they thought it would be the answer and it has not been,” she said. “Shoot, I thought it would be the answer.”

Disability rights advocates have long criticized CARE Court as being a poor use of state funds, and part of a larger swing toward forced treatment. They, too, are questioning the numbers that the administration is touting as evidence of its success.

They believe families are giving up on the program, a trend they see reflected in state data. It shows the proportion of CARE Court petitions filed by someone with a personal relationship to the participant dropping from 67% to 26%.

“It’s not surprising because CARE Court is not delivering on what it told families it would,” said Monica Gilbert, associate director and senior counsel of Public Policy for Disability Rights California. Newsom’s administration attributes that decline to a concurrent increase in petitions filed by mental health providers, likely due to more outreach, training and technical assistance.

Gilbert and Keris Myrick, the organization’s board chair, both sat on the state’s CARE Act working group and said they weren’t given a chance to review the report before it was published.

“Are we really involved, or are we window dressing?” Myrick said.

Is CARE Court helping with housing?

The new CARE Court report says that more people are using the program, and many are getting housing and services, but it also flags areas of concern. The time it took for courts to rule on CARE Court petitions varied widely from county to county, with median waits reaching three months in more densely populated areas. Counties also continue to dismiss large numbers of CARE Court petitions. Among the hundreds of people dismissed from CARE Court, nearly three-quarters received no county mental health or addiction services.

More than half of participants with active CARE plans or agreements experienced what the report called an “event that may signal a need that was not addressed,” while in the program. Those events included jail or prison encounters, conservatorships, hospitalizations and death.

When Newsom launched CARE Court, a major selling point was that it would help people living on the streets with serious mental illness. But CalMatters reporting found that it struggled to help unhoused Californians.

About a quarter of CARE Court participants were homeless when they started the program, according to the new state report. That low number is notable, said Samuel Jain, a senior policy attorney at Disability Rights, because the “governor’s whole thing is it’s supposed to be a panacea to solve the homelessness crisis.”

Of those enrolled in CARE Court, many participants’ housing situation changed for the better, the report said. The proportion of CARE Court participants living in temporary or permanent housing grew from 53% to 71%. Nearly half of all people who started CARE Court while homeless became sheltered or housed.

After five months in CARE Court, 87% of participants were accessing a mental health service and 61% were receiving medication, according to the report.

Legislators have called CARE Court a work in progress, and each year they pass new laws designed to fix perceived gaps in the program. Two such laws made it onto the books this year. One makes it easier for first responders, such as firefighters and EMTs, to refer people into CARE Court. The other lets family members give information about a participant to that person’s CARE Court treatment team, in the hope that it might be helpful for their treatment.

Two other bills, which would have created a direct path between CARE Court and the mental health conservatorship program, died before reaching Newsom’s desk.

Gov. Gavin Newsom this week vetoed a bill that would’ve stopped the Department of Motor Vehicles’ practice of keeping excess proceeds from the sales of towed cars.

The DMV’s handling of the money came under scrutiny following a CalMatters investigation that showed the agency had kept millions of dollars in proceeds without notifying the cars’ owners.

People who can’t afford the fines and fees after their cars get towed sometimes leave their vehicles at the storage yards, which can sell cars to recoup the costs through what’s known as a lien sale. The DMV can keep the money.

State law does not require the agency to tell people that they could claim their money, and after three years, owners lose their right to the money.

The bill by state Sen. Kelly Seyarto, a Republican from Murrieta, would have forced the DMV to turn those funds over to the state Controller’s Office to be treated like unclaimed property. It was passed by the Legislature.

“I support the author’s goal of helping vehicle owners recover excess proceeds that rightfully belong to them,” Newsom wrote in his veto statement. “However, this bill divides responsibility between two state agencies without establishing a clear process.”

The governor said the bill would force new costs without clearly getting more funds into the hands of car owners. He noted that the DMV has now created a tool to make it easier for car owners to find out if they’re owed money. The agency’s tool mimics one created by CalMatters.

As originally written, Seyarto’s bill would’ve required the department to notify owners within 14 days of receiving the surplus, but that provision was removed as the bill was amended in the legislative process.

