{"id":481480,"date":"2026-10-01T10:14:48","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T10:14:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/481480\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T10:14:48","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T10:14:48","slug":"kern-river-hearing-moved-to-san-francisco-state-ag-to-weigh-in-sjv-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/481480\/","title":{"rendered":"Kern River hearing moved to San Francisco, state AG to weigh in \u2013 SJV Water"},"content":{"rendered":"

The California Supreme Court hearing on Kern River flows has been changed from Redding to the justices\u2019 home court in San Francisco, according to the court\u2019s website<\/a>. The hearing will still be held Oct. 7 at 9 a.m.<\/p>\n

The California Attorney General\u2019s office and Department of Fish and Wildlife also accepted an offer from the Supreme Court to make their own arguments in support of the plaintiffs, Bring Back the Kern and Water Audit California.<\/p>\n

This case has generated significant interest as it hinges on a key statute used in numerous conservation cases, California Fish and Game Code 5937.<\/p>\n

Bring Back the Kern and Water Audit sued the City of Bakersfield in 2022 over how it operates the Kern River. They argued the city needed to study those operations under the Public Trust Doctrine, which requires all state waters be used for the highest, beneficial use, including public recreation and the environment. Because the river is dry through Bakersfield most of the time, plaintiffs argued, Bakersfield had been derelict in its Public Trust duty.<\/p>\n

When the 2023 big water year brought fish back to the river, plaintiffs won a temporary injunction requiring Bakersfield to keep enough water in the river for fish under Fish and Game Code 5937, which requires dam owners let enough water pass downstream for fish.<\/p>\n

Several agricultural water districts with river rights, which aren\u2019t defendants but are \u201creal parties in interest\u201d in the case, appealed that injunction and the Fifth District Court of Appeal overturned it in April 2025 saying the judge should have determined how much water was needed for fish and then balanced that need against other water uses.<\/p>\n

Bring Back the Kern and Water Audit sought to have that Fifth District decision reviewed by the Supreme Court, which was granted in July 2025.<\/p>\n

After more than a year of briefs back and forth, justices are now ready for oral arguments. After the hearing Oct. 7, they have 90 days to issue their written opinion.<\/p>\n

During the hearing, attorneys will be held to a strict timeline set out by the court:
\u2022 Plaintiffs get 20 minutes, less any time reserved for rebuttal
\u2022 The AG and Fish and Wildlife will get 10 minutes
\u2022 The defendant gets 15 minutes
\u2022 The water districts will get a collective 15 minutes<\/p>\n

For those attending in person, the hearing will be held in the Ronald M. George State Office Complex, Earl Warren Building, 350 McAllister Street, Fourth Floor in San Francisco. It will also be webcast live on the Supreme Court\u2019s website at https:\/\/supreme.courts.ca.gov\/<\/a>. Archives of those webcasts are typically posted to the court\u2019s webpage two weeks to a month later.<\/p>\n

Bring Back the Kern will hold a watch party<\/a> at Dagny\u2019s coffee shop in Bakersfield to view the historic hearing. <\/p>\n

The last time Supreme Court justices heard a case involving the Kern River, their 1886 decision set the basis for California\u2019s water rights system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The California Supreme Court hearing on Kern River flows has been changed from Redding to the justices\u2019 home…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":481481,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-481480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/481481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}