The Brief

A Costa Mesa woman has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for registering her dog to vote, and then voting on behalf of the dog in two elections — a political stunt that made headlines.

How we got here

Laura Lee Yourex, 62, registered her dog, Maya Jean, to vote in 2020 and voted on behalf of the dog in the 2021 recall election of Gov. Gavin Newsom and the 2022 primary. It all came to light when she self-reported the fraudulent voting last year and the DA filed criminal charges against her.

The context

Proponents of stricter requirements for voter identification point to incidents like this as evidence that it's easy to skirt California’s voting rules. Registering pets, or fake pets, has been a favored tool for some of these activists. Defenders of the state’s election rules say fraud is extremely rare.

What's the penalty?

Yourex pleaded guilty earlier this month in Orange County Superior Court to one misdemeanor charge of knowingly registering a “non-existent person to vote.” In exchange, the district attorney’s office dismissed the remaining four felony charges against her.

Initially, Yourex faced up to six years in state prison. But after her plea deal, she will face no more than one year in county jail. She is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 16.

Why this matters

The dog incident comes at a time of heightened debate over voter ID. Congress is discussing several bills that would require people to prove their identity and/or citizenship in order to vote. At the same time, Californians are likely to vote on a ballot initiative this fall that would require voters to show ID at polling places and provide partial numbers of that ID (social security, driver’s license, or other state-issued ID) on mail-in ballot envelopes.

Go deeper

Voter ID could be headed to the California ballot in November

In a city that thrives on blockbuster sequels, the November election is set to plunge Los Angeles voters back into a heated debate around the city’s “mansion tax.”

The California secretary of state on Tuesday verified that backers of a statewide initiative to overturn the tax have collected enough signatures to place their measure on the ballot.

But other efforts to reform the tax — without ending it — may also end up going before city voters. Here’s what Angelenos need to know to make sense of the various efforts to re-do or nix the tax.

‘Mansion tax’ basics

Measure ULA was passed by city voters in 2022. It raises money for tenant aid programs and affordable housing construction by taxing real estate that sells for more than $5 million, annually adjusted for inflation.

It was widely pitched as a “mansion tax.” But it also applies to apartment buildings and other commercial properties. Economic studies have linked this additional cost with depressed housing development in the city relative to other parts of Southern California without the tax.

Measure ULA backers dispute those findings, blaming high interest rates and other economic trends for L.A.’s housing slowdown.

Supporters initially said the measure would raise up to $1.1 billion per year. But actual revenue has proven far lower. Three years after it first took effect, the tax has raised just over $1.1 billion total.

Some of that money has gone toward defending tenants in eviction court, as well as relief to struggling tenants through the city’s ULA Emergency Renters Assistance Program and ULA Income Support Program.

On the construction side, Measure ULA has helped subsidize about 800 units of affordable housing so far. The City Council will soon take up approval of a new round of developments, largely funded by Measure ULA. In total, those new projects seek to build 1,528 units of affordable housing and preserve affordability in 3,713 existing units.

Proponents of the measure say these numbers prove Measure ULA is working, and voters should not exempt new apartment buildings from the tax or overturn it.

Joe Donlin, director of the United to House L.A. coalition, said the initiative backed by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association poses a real threat to the city’s progress on addressing housing affordability.

“They want to eliminate revenue for affordable housing, the type of housing that makes it possible for working families, working people of California, to live here and work here and thrive here,” he said.

The measure that just made the ballot

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association has opposed Measure ULA from Day 1. The organization joined a 2022 lawsuit seeking to overturn the tax, which ultimately failed.

In recent months, the association has been collecting signatures for a ballot initiative that seeks to invalidate Measure ULA and other such transfer taxes in cities like Berkeley, Oakland, Santa Monica and Culver City.

Howard Jarvis organizers turned in those signatures last month. Now, state election officials have verified the organization has collected enough signatures to put the measure on the statewide ballot.

The measure seeks to limit transfer taxes to no more than 0.11% (Measure ULA’s tax tops out at 5.5%). It also seeks to counter recent court rulings, which have allowed California voters to pass new taxes with simple majority support as long as ballot initiatives are driven by citizens, not elected officials.

