1DCA Division 4 Oral Argument - 2025/09/25 - Sep 25, 2025

argument

1DCA Division 4 Oral Argument - 2025/09/25

California First District Court of Appeal 5h 19m 8 chapters transcribed 7 days ago official recording ↗

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What opening appearances and initial arguments are made at the beginning of the oral argument?

Justice Brown 0:19

Good morning, and please be seated. All right, so let us call the first case on our long calendar today, which is In Re Tai. Could I please get appearances from counsel?

Heather McKay 0:37

Heather McKay, appearing for Petitioner Tai. And I'd like to reserve five minutes for your

Justice Brown 0:42

rebuttal. OK. You already answered my first question, so that's a good start. Thank you. Okay, so why doesn't counsel for petitioner take the stand and begin with their 10 minutes?

Heather McKay 0:59

Good morning. I'd like to start by addressing concerns about how this case may be affected by the Third District Court of Appeal decision in CJLF versus CDCR, which is the case that holds that the department cannot use its regulations to apply good conduct or program credits to advance MEPDs for people with life terms. If no person could ever earn credits for their MEPD, there might not be a valid equal protection issue still. But that's not the situation here. First, the final outcome of CJLF is not yet known. The department did file a petition for review yesterday. asking the California Supreme Court to reconsider the part of the decision concerning application of credits to

Justice Streeter 1:45

MEPDs. Do you have a view on whether CGLRF is correctly decided?

Heather McKay 1:53

I do. I think that portion of the decision is incorrectly decided. And we do hope that the California Supreme Court will reverse that section and allow the department to exercise its authority to grant credits toward MEPDs.

Justice Streeter 2:11

Okay. And I won't take up our time to talk about that because it's kind of a side issue, I think, but I no doubt will be asking your friend on the other side the same question.

Heather McKay 2:22

I think it's one of the few issues that we're on the same side of the aisle for. Moreover, even if the Supreme Court denies review, the CGLF case allows some people with MEPDs to receive credits to advance their parole hearing dates. CJLF doesn't disturb statutes that authorize credits toward MEPDs in some cases, including some cases in which people can earn 50% day for day good conduct credits. And people who have YPEDs.

Justice Streeter 2:56

May I ask you, just skipping into the merits here, The Nguyen case applies the similarly situated analysis in equal protection law that was commonly applied up until Hardin. but quite clearly was discarded as the first step of the equal protection analysis in Hardin. Should we be, how should we look at that?

Heather McKay 3:38

I'd urge this court to follow Hardin's statement that there's no need for a two-step analysis. And that's what this court did in People v. Briscoe, which is another youth offender equal protection case involving issues about who can be made ineligible or eligible for youth offender parole. To some extent, it's just a matter of shifting where the court looks at whether there are differences between youth offenders and adult offenders. And so instead of it being part of an initial inquiry into whether they're similarly situated, that's

Justice Brown 4:18

really now... It's just another way of saying, is there a rational basis for the distinction in the treatment? Can I ask you a question? You, I presume, would agree that the disparate treatment here, the classification here, is relevant to the purpose of the regulation, correct?

Heather McKay 4:43

I would disagree, I

Justice Brown 4:45

think,

Heather McKay 4:45

if I understand the question correctly. The purpose of the regulations on credits are to encourage good behavior, to encourage programming and rehabilitation. And for those purposes, people whose controlling hearing data is set by their YPED are exactly in the same position as people whose controlling hearing day is set by the MEPD. The fact that the legislature's chosen to set the cap for youth offenders lower than the potential caps for people with MEPDs doesn't really affect whether people who are youth offenders should entitled to the same rights to advance their hearing date through good behavior and through programming credits.

Justice Brown 5:38

So your view sort of crystallized is that because people subject to the MEPD can get a whole universe of credits to advance their date, it's unfair, disparate treatment that lacks a rational basis for people who have the YPED, YPED, not to get the same universe, right?