California Superior Court Judge Raymond M. Cadei awarded declaratory relief to Attorney General Kamala Harris, who sought to avoid circulating a proposed ballot initiative called the “Sodomy Suppression Act,” which had been proposed by one Matt McLaughlin, an attorney of questionable taste. The measure purported to authorize people to kill gays and lesbians by “bullets to the head” or “any other convenient method.” Normally, the Attorney General’s office does not get to screen proposed initiatives for content, but Harris balked at writing a ballot title and summary and authorizing the circulation of petitions to put the proposal on the ballot. Instead, she filed a declaratory judgement against McLaughlin arguing that the measure should be disqualified. After having filed his proposal and achieved whatever notoriety he was seeking, McLaughlin seems to have abandoned it, since he defaulted on responding to Harris’s lawsuit. In an order signed on June 22, 2015, Judge Cadei wrote that Harris was entitled to the relief she requested, stating that the proposed initiative “is patently unconstitutional on its face,” that preparing a title and summary would be “inappropriate, waste public resources, generate unnecessary divisions among the public, and tend to mislead the electorate,” so Cadie held that Harris “is relieved of any obligation to issue a title and summary” for this proposed statute. Harris v. McLaughlin, Case No. 34-2015-00176006 (Cal. Super. Ct., Sacramento Co.).
