Justice John Wiley

A personal voter-guide blog recommends retaining Wiley, finding no ethics or misconduct issues; it describes his candid writing style and three areas where his opinