What’s in a Name? Supreme Court Rejects Challenge to Law School Name Change

What’s a name worth? A lot, according to a case the U.S. Supreme Court recently declined to hear.

In 1878, more than 145 years before this dispute, California’s first chief justice, Serranus Clinton Hastings—who made a small fortune from various real estate ventures—agreed to fund the establishment of a new law school in San Francisco. He did so in exchange for the law school bearing his name and certain guarantees that his descendants would always have a seat on the board and retain a say in the law school’s operations.

The California State Legislature agreed to this proposal and passed legislation establishing the school under these conditions. The legislation also provided that should the state fail to pay the directors of the law school, including Hastings’s heir or representative, “seven per cent per annum … or should the College cease to exist, then the State … shall pay to the said S.C. Hastings, his heirs or legal representatives, the said sum of one hundred ($100,000) thousand dollars [Hastings’s original contribution] and all unexpended accumulated interest.”

Things continued on under this agreement until 2017, when the College first established a “Hastings Legacy Review Committee” to consider whether the school should be renamed. It took this action in response to a San Francisco Chronicle article titled, “The Moral Case for Renaming Hastings College of Law,” in which the author alleged that Hastings had helped foment violence against Indian tribes living in present-day Mendocino County, California.

The College declined, at that time, to rename the school, but four years later, the New York Times ran an inflammatory piece entitled, “He Unleashed a California Massacre. Should This School Be Named for Him?” raising other incendiary claims about Hastings’ treatment of Indian tribes.

After the New York Times piece, the College convened a special meeting five days later on Nov. 2, 2021, and adopted a resolution directing the College’s dean to “work with the California Legislature, the Governor’s Office, and other offices to enact legislation changing the name of the school.” It recommended that the name be changed to “College of Law, San Francisco.”

In 2022, the California Legislature took up that recommendation and passed Assembly Bill 1936, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed it into law. It stripped Hastings’s name from the College and removed his family’s hereditary board seat. It took effect Jan. 1, 2023.

A college alumni association dedicated to upholding Hastings’s legacy and a group of Hastings’ descendants challenged these changes, suing the state and the college.

Given the unique arrangement between then-Chief Justice Hastings and the State of California, the challengers raised a number of legal claims.

They asserted that Assembly Bill 1936 violated the contracts clauses of the California and United States Constitutions, constituted an impermissible bill of attainder and ex post facto law, and violated the California Constitution’s provision regarding collegiate freedom.

But California courts rejected them all.

When considering the plaintiffs’ contracts clause arguments, the courts wrestled with whether a contract existed at all. and even if one did exist, could California “bargain away [its] right to regulate public matters and public bodies.”? On the latter count, the California appellate court said no. It made clear its view that “the Legislature could not contract away sovereign authority to manage a public institution like the College.”

Similarly, the courts swatted away the bill of attainder argument, principally because Hastings had died many years before Assembly Bill 1936’s enactment and thus couldn’t be “punished” as a result of its passage.

The ex post facto argument failed because the California court said that under “both the federal and state constitutional prohibitions on ex post facto laws apply only to criminal statutes,” unless a civil statute is “so punitive either in purpose or effect as to negate [the State’s] intention to deem it civil.” And the court said that didn’t exist here.

Despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s declining to take up the case—meaning that there were not four Justices who believed the court should hear it—questions remain around the renaming.

Is the basis for the renaming—alleged mistreatment of Indian tribes in California—even reliable? Recent scholarship suggests not.

Can someone’s good name be restored more than 130 years after his death?

The U.S. Supreme Court has said that—at least from a legal perspective—these are questions for another day.

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