New 5th District Justice Sandhu built treatment courts, school outreach

As presiding judge of the Stanislaus County Superior Court, Justice Sonny S. Sandhu brought all the county's treatment courts, including CARE Court, before a single judicial officer.

The Collaborative Court grew out of talks with the district attorney and public defender, who agreed a more coordinated framework was needed for diversion programs and treatment "while making effective use of limited resources," Sandhu wrote in a recent email.

Sandhu, who took the oath at the 5th District Court of Appeal on Aug. 6, seeks a 12-year term in the Nov. 3 election.

In his first published opinion, Yzaguirre v. Clovis Unified School District (2026), Sandhu held that primary assumption of the risk can bar a student's claim for an injury suffered in a physical education class devoted to basketball. A 12-year-old seventh-grader broke his wrist when an adult instructor blocked his shot. The boy testified the coach "karate-chopped" his arm, and a jury found for the coach and the district.

On appeal, the student argued the defense could not apply to a class that satisfied the school's PE requirement. Sandhu disagreed. The class was open only to students the coaches approved, served as extra practice for the school's basketball teams and was required of no one. A rule turning on whether an activity is technically part of the curriculum "would unduly emphasize form over substance," he wrote, and would discourage schools from offering such classes.

Shortly before leaving the Superior Court, Sandhu ruled June 26 that the city of Patterson illegally denied a tentative subdivision map for the 719-home Keystone Ranch development. The City Council had required the developer to build a groundwater recharge basin costing about $20 million, part of the city's response to state-ordered pumping cuts, though city staff and the planning commission had recommended approval.

The city failed to show the project posed a specific risk to public health or safety, as the Housing Accountability Act requires before a housing project can be denied, Sandhu found, and it could not impose the basin as a condition. He gave Patterson 90 days to reconsider.

On Feb. 21, 2023, Sandhu decided the remedy phase of a class action by Modesto Irrigation District electricity customers. Another judge had ruled in 2019 that the district illegally used electricity revenue to subsidize farmers' irrigation water. Sandhu agreed the district had overcharged its power customers but declined to order refunds.

The plaintiffs "prevailed, if not in whole, at least in significant part," he wrote, and he ordered the district to pay their attorney fees.

Treatment has been a thread throughout his career since he graduated from Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law.

Before Gov. Jerry Brown appointed him to the bench in October 2018, Sandhu spent 15 years in the Stanislaus County public defender's office, rising to Public Defender. He helped establish the county's Veterans Treatment Court, and the office added social workers to advance "a holistic approach to client representation," he wrote.

On the Superior Court, Sandhu handled criminal and civil matters and became presiding judge in January 2025. He worked with the court's self-help center, the county law library and the county bar association to expand resources for civil litigants representing themselves.

"My proudest contributions, however, have involved youth outreach," he wrote. He created First Impressions, a five-week civics curriculum for fifth-graders that ends in a courtroom mock trial of the Big Bad Wolf. He brought the statewide Judges in the Classroom program to the county. He still coaches a high school mock trial team.