The California Supreme Court has moved to restrict the use of a legal provision that allowed parties to disqualify judges without judicial scrutiny of their claims.
The ruling centres on California Code of Civil Procedure Section 170.6, which permits a party or attorney to disqualify a judge simply by signing an affidavit or stating under oath that the judge is “prejudiced” against a party, attorney, or their respective interests.
Under the previous framework established in Solberg v. Superior Court, if a motion was timely and properly presented, disqualification was automatic and a new judge had to be assigned without any inquiry into whether the claim was truthful.
The case that prompted the Supreme Court’s intervention originated in San Joaquin County, where a judge admonished an attorney from the Office of the County Counsel for actions that were deemed improper.
Following that admonishment, County Counsel adopted a blanket policy of disqualifying the judge across all conservatorship cases handled by the court.
In the span of less than four months, County Counsel filed an estimated 325 Section 170.6 disqualification motions against the same judge, forcing that judge to be reassigned to a different department entirely.
The Supreme Court, ruling in J.O. v. Superior Court, 19 Cal. 5th 753 (2026), determined that this kind of systematic use of the provision represented a serious abuse of the disqualification process.
In its ruling, the court overruled Solberg to the extent that it permitted what the justices described as “blanket abuses” of Section 170.6, marking a significant departure from nearly five decades of established precedent.
In place of the old automatic framework, the court adopted a more flexible shifting-burden test to address situations where the provision is being weaponised against a specific judge.
Under the new test, a party may oppose a disqualification motion by making a showing that the motion’s proponent is lodging “blanket challenges” against a judge, giving courts a mechanism to push back against coordinated disqualification campaigns.
The decision has significant implications for litigation practice across California, particularly in specialised court departments such as conservatorship, family law, and other areas where cases are routinely assigned to specific judges over extended periods.
Legal commentators have noted that the ruling strikes a careful balance, preserving the core purpose of Section 170.6 as a safeguard for litigants with genuine concerns about judicial bias, while closing the loophole that allowed institutional actors to effectively remove judges they found inconvenient.