4 Cal. 3d 716 - Zeilenga v. Nelson’s Empirical Analysis
1971
Citation profile
5 district · 158 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 166 later decisions — most recently May 2024 · most notably 17 Cal. 3d 236 - People v. Olivas (1976), 54 Cal. 3d 492 - Legislature v. Eu (1991)
5 district · 158 state decisions
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.
Relationships
Relies on Reynolds v. Sims · Shapiro v. Thompson · Kramer v. Union Free School District No. 15 · Carrington v. Rash · Cipriano v. City of Houma
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 166 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Perhaps in the horse and buggy days the five-year requirement could have been reasonable, but in these days of modern public transportation, the automobile, newspapers, radio, television, and the rapid dissemination of news throughout all parts of the county, the requirement is unreasonable. It excludes certain citizens from public office by a classification which is unnecessary to promote a compelling governmental interest. It is a built-in device to prevent competition against the county's oldtimers for the office of supervisor. Nowhere is it shown that a candidate for the office of supervisor cannot acquire competent knowledge of the county's conditions in much less than five years to qualify him for the office, at least sufficiently to submit to the voters for their choice his knowledge thereof.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“'Qualifications for office must have a rational basis, such as age, integrity, training or, perhaps, residence. ... If a classification is employed in prescribing qualifications, it must be nondiscriminatory and”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“[T]he right to hold public office, either by election or appointment, is one of the valuable rights of citizenship.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.