1DCA Division 3 Oral Argument - 2026/04/29 - Apr 29, 2026

argument

1DCA Division 3 Oral Argument - 2026/04/29

California First District Court of Appeal 2h 53m 8 chapters transcribed 1 month ago official recording ↗

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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

What is the opening of the oral argument and who are the appearing counsel?

Unknown 0:03

Recording stopped. Recording in progress. Good morning. Welcome. Please be seated. Welcome to Oral Argument in Division III. You see that joining me on the bench this morning are my colleagues, Justice Karen Fujisaki and Justice Victor Rodriguez. And we will, after a couple of cases, have a panel change. But it looks like we're all ready to call line one, which is the matter of Adama Ison versus the commissioners of the California Department of Insurance. May I have appearances, please?

Joe Cravis 0:46

Good morning, Your Honor. My name is Joe Cravis. We're petitioners.

Michael Sapochnikoff 0:50

Your Honor, Michael Sapochnikoff, Deputy Attorney General for the Insurance

Unknown 0:55

Commission. Thank you, and I should have remarked, and this is for everyone, when you enter your appearance, please do step to the microphone. Your colleague will cede the place, and that way it's audible to the people who are

Michael Sapochnikoff 1:06

listening.

Unknown 1:06

Recording stopped.

Michael Sapochnikoff 1:08

Thank you, Your Honor. Michael Sapochnikoff, Deputy Attorney General for the Insurance Commission.

Unknown 1:13

Thank you.

Katie Wellington 1:16

Your Honor, Katie Wellington for Farmers Insurance Exchange and Mid-Century Insurance.

Unknown 1:21

Excellent. And can I just ask the two counsel who were just at the microphone? Recording in progress.

Katie Wellington 1:28

Maybe they should start

Unknown 1:29

off. Have you decided how you're going to split the 15 minutes that are allotted to your side?

Katie Wellington 1:33

Yes, Your Honor. Mr. Soposnicko has 10 minutes and I have five minutes.

Unknown 1:37

Got it. Thank you very much. Okay. The matter is down for 15 minutes. Would you like to reserve some of that for rebuttal?

Joe Cravis 1:47

I would like to reserve six minutes, Your Honor.

Unknown 1:49

All right. We'll try to help you keep track of time. The microphone is yours.

Joe Cravis 1:52

Very good. Your Honor, I want to address out of the box the question that was posed by the court. The first question is, does the RAINN law have a counterpart for Civil Code 51 Subdivision C? The answer to that is no, it does not. It was not incorporated into the RAINN law and it does not have a counterpart. The second question actually imports two different scenarios that all end up at the same place. Scenario one is that 51C, where it says condition or limit by law, law means statute or regulation. That's what the Superior Court found. Scenario two is where law in 51C means statute, which is what the Supreme Court read it to be in the Harris versus Capital Growth case. So under scenario one, where regulation is a law under 51C.

Joe Cravis 2:56

I think instructive there in sort of setting the framework of how you analyze it is the Supreme Court's decision in the Schmidt versus Superior Court case. So in Schmidt, that involved a situation where you had an under act provision dealing with fair housing and preventing age discrimination. But there was a statute that allowed minimum age requirements for mobile homes. So the court looked at that and said, well, there's a potential conflict here. It is certainly not for us to determine fundamental

Unknown 3:34

policy. It

Joe Cravis 3:36

is not for us to determine fundamental

Unknown 3:38

policy.

Joe Cravis 3:40

Apologies for the automatic interruptions. Okay. It is not for us to determine the fundamental policy of what classes should or should not be discriminated against, that's for the legislature, but we are here to interpret what the legislature did, whether we can, if we find a conflict, or if there is none, if we can harmonize the statutes. So first what they did is they looked at the statutes, they looked at the purpose behind the statutes through legislative history, and then they said, well, if we can't resolve the conflict, then the later enacted, more specific statute will prevail. So if we apply that here, 51 certainly predated the 2008 amendments to the rain law. The legislature in enacting the 2008 amendments to the RAIN law, that was actually part of...

Unknown 4:46

I'm sorry, this is unfair to you. Hold on just a minute.

4:56

...

Unknown 5:03

So we're going to attempt to ignore the automatic voice. It

Laura Robbins 5:06

is an

Unknown 5:07

open courtroom. I hope the people are able to hear us online, but we're going to continue whether or not the recording starts or stops. Very good.

Joe Cravis 5:18

So the 51C was not incorporated. into the rain law. They only incorporated 51B and E. And the purpose of doing that was with this scheme of 13 different statutes that needed to be updated.