Election 2026: Longest-serving 1st District justice seeks new 12-year term

Justice Mark B. Simons has said courts work best when they respect the other two branches of government, testing a law against the constitution and reading it as lawmakers intended rather than deciding they could have written it better.

The 1st District Court of Appeal's longest-serving justice, who is seeking a new 12-year term on the Nov. 3 ballot, has applied that approach in opinions to let Sonoma County's civilian watchdog subpoena sheriff's deputies, uphold an order restoring public access to a San Mateo County beach and dismiss rape charges over a scheduling practice the law did not allow.

In Independent Office of Law Enforcement Review and Outreach v. Sonoma County Sheriff's Office, A171763, Simons held that Government Code Section 25303.7 gives sheriff oversight bodies subpoena power in a whistleblower investigation, noting the statute uses "may" for a county's choice to create one but "shall" for its subpoena authority. A labor agreement could not override that grant, he wrote.

Nine years earlier, Simons held that closing the only road to a secluded San Mateo County beach was "development" requiring a Coastal Act permit. In Surfrider Foundation v. Martins Beach 1 LLC (2017), he rejected the owners' takings challenge as premature and upheld an injunction restoring public access at 2008 levels.

The criminal case, Hernandez v. Superior Court, A173010, turned on just two words: "in progress." Penal Code Section 1050(g)(2) allows a sex-offense trial to be continued when a prosecutor has another trial in progress. Simons ordered rape charges dismissed on speedy trial grounds after a judge twice postponed Hector Hernandez's trial because his prosecutor was assigned to another case that had not started.

"Trial court calendar management must comply with the law," he wrote.

The same insistence on text produced different results in produced different results in cases about voter-approval requirements. In Thacker v. City of Fairfield, A171354, Simons held that raising a flat per-lot landscaping assessment was an "increase" in a "rate" requiring voter approval under Proposition 218, rejecting an interpretation that would allow grandfathered assessments to grow indefinitely without voter oversight.

But in Alameda County Taxpayers' Assn. v. County of Alameda, A168775, he upheld Measure W, a half-cent sales tax promoted for homelessness services, because its text directed proceeds to the general fund, making it a general rather than special tax.

Textual fidelity cut against both a defendant and the state in People v. Terwilligar, A170304. A man serving 53 years to life under the three strikes law sought resentencing as a second-strike offender after three enhancements were invalidated. The attorney general agreed; Simons did not. He held that applying Proposition 36's reduced penalties in that setting would unconstitutionally amend the initiative. The state Supreme Court later ruled 5-2 in another case that the reduced penalties can apply if resentencing would not endanger public safety.

In a 2018 Daily Journal interview, Simons described his style on the bench as "toward the very involved," with rapid-fire questioning and focus letters directing counsel to key issues.

"I often am trying to probe to see if I've overlooked something," he said.

On Division Five since 2001, Simons spent seven years as a Contra Costa County deputy public defender before Gov. Jerry Brown appointed him to the Mt. Diablo Municipal Court in 1980. He was elevated to Superior Court in 1995 and was presiding judge when Gov. Gray Davis named him to the appellate court.

Simons has also spent three decades teaching judges at the B.E. Witkin Judicial College since 1995. He writes two annually updated practice guides, California Preliminary Examinations and the Simons California Evidence Manual.

That work means a generation of California trial judges learned evidence and preliminary-hearing law in part from a justice who now reviews trial court rulings on appeal.