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25 Cal. 3d 260

599 P.2d 622

People v. Ramirez

California Supreme Court

Decided September 7, 1979

California Supreme Court · decided 1979-09-07

Relies on Morrissey v. Brewer · Wolff v. McDonnell · Meachum v. Fano

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1979-09-07

How this case has been cited

Cited by 396 later decisions — most recently December 2022 · most notably Toussaint v. McCarthy (1986), 37 Cal. 3d 136 - People v. Ramos (1984)

9 federal appellate · 370 state decisions

2080197919801990200020102020decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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RICHARDSON, J .

¶1I concur in the judgment. Because of the close similarity in the applicable United States and California constitutional language, and to avoid insulating our decision from further review, I *278would rely on the federal due process clauses, and would apply recent and indistinguishable precedent of the United States Supreme Court. (See People v. Pettingill (1978) 21 Cal.3d 231, 254 [145 Cal.Rptr. 861, 578 P.2d 108] (dis. opn.); Serrano v. Priest (1976) 18 Cal.3d 728, 778 [135 Cal.Rptr. 345, 557 P.2d 929] (dis. opn.); People v. Disbrow (1976) 16 Cal.3d 101, 119 [127 Cal.Rptr. 360, 545 P.2d 272] (dis. opn.).)

¶2When a state creates or recognizes rights and specifies the conditions of their forfeiture, it may not thereafter arbitrarily deny such rights. The state action must be guided by due process considerations. (Meachum v. Fano (1976) 427 U.S. 215, 225-226 [49 L.Ed.2d 451, 459-460, 96 S.Ct. 2532]; Wolff v. McDonnell (1974) 418 U.S. 539, 557-558 [41 L.Ed.2d 935, 951-952, 94 S.Ct. 2963]; see Morrisey v. Brewer (1972) 408 U.S. 471, 479, 482 [33 L.Ed.2d 484, 494-495, 92 S.Ct. 2593].)

¶3Welfare and Institutions Code section 3053 permits exclusion from the benefits of CRC treatment for “excessive criminality or other relevant reason” rendering the patient unfit. As the majority quite properly observes, “the words ‘other relevant reason’ permit the Director [of the Narcotics Addict Evaluation Authority] broad discretion in making his decision, [but] that discretion is not unlimited.” (Ante, p. 266.) Procedural rights therefore arise under the federal Constitution. Upon similar facts, the Supreme Court has applied the interest-balancing test carefully described by the majority. (Wolff, supra, 418 U.S. at p. 560 [41 L.Ed.2d at p. 953]; Morrissey, supra,408 U.S. at p. 481 [33 L.Ed.2d at p. 494]; see Cafeteria Workers v. McElroy (1961) 367 U.S. 886, 895 [6 L.Ed.2d 1230, 1236, 81 S.Ct. 1743].)

¶4In my view, these authorities are dispositive, and we need not venture beyond them in deciding the instant case. Nor should we do so; recent Supreme Court decisions demonstrate understandable reluctance to recognize a generalized due process right against “arbitrary” governmental action. (See, e.g., Van Alstyne, Cracks in “The New Property”: Adjudicative Due Process in. the Administrative State (1977) 62 Cornell L.Rev. 445, 455 et seq.)

¶5Clark, J., concurred.

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