Civil Procedure
May 6, 2026
Saving California's jury bias reform from judicial retreat
California's landmark jury-bias reform law, Code of Civil Procedure section 231.7, was designed to eliminate discriminatory jury strikes rooted in implicit bias, but pending judicial challenges threaten to weaken its core protections by reintroducing doctrines the Legislature expressly sought to overcome.
Robert Bacon
Robert Bacon, a former prosecutor in another state, now practices law in Oakland. He represents individuals under death sentence, none of them sentenced in Alameda County.
Code of Civil Procedure section 231.7 was enacted in 2020 to reform the decades-old, ineffectual procedure for preventing discriminatory use of peremptory challenges to remove jurors based on group bias and stereotype. It eliminates the onerous and unrealistic requirement of Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986), that purposeful discrimination must be shown in order to invalidate a peremptory challenge.
An appeal set for argument in the Californi...
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