Hastings College Conservation Committee, et al. v. California, et al.

In 1878, the State of California (“State”) enacted legislation, 1878 Cal. Stat. ch. 351 (“1878 Act”), authorizing Serranus Clinton Hastings (“S.C. Hastings”), the State’s first Chief Justice, to found and establish a public college of law (“College”) “upon the condition” that he pay the State $100,000. App. 72a– 74a. The 1878 Act represented that the College would “forever” be known as “Hastings College of the Law” and that one seat on its Board of Directors (“Board”) shall “always” be reserved for S.C. Hastings’ heirs and representatives. App. 72a. S.C. Hastings paid the State $100,000 and founded and established the College. App. 62a. In 2022, the State enacted Assembly Bill 1936 (“AB 1936”), which “finds and declares,” inter alia, that S.C. Hastings “promoted and financed” the massacre of Native Americans in the 1850s, removes “Hastings” from the College’s name to atone for the “crimes of the past,” and eliminates S.C. Hastings’ heirs and representatives’ entitlement to a Board seat. App. 60a–72a. This case presents the following two questions: Whether a state law that requires a specified name and governance structure for a public college and is enacted in exchange for payment of a specified sum creates binding contractual obligations on the part of that state subject to the protections of the Contract Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Whether state legislation posthumously declaring an individual as having engaged in criminal conduct and, on that basis, stripping benefits secured by state law for that individual and his descendants violates the Bill of Attainder Clause of the U.S. Constitution.