The California Supreme Court said dependency judges may take children away from parents who cannot supervise or protect their children — even if the parents are not to blame.

Settling a split of authority in In re. R.T., the court ruled the state’s Welfare and Institutions Code authorizes dependency jurisdiction without a finding that a parent is at fault or blameworthy for a failure or inability to supervise or protect a child.

“When that child’s behavior places her at substantial risk of serious physical harm, and a parent is unable to protect or supervise that child, the juvenile court’s assertion of jurisdiction is authorized under section 300(b)(1),” Justice Goodwin Liu wrote in a concurring opinion to invite the Legislature to revisit the issue.

One mother’s disturbing discovery has led a California appellate court to distinguish the rules on when secret recordings are permissible. Although California is one of the few “all-party consent” states, meaning everyone who is audio recorded must consent to being recorded, there are a few exceptions to that rule.

One of the main exceptions to the “all-party consent” rule allows a person to obtain evidence of a violent felony, extortion, bribery, or kidnapping via a secret recording. However, at issue in the In Re: Trever P. case isn’t whether a person involved in the conversation can make a secret recording, but rather, whether a parent can consent on behalf of their child and make a secret recording of the child and a babysitter.

In November 2016, California voters passed Proposition 66 which sought to speed up the time between a death penalty conviction and sentence and the actual execution. Most notably, Prop. 66 imposed a mandatory five-year deadline for the California courts to finish a capital appeal. Almost immediately after passing, opponents filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the proposition, and specifically, that five-year deadline.

After reviewing the challenge, the California Supreme Court issued their ruling, in Briggs v. Brown, effectively striking down the five-year deadline (at least for the time being), while upholding other portions of the proposition.

The Fourth District Court of Appeal for the state of California has issued a ruling that, at first blush, appears to disregard the recent ruling of the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on a nearly identical issue. At issue in the People v. Sandee case is whether a warrantless search of a probationer’s cell phone is valid under the Fourth Amendment waiver that probationers consent to as a prerequisite to being granted probation.

The California appellate court explained that under California law, and the precedent set by the California supreme court, probationers should expect that their Fourth Amendment waiver will allow a cell phone to be searched attendant to a probation search.

Did you hear the one about the guy who was caught cheating when a traffic cam snapped his photo with another woman in the car?

That’s not this case, but it has a cross-over issue. Los Angeles police use high-speed cameras to scan license plates and then catch drivers who are involved in crimes. They scan about 1.8 million license plates a week.

But what to do about the privacy of all those people who are not criminals? That’s the question the state Supreme Court sent to a trial judge to consider.