A California appellate court rejected a lawsuit against the State Supreme Court from a suburban San Jose lawyer, who claimed he failed his bar exams because the tests favor younger applicants.
The appellate justices said the state high court is immune to such suits.
The March 17 decision was written by Justice Allison Danner, with concurrence from Justice Charles Wilson and Acting Presiding Justice Patricia Bamattre-Manoukian, of California Sixth Appellate District Court, which sits in San Jose. The decision went against lawyer Matthew Flinders, of Sunnyvale.
Flinders has been licensed to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and was a lawyer in Massachusetts, until he moved to California in 2018 and joined a firm there. However, he had to pass the California bar examination to practice in that state. He failed in 2019 and again in 2020, according to court papers. As a consequence, Flinders said he lost his job and his failure to pass became part of the public record.
In November 2021 in Santa Clara County Superior Court, Flinders sued the State Supreme Court, which oversees bar exams and determines whether a person is admitted to the bar. He alleged the exams discriminated against people older than 50, such as himself, because they were "scored utilizing an arbitrary and unreasonable measure of manual dexterity that overwhelmingly favored younger examinees."
There are two programs in place to help certain applicants who fail exams, but Flinders claimed these programs too are biased against older examinees.
Representing himself in the case, Flinders cited California State Bar records that indicated younger applicants passed at much higher rates. In addition, Flinders claimed he was defamed, because the allegedly discriminatory test purported to measure "minimum competence," and his failure to pass wrongly suggested he was incompetent.
Flinders wanted damages and a court order that his two exams be scored again.
Santa Clara Superior Court Judge Christopher Rudy dismissed the suit in June 2022, finding the State Supreme Court, not superior court, has "sole original jurisdiction" over exams. Rudy also said the Supreme Court is immune to Flinders' claims under doctrines of judicial and legislative immunity, as well as under the California Government Claims Act.
On appeal, Justice Danner agreed with Rudy, saying the Claims Act shielded the state high court no matter how you looked at it.
As far as Flinders' allegations the Supreme Court falsely held out the exam as an assessment of competence, Danner concluded the allegations were too scanty. Danner explained the allegations were "conclusory" and "did no more than skeletally allege fraud and defamation."
The California Supreme Court has been defended by Robert A. Naeve, of the Irvine office of the Cleveland-based Jones Day firm.