I
previously wrote about Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye's outrage at the California Traffic Courts' practice of making motorists post "bail" in order to challenge their traffic tickets. She urged the California Legislature to pass immediate legislation to prohibit the practice, and
Sacramento apparently heard her.
On September 30, Governor Brown signed the legislation outlawing the practice.
Since you can't have bail for charges that don't carry a jail sentence, what the courts were really doing was making people "pre-pay" the fine the court expected them to pay when they were found guilty. It was an outrageous practice, and one we have been criticizing for years. We owe the Chief Justice a big thank you on this one, because without her leadership it never would have happened.