Advancing the state’s ongoing work to provide access to safe drinking water for every Californian, the State Water Resources Control Board released its fourth Drinking Water Needs Assessment and proposed plans to distribute about $855 million in financial assistance over the next year for projects that address drinking water needs in disadvantaged communities and emerging contaminants.

Congress hasn’t approved a nationwide increase in federal judgeships since 1990, leading to a shortage of judges that has increased their caseloads and the time it takes to get into court. But that could be changed by bipartisan legislation that would add 66 judges to U.S. courts in the next decade, 21 of them in California.

An 11-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit unanimously ruled recently that the California legislature did not act unconstitutionally in subjecting app-based work arrangements in the transportation and delivery industries to the strict ABC independent contractor test and app-based work arrangements in other industries to a flexible test.

(Subscription required) State Sen. Tom Umberg, D-Santa Ana, late last week dropped language from SB 940 that would have barred arbitrators from accepting jobs or new cases from lawyers or parties who are currently appearing before them.