The measure would require future taxes to achieve more than two-thirds support from voters. Measure ULA, which was passed with nearly 58% support, would have failed to meet that threshold.

“California is very unaffordable, and the courts have made it easier to raise taxes,” said Susan Shelley, a spokesperson for the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. “We don't think that's right, and we are going to make it harder to raise taxes.”

According to the state Legislative Analyst’s Office, the measure’s passage could lead to “a couple of billion dollars” of lost local revenue, plus potential losses from future taxes that could pass under the lower voter-approval threshold but won’t muster two-thirds support.

The ‘Mend It, Don’t End It’ option

Voters will get a simple binary choice on the Howard Jarvis-backed measure: “yes” to end the taxes and raise the threshold for approving new taxes or “no” to keep the taxes and the threshold as they are.

But to complicate matters, L.A. city voters may be confronted with yet another choice: to keep the tax mostly in place, with some new limits.

Affordable housing developers, business leaders and academics have formed a new coalition they’re calling “Mend It, Don’t End It.” They’re pushing the City Council to place a measure on the November ballot that would potentially exempt new apartment buildings from the tax, among other changes.

“The Jarvis measure is a blunt instrument that would harm our city,” said Melanie Mendoza, a spokesperson for the coalition. “We stand for surgical fixes that can be made to Measure ULA to build more housing, increase affordability and reduce homelessness. The qualification of the Jarvis measure adds urgency to act to make L.A. affordable.”

The City Council recently created an Ad Hoc Committee on Measure ULA, which is tasked with developing reforms that could potentially go to voters in November. The committee will also have to consider whether the tax should apply to Pacific Palisades homeowners who may end up selling their properties after 2025’s devastating fires.

Proponents of the reform-not-repeal approach say they hope that if local officials and voters get behind efforts to carve out new apartment projects, some developers will choose not to pour money into an expensive Howard Jarvis-led campaign.

Shelley, the organization’s spokesperson, said developers can choose to spend their money however they want, but the taxpayers association has no plans to back down from this fight.

“The courts have made it easier to raise taxes,” Shelley said. “We don't think they have any authorization to do that.”

The City Council’s Measure ULA committee is scheduled to meet Friday and has a deadline of the end of April to finalize its recommendations.

Two bills moving through the state Senate seek to prevent immigration enforcement officers from isolating patients from their loved ones and interfering with their ability to get legal help. Analyses for both bills cite reporting by KFF Health News that found family members and attorneys have faced extreme difficulty locating and supporting patients hospitalized while in immigration custody.

KFF Health News found that some hospitals have facilitated patient isolation through what are known as blackout policies, which can include registering people under pseudonyms, withholding their names from the hospital directory, and preventing staff from contacting patients’ relatives to let them know their location and condition.

A bill by Democratic state Sen. Caroline Menjivar of the San Fernando Valley, SB 915, would largely prohibit the use of blackout policies for patients in immigration custody and ensure they retain the right to have their families and others notified of their whereabouts and condition. Blackout policies would be allowed when the health care provider determines the patient is a credible risk to themself or others and the risk is documented in the patient’s medical record. Patients would also be allowed to receive visitors.

It seeks to address reports of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents guarding patients in their hospital rooms while they undergo medical exams or talk with doctors, interfering with medical decisions, and pushing for patients to be discharged prematurely to detention facilities ill-equipped to provide follow-up care.

“These are actions that have no place in health care, and it is a clear violation of the patients’ rights,” Menjivar said.

Under Menjivar's proposal, agents would not be allowed into the rooms of patients they bring in for care unless they can show legal authorization to be there. If agents remain in the room, staff would be required to ask them to leave during medical exams and patient care discussions. If agents refuse, health care facility staff would need to document it.

SB 1323, authored by state Sen. Susan Rubio, a Democrat from the San Gabriel Valley, would require health care providers to inform staff and relevant volunteers to respond when patients want their families to know where they are, and to post a notice at facility entrances with information about visitation and access policies. The law already says patients can agree to have loved ones notified they’re in the hospital, and Rubio’s bill seeks to make sure staff and others know they can do that for patients in immigration custody.

The federal Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration enforcement, did not respond to a request for comment.

Both bills were passed by the Senate Health and Judiciary committees along party lines and will be heard next by the Senate Appropriations Committee.

