Tag: Jerry Brown

California enacts modest occupational licensing reform

On September 30, 2018, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law AB 2138, making California the twelfth state this year to enact occupational licensing reform. This flurry of legislation will make it easier for people with a criminal record to obtain occupational and professional licenses. (As discussed in recent posts, the Institute for Justice’s model occupational licensing act and the National Employment Law Project’s model state law have influenced this legislative trend.) However, California’s take on licensing reform is relatively tepid compared to more extensive reforms in states like Indiana, Kansas, New Hampshire, Tennessee, and Wisconsin.

In California, nearly 30 percent of jobs require licensure, certification, or clearance. When AB 2138 takes effect in 2020, it will prohibit licensing boards from denying a license based on certain acts not resulting in conviction, or certain less serious convictions after seven years. The law will require boards to consider rehabilitation evidence for any conviction (not just misdemeanors, as under existing law), to establish more detailed criteria for evaluating convictions, and to issue annual reports.

While a more robust version of the bill first passed the California Assembly, it was weakened in the California State Senate, and ultimately, the Senate’s version prevailed. The legislative process and bill’s provisions are discussed in more detail below.

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Jerry Brown takes back a pardon . . . really?

Jerry Brown reportedly regretted one of his 105 Christmas Eve pardons, after learning from an LA Times article that the recipient had recently been disciplined by federal financial regulators.  He therefore announced that he was rescinding his grant, claiming that the pardon was not yet final because the Secretary of State had not signed the document evidencing it.

This is not the first time that a governor or president has had second thoughts about a pardon, but it is unusual for a chief executive to attempt to undo one that has been made public.  Governor Brown’s attempt to retract the pardon may or may not be effective, but it certainly reflects unfortunate disarray in the administration of the pardon power in California for which other deserving pardon candidates may end up paying.

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‘Tis the season for . . . . some presidential forgiveness

It’s that time of year again.  Odds are that sometime in the next two weeks President Obama will issue some pardons and commute some prison sentences.  I have never quite reconciled myself to the unfortunate and ahistorical  association of pardoning with the silly turkey ceremony (the Obama girls were right to roll their eyes) and Christmas gift-giving, the result of decades of presidential neglect and sometime Justice Department sabotage of the power.  But now that the season for forgiveness is upon us, I can’t wait to see what’s underneath the tree.

It was my fondest hope during the 2008 campaign that this president would want to revive the practice of pardoning, like Jerry Brown in California and Pat Quinn in Illinois, and restore a degree of regularity and accountability to the federal pardon process.  But so far President Obama has issued only 52 full pardons, making him the least generous full-term president in our Nation’s history.  And so far there is no indication that he intends to reinvigorate the federal pardon process, as Justice Anthony Kennedy urged in an iconic speech to the American Bar Association more than a decade ago, and as scholars and practitioners have regularly urged in less exalted settings ever since.  Nor has his Administration proposed any alternative procedure by which individuals with federal convictions can avoid or mitigate collateral consequences, like the set-aside authority in the Youth Corrections Act that was repealed in 1984.

But there is some reason for optimism even this late in the game.  President Obama’s evident willingness to use his constitutional power to reduce long drug sentences will hopefully have a spillover effect on the other half of the clemency caseload, the applications for full pardon from people who have long since served their sentences and gone on to live productive and law-abiding lives.  There are more than 800 applications for pardon pending in the Justice Department, many from people convicted decades ago whose lives of service have been exemplary.  They deserve something more than a gambler’s chance at forgiveness.