UCLA Faculty Association: A More Complete Explanation of the Hastings Decision

Hastings

We posted earlier about a court decision allowing UC-Hastings law school to drop the Hastings name. All we had at that point was a tweet to that effect. The San Francisco Chronicle carries a more detailed explanation:

The Jan. 1 scrubbing of the name “UC Hastings College of the Law” — challenged in court by descendants of its founder, Serranus Hastings — can proceed as planned, a judge ruled Friday in San Francisco. San Francisco Superior Court Judge Richard Ulmer Jr. denied the descendants’ request for a preliminary injunction, which means the storied public law school that opened in 1878 will become “UC College of the Law, San Francisco” ... The full lawsuit by the descendants to reverse the renaming can still proceed.

The new name may sound vanilla, but it succeeds in severing ties with the 19th century Hastings, a wealthy rancher and former chief justice of the California Supreme Court who historians say sponsored massacres of thousands of Native people, including ancestors of today’s Round Valley and Yuki tribes. Four of Hastings’ great-great-great grandchildren, other descendants and a small group of alumni sued the law school in October, disputing not only that the founder was a racist, but also the school’s legal right to change the name without paying a massive penalty — $1.7 billion.

Separately, the descendants filed a request to block the school from changing its name on Jan. 1, pending the outcome of its lawsuit. Hastings founded the University of California’s first law school with $100,000 in gold and a deal that included a new state law requiring that the college “shall forever be known” as the Hastings College of the Law. If not, the state would have to pay back the $100,000, plus interest. Family members who filed their lawsuit on Oct. 4 said they figured the rate to 7% a year, for a tidy $1.7 billion.

On Friday, Ulmer sided with the college and the state in regarding the 1878 law not as an inviolable contract, but as a statute that lawmakers can rescind... “The Act is not couched in the terms of a contract,” Ulmer wrote...

Full story at https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/Judge-halts-attempt-by-descendants-to-reverse-17686249.php.

The bottom line here is that the lawsuit continues - and potentially could go on for a long time - but the name change is in place.

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*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2022/12/despite-lawsuit-to-block-it-uc-hastings.html.

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