(Subscription required) Under state rules, a nominee will come from Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), whose second term concludes in January. And while the state’s coming June and November elections are likely playing into Newsom’s calculation on timing, the extended opening on the seven-member tribunal has largely left legal experts stumped.

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge who made disparaging remarks and interrupted litigants in court was recently publicly admonished by the state’s judicial disciplinary body for the second time.

The California Supreme Court this week announced it would review the legal case filed by the UCLA Voting Rights Project (VRP) on behalf of four Riverside County voters that Sheriff Chad Bianco illegally seized the ballots from last November’s statewide special election as part of his investigation into alleged election fraud, as first reported by The Riverside Record.

The California Supreme Court held yesterday that a statute providing a cause of action for disclosures of confidential medical records only requires a showing that a leak exposed a user’s information to “a significant risk of unauthorized access,” disapproving a line of cases saying that a plaintiff must prove that the information was “actually viewed.”