More than 20 immigrant rights advocates and health care workers voiced support for strengthened protections for patients at a hearing last week.

“This state must do everything in its power to protect against these abuses and ensure detainees have the right to contact their loved ones when they are hospitalized and in critical conditions,” said Hector Pereyra, political manager with the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice.

However, representatives from the California Hospital Association and California Medical Association told lawmakers last week they had concerns that directing health care workers to document agents’ badge numbers and ask them to leave patients’ rooms could create conflict and pose a safety risk.

“While we understand that this is an important issue, we want to ensure the bill strikes the right balance and does not create conflicting or unclear obligations for hospitals and their staff and clinicians, particularly in real-time interactions with federal officers,” said Vanessa Gonzalez, a vice president of state advocacy for the hospital association.

KFF Health News reported that one man, 43-year-old Julio César Peña, was held at a hospital in Victorville for almost two weeks before his attorney and family found out where he was. Peña, who had terminal kidney disease, was shackled to his hospital bed, guarded by immigration agents, and told he wasn’t allowed to disclose his location, according to his wife. He then suffered a seizure that left him intubated and unconscious, but no one notified his family. Peña died Feb. 25, less than two months after he was released to go home.

Advocates for immigrants and health care workers, as well as lawmakers, fear similar incidents are happening around the state.

Menjivar said her bill “seeks to close the gap between existing law and practice by empowering health care provider entities with the tools to uphold the privacy, health, and visitation rights of a patient brought in under immigration custody.”

SB 915 would prohibit hospitals and clinics from allowing immigration officers to make medical decisions for the patient or provide interpretation. Health care facilities would be required to document and verify, “to the extent possible,” the identities of immigration officers; provide patients access to communication tools; and inform patients of their rights. They would also need to complete discharge planning that includes attempts to coordinate with any receiving facility, such as a detention center, to ensure patients receive follow-up care.

The bills come on the heels of legislation passed last year that sought to limit immigration enforcement at health care facilities, including by prohibiting medical establishments from allowing federal agents without a valid search warrant or court order into private areas. However, that bill did not address situations in which patients are already in immigration custody.

“ICE has instilled fear in our hospitals and has kept us from doing our job,” said SatKartar Khalsa, an emergency medicine resident at a safety net hospital in San Francisco who has treated detained patients and testified in support of SB 915. “This has all led to worse care for our patients and has added another layer of fear among health care workers.”

This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

A federal appeals court on Wednesday struck down California’s requirement that masked federal agents identify themselves, a blow to the state’s ongoing resistance to the Trump administration’s deportation program.

A Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel handed down a ruling prohibiting California from enforcing a section of the 2025 mask law that mandates federal law enforcement officers visibly display identification while carrying out their duties.

The law was destined to face critical scrutiny from the federal judiciary. An 1890 Supreme Court case provides that a state cannot prosecute federal law enforcement officers acting in the course of their duties.

The law also ran headlong into the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which holds that states may not regulate the operations of the federal government.

The Trump administration sued to challenge the law soon after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed it. On Feb. 19, a federal judge issued an injunction against the mask law. The new ruling by a 3-0 decision makes that injunction permanent, pending appeal.

“If a state law directly regulates the conduct of the United States, it is void irrespective of whether the regulated activities are essential to federal functions or operations, and irrespective of the degree to which the state law interferes with federal functions or operations,” wrote judge Mark J. Bennett.

California’s lawyers argued that even if the mask law does violate the Supremacy Clause, the court should have also considered the state government’s concerns about federal immigration enforcement’s effect on public safety.

“We decline to do so,” Bennett wrote. “Because the United States has shown a likelihood that the Act violates the Supremacy Clause, it has also shown that both the public interest and balance of the equities tip ‘decisively in … favor’ of a preliminary injunction.”

Democrats passed the mask ban to rein in the anonymous federal agents carrying out the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement program.

Lawmakers this year are advancing more bills targeting the administration’s immigration agents, including proposals that would bar them from employment in California law enforcement agencies and a measure that would make it easier for people to sue federal agents over civil rights violations.

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

In 2022, faced with mounting criticism from California parents and students who couldn’t get into the state’s three premier public universities, legislators and UC officials struck a deal.

