Season 8, Episode 41
What a Difference a Week Makes!
Oh, happy days! The October 2 court ruling is behind us, the enormous weight of uncertainty has lifted, and we’re in better shape than we’ve been in a very long time.
Judge Shelleyanne W. L. Chang rejected the State’s demurrer on the one issue we absolutely needed to survive: our claim that the California Fish and Game Commission failed to fulfill its obligations under the Administrative Procedure Act and Government Code Section 11340.7.
WE WON WHERE IT MATTERED MOST!
The State of California tried to convince Judge Chang to throw out the heart of our lawsuit — our claim that the Fish and Game Commission failed to fulfill its legal obligations in handling Petition 2025-003. The judge rejected that argument! Our central legal challenge survived, and the Commission must now defend its handling of our petition in court.
This is a tremendous victory. After more than a year of waiting for the Commission to properly address our petition, we’ve cleared a major legal hurdle. The court has allowed us to pursue the very issue that brought us here in the first place.
There’s still a final ruling to be won, but we’ve already accomplished something enormously important: the State’s attempt to end our central case before it could proceed has failed.
And Joe Ferret thinks that’s worth celebrating!
Now comes the interesting part. The Fish and Game Commission still has to deal with Petition 2025-003. Could they actually approve it? Certainly. And we might wake up tomorrow to reports of a snowstorm in hell. More realistically, we expect a denial. And if that happens, we'll examine the reasons carefully and decide whether another lawsuit is warranted. After all these years, we're not about to accept an arbitrary decision simply because it's the easiest way for the Commission to make us go away.
Meanwhile, we’ve been sharpening our arguments and preparing our revised petition for writ of mandate. We had an opportunity to revise our Public Records Act claim, too, but decided not to pursue that claim in this amended filing rather than prolong a side dispute that could face additional challenges.
Judge Chang also dismissed our Administrative Procedure Act claim against the Department of Fish and Wildlife. That’s okay. The Fish and Game Commission is the agency responsible for the petition, and our central case against the Commission survives.
We’ve strengthened our argument about the Commission’s obligations under Section 11340.7. I think it’s our clearest and most persuasive version yet. Whether it’s ironclad is for the court to decide, but I’m feeling pretty darn good about it.
And here’s something else. We’re getting smarter. AI is getting smarter. We’ve learned a tremendous amount about California’s petition process, administrative law, and the way government agencies operate. We’re better prepared today than we were when this adventure began.
The State still has arguments to make, and there is more litigation ahead. But we’re no longer wondering whether our case will survive its first major legal challenge. It did.
I’ll have links to the revised court documents and a fuller explanation in Sunday’s CLIFFNotes.
Oh, Happy Days!
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