Most lien sales don’t cover the towing and storage fees. However, CalMatters found that the DMV collected more than $8 million from nearly 5,300 cars sold at auction between 2016 through the fall of 2024.

The U.S. Supreme Court formally opens a new term on Monday, with big test cases on religion, bans on semi-automatic weapons, climate change, immigration and — waiting in the wings — election law cases.

It used to be that the first Monday in October marked the beginning of a new Supreme Court term. And that's still true, technically. But for all practical purposes, the formerly quiet summer months after the court finishes its opinions in all argued cases no longer exists.

Indeed, as Georgetown University law professor Stephen Vladeck observes, the number of emergency appeals has ballooned during the Trump administration, while at the same time, fully briefed and argued cases have dropped precipitously over the years.

"So now we have twice as many full court rulings on emergency applications as we have on the merits docket," Vladeck observes, adding, "That is a very new phenomenon."

The difference is that decisions on the emergency docket are rendered quickly, with little briefing, no oral arguments, and ultimately little or no explanation of the ruling. In contrast, a decision on the merits is typically worked on for months after full briefing and lengthy oral arguments.

Of late, the court seems to be making an effort to offer some limited explanations of its emergency docket rulings, but lower court judges, both liberal and conservative, complain that isn't enough to provide them with adequate guidance. And the Trump administration often takes what used to be the rare step of getting to the Supreme Court by leapfrogging over lower appellate courts that the administration views as hostile.

With that backdrop, here are the cases the court will be hearing in the coming weeks:

Climate change

The opening case, to be argued Monday, tests whether state and local governments can sue energy companies for allegedly deceiving the public about the damaging effects of fossil fuels.

"The theory is that the energy company defendants deceived the public for many years," says Deepak Gupta, who teaches at Harvard Law School and practices law in Washington, D.C. What the companies were telling the public for years, he says, is "the opposite of what the company's own scientists knew, and the local cost of that deception."

That said, however, most court observers see the case as an uphill battle for environmentalists.

Religion

Perhaps the biggest case of the term so far, in terms of ripple effects, involves religion, a subject on which the court's conservative supermajority has dramatically changed its legal doctrine. Indeed, for the better part of a century, the Supreme Court emphasized the First Amendment's separation of church and state, with the free exercise of religion playing an important — but secondary — role. Since President Trump's appointment of three new justices, however, things have changed.

"It's literally the opposite of what the law was not that long ago, and it's just a complete shift," observes Michigan State University law professor Frank Ravitch.

The court may, in fact, be on the verge of requiring taxpayers to fund religious schools that refuse to admit LGBTQ students and parents. Last term the justices deadlocked on the issue in a separate case after Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself because of a conflict. The 4-4 tie vote automatically left in place an Oklahoma Supreme Court decision that barred overtly religious charter schools from being funded by the taxpayers. But this year the issue is back in a case from Colorado. The case centers on a state law that provides universal preschool programs that are open to all students, regardless of race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, sexual orientation or gender identity.

St. Mary Catholic Parish in Littleton, Colo., wants the state funding guaranteed in the state's universal pre-K law. But it doesn't want to admit LGBTQ students or students with gay or trans parents. The parish maintains such admissions would violate the church's right to the free exercise of religion. The state counters that funding the church school would violate the state's anti-discrimination law.

The court's conservative majority has, in multiple cases, ruled in favor of religious exemptions from generally applicable laws. Until now, however, the court has never said that religious schools are entitled to full taxpayer funding. But given the current court's views, and with Justice Barrett participating in the Colorado case, taxpayers could well end up having to fund religious schools in Colorado and elsewhere.

Bans on semi-automatic weapons

In December, the court will hear a case testing whether state and local governments violate the Second Amendment right to bear arms when they ban semi-automatic weapons, like the AR-15.

Former Solicitor General Don Verrilli, Jr. articulates two different ways to look at the question.

On the one hand, the AR-15 "can deliver upwards of 100 bullets per minute" without any enhancements, and 500 bullets per minute with various enhancements. On the other hand, he notes that millions of Americans own AR-15s, "and it would be quite disruptive to suggest all these Americans ... would be dispossessed of their weapons."

Lawyer Erin Murphy, who has litigated lots of cases on behalf of gun owners, says the "single most important question is who gets to decide what guns you have," and he argues it makes no sense to say, "You've got this right against the government, but the government decides which arms you can get."

Immigration

The Trump administration has repeatedly taken positions in immigration cases that no other administration has adopted. Most recently, the court announced it would hear arguments and decide a case testing whether the Department of Homeland Security may deport migrants to so-called "third countries," when their countries of origin refuse to accept them. Since Trump began his second term, his administration has deported thousands of people to third-world countries where they have no connections, may not speak the language, have often been jailed and allegedly subject to torture. The court has twice blocked lower court decisions that prevented the third-country policy, and now the justices have said they will hear arguments about the policy in December.

In a second immigration case, the issue is the Trump administration's policy of detaining undocumented immigrants without a bond hearing, regardless of how long they have been in the U.S.

Possible cases: The 10 Commandments and much more

There are many more cases waiting in the wings that the justices may take up. Among them is a case that seeks to reverse a nearly half-century-old Supreme Court precedent; it bars public schools from posting the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms. Now, however, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana and Alabama have passed laws that conflict with the Supreme Court's 1980 ruling, and the lower courts are split on the question. That split all but guarantees that the Supreme Court will revisit the question.

Another case that could make it to the court this term tests whether states can regulate Kalshi, the $40 billion prediction market behemoth that has sports fans betting on everything from the next pitch to the point spread or, at the other end of the spectrum, betting on the outcome of Supreme Court cases.

And then there are cases that the Trump administration has slow-walked for close to two years, after quickly losing in the lower courts. Prime examples are the administration's attempt to deny medical research grants to Harvard University, and other attempts to deny security clearances to law firms, as well as seeking money damages from law firms Trump views as hostile. Earlier this year, the Justice Department told a federal court in Washington that it was dropping the law firm cases. But the next day it went back to court to reverse course.

"They don't want to take up cases that they're going to lose, but on the other hand, they have a boss who wants everything taken up there [to the Supreme Court]," says Stanford University law professor Pam Karlan.

Georgetown's professor Vladeck adds that in his view, "The real story of the upcoming term hasn't been written yet because what we're going to look back on as the biggest cases of the term … are not on the docket yet."

Elections

More immediately, the probability is that, like it or not, the justices will be drawn into the election. The Trump administration has sought to influence elections in numerous ways, and it's unclear what efforts the administration might take going forward.

Democrats have a battalion of lawyers lined up to deal with problems on the ground — whether it's moving polling places at the last minute or having federal agents stationed near polling places. But if there are serious voting problems, they will likely end up at the Supreme Court's door — on the emergency docket.
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Malibu is pushing back the next phase of its speed camera program along a deadly stretch of PCH to November. The 60-day warning period was originally set to start in November, where drivers going 11 or more miles per hour over the speed limit will get a warning instead of a fine.

The delay, the city says, is needed so adjustments can be made to camera installations.

Yesterday, a Nobu worker was killed about a block from the upscale Japanese restaurant on PCH. CBS LA reports that a juvenile had crashed into the employee's parked vehicle.

When fines start

Malibu officials announced the delay of the program's warning phase last week after a testing period in September recorded around 100,000 speeding violations in less than 10 days.

Enforcement at the 10 cameras along a 21-mile stretch of Pacific Coast Highway will start sometime after the end of the warning period. According to the city, violations will result in fines, but not driver’s license points or insurance penalties.

Why Malibu added speed cameras

Since 2010, traffic collisions on that part of PCH have killed more than 60 people, the city says. In 2023 alone, there were 220 reported crashes there, with 93 injuries and seven deaths — including four Pepperdine University students who were standing along PCH when a driver hit and killed them. The driver, who is charged with murder, is scheduled to stand trial beginning Dec. 1.

Following that incident, Malibu City Council declared a local emergency over dangerous conditions posed by reckless and speeding drivers.

In 2024, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed SB 1297 into law to allow Malibu to install the speed cameras