UC Berkeley, UCLA and UC San Diego would admit a combined 900 more in-state students a year, and the state would up their budgets to cover the loss of revenue from non-resident students, who pay three times what in-state students pay.

That deal has since cost taxpayers $276 million and allowed around 3,000 more students to enroll at the three universities.

While the costs were expected, the number is far higher than the annual $31 million figure Gov. Gavin Newsom and state legislators routinely cite for funding the in-state student expansion, a CalMatters analysis shows. Now, with one year to go in the five-year plan, some are wondering whether the program’s high costs should continue as-is, particularly as California faces several years of multibillion-dollar deficits.

Questioning the non-resident swap

At least one lawmaker and the Legislative Analyst’s Office are questioning the ongoing wisdom of the non-resident funding swap.

“We are now living with those decisions, and we need to decide whether those are decisions we want to stand by still, or perhaps there is another approach,” said Assemblymember David Alvarez, a Democrat from Chula Vista, at a March meeting of the budget subcommittee on education, which he chairs.

The Legislative Analyst’s Office supported enrolling more California students in 2022, but its analysts now are proposing that the state no longer add new resident students in lieu of out-of-state students. The analyst’s office says it’s an unnecessary expense for multiple reasons and going forward can be made cheaper, especially given “the state’s projected budget deficits.”

Instead, it proposes that the Legislature direct the UC to enroll more resident students without limiting the enrollment of non-resident students. That would cost the state $25 million annually, rather than the $61 million predicted for the fiscal year starting July.

One reason for the office's skepticism about keeping the current formula is that the three campuses were able to add thousands more undergraduates from California since the funding program began, aside from those who replaced non-residents.

UC data shows 6,000 more Californians were enrolled at the three campuses, on top of the students added through the funding program, since the swap began. That growth was fueled by hundreds of millions of dollars in annual funding increases to the UC between 2022 and 2024 that lawmakers and the governor also approved in addition to the non-resident funding swap.

The analyst’s office also indicated that the three popular UC campuses have space to continue adding students. “Over the past five years, all three campuses have initiated and/or completed housing projects adding several thousand beds” and still have available classroom and lab space, a February report from the office said.

Time will tell if the Legislature will agree with the analyst’s office. Lawmakers and the governor face an annual late June deadline to finalize the state budget.

The governor’s office so far supports maintaining the non-resident swap program and doesn’t intend to alter the plan in its forthcoming May revision to the governor’s budget proposal, said H.D. Palmer, a spokesperson for the Department of Finance, which in effect serves as the governor’s fiscal policy team.

In a statement, UC spokesperson Omar Rodriguez underscored that the Legislature’s push to drive down out-of-state enrollment has to come with costs.

“Replacing a non-resident student with a resident student is not an even exchange absent sufficient state buyout,” Rodriguez wrote to CalMatters in an April email. With the higher tuition they are charged, every out-of-state student pays for the equivalent of 2.7 California students, he wrote. The three UCs added about 300 more in-state students through the swap program than they were funded for, Rodriguez added.

CalMatters requested interviews with UC officials, but key personnel were not available, Rodriguez said.

UC officials were ambivalent about the non-resident funding swap five years ago. While they welcomed the money, they worried that future lawmakers would back away from the promise to pay the UC for not enrolling out-of-state students.

Emphasis on Californians

Why do any of this? Lawmakers in 2022 wanted to curb the percentage of out-of-state undergraduates at the UC and the three campuses specifically. At the time, more than 20% of the three schools' undergraduate students came from out of state. The funding swap was intended to bring the percentage down to 18% by the fifth year, which is next year. The non-resident enrollment rate currently is around 19% at the three campuses.

But the decision by lawmakers to require the campuses to limit the number of out-of-state students came at a considerable cost. Had the Legislature instructed those same campuses to enroll more Californians and not cut out-of-state enrollment, the combined price tag since 2022 wouldn’t be $276 million, but closer to $105 million, according to CalMatters’ calculations that were validated by officials at the governor’s Department of Finance as well as the UC.

The final price tag to reach the out-of-state enrollment goal will be about $460 million. After that, the program will cost about $153 million a year to sustain — or less, if policymakers side with the Legislative Analyst’s Office.

California spent more for a reason

In many ways, the Legislature’s actions were a return to form. The state’s interest in enrolling more California students in its prominent public universities is decades-old. Until the mid-2000s, UC campuses enrolled few students from outside of California. After the Great Recession prompted lawmakers to slash state spending, UC’s public funding cratered. To make up the difference, UC tripled its enrollment of undergraduates from out of state.

But then the state, under the guidance of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s five-year higher education compact, promised to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars annually in 2022 so the UC could enroll more California students at all its campuses. That’s in addition to the $30 million annually to limit the out-of-state student body at Berkeley, UCLA and UCSD, the three most popular campuses.

“They’re making good on the reason that you have a state university, which is not supposed to be a purely revenue-making machine,” said Julie R. Posselt, a professor specializing in higher education issues at the University of Southern California, where she’s an associate dean. “It’s supposed to be an engine for your state's population, economy and workforce.”

The UC is arguably one of the best deals for state taxpayers: a world-class education that for more than half of California undergraduate students is tuition-free because of financial aid.

Demand for the three UCs, by the numbers

More than 100,000 students apply to each of three most popular UC campuses annually, the majority Californians. Lately the freshman admissions rate at UCLA has been less than 10% — not quite as exclusive as Harvard’s 4% but well below the admissions rate to UCLA two decades ago, when more than a quarter were admitted.

UCLA is top of mind for the thousands of low-income students in Southern California that Alison De Lucca’s collective serves. She’s executive editor of the Southern California College Attainment Network, which is made up of dozens of nonprofits working to help students apply for college and financial aid.

Additional slots at UCLA matter to the region’s high schoolers seeking to attend a highly selective institution. “Many of them, particularly post-pandemic, would like to stay a little closer to home,” she said.

She didn’t speculate on whether parents think more slots for Californians is worth the extra state spending, “but I will say that parents are quite emphatic about ensuring that their students also have the chance” to gain entry at a school such as UCLA.

National studies of flagship public universities also indicate that as schools rely more on increased revenue from non-resident students, overall campus diversity can decline. That’s because out-of-state students “tend to be richer and are less likely” to be Black or Latino, one study co-written by Posselt found.

Non-resident value

The UC student association representing all undergraduates opposed the out-of-state funding swap when it first became policy. The association didn’t want to see fewer non-residents, which it considered an attack on the diversity of the student body. Students argued that out-of-state students add to the cultural dynamism of a campus and also contribute to the regional economy.

“We’re living here, we’re voting here, we’re working here, we’re tenants in our campus cities. We’re still treated as second-tier students,” said Riya Master in 2021, when she was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley from Virginia.

Master is now in her fourth year of attending UC San Francisco’s highly ranked medical school. She gained residency as a Californian by working at a UCSF laboratory on drug discovery after graduating from UC Berkeley. As a result, she’s paying the in-state tuition rate. Her goal is to specialize in pediatrics, a field of medicine undergoing a massive shortage nationally.

California enrollment grew

The UC system added 19,000 slots for new California undergraduates across its nine undergraduate campuses since 2022 — equal to a mid-sized UC campus without having built one. That includes about 9,000 more at the three sought-after campuses.

The number of non-resident undergraduates at the UC fell by 3,500 students in that time.

The growth in enrollment availability coincided with higher admissions rates for Californians, as the share of applicants gaining admission jumped from around 65% to 77% in that time.

But it’s a different story at the three most popular campuses: admission rates there haven’t increased, meaning it’s as difficult to get into UC Berkeley, UCLA or UC San Diego now as it was five years ago — and harder compared to nearly a decade ago.

Even with loads of new state spending, UC reports less money per student. Though state support has jumped by more than a billion dollars since 2000, inflation has eroded those gains while enrollment soared. As a result, UC academic spending for every student decreased from $46,000 at the start of the millennium to $28,000 today.

Public universities, such as the three UC campuses, have to manage a tough balancing act, said Posselt, the USC professor. They need to preserve their academic rigor, but “they absolutely have a mandate to not become exclusionary institutions, and they must do all of that while maintaining financial solvency.”

She said the UCs are “probably the best in the country in terms of a state system that is actively trying to maximize” student access.

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