(Subscription required) California's 58 superior courts conducted nearly 1.75 million remote proceedings between September 2024 and August 2025, with user satisfaction exceeding 90%, according to a report the Judicial Council of California will consider at its Feb. 20 meeting.

Div. Five of the First District Court of Appeal held Friday that the conviction of a man accused of contacting a minor for lewd purposes, after a law enforcement child predator sting revealed sexual messages he sent to a police officer posing as a 13-year-old girl, must be reversed due to a trial judge failing to provide any reasoning when denying a defense objection to the prosecutor’s exercise of a peremptory challenge based on the Racial Justice Act.

California Supreme Court Justice Goodwin H. Liu has written a concurring statement to the high court’s denial of a petition for review in a case in which Div. Five of this district’s Court of Appeal held that 2022 amendments to the Penal Code, which favor the imposition of a midterm sentence and provide that an “enhancement” cannot be used to both add time and justify imposition of a high term, do not have any effect on the Three Strikes sentencing scheme.

Parties on both sides of a long-running debate over the California Public Utilities Commission’s controversial overhaul of rooftop solar regulations are anxiously awaiting a ruling from the state’s court of appeals. Depending on what conclusion the justices reach, the decision may alter the rate of compensation that at least some of the roughly 2 million Californians with solar installations on their homes and businesses receive when their systems generate excess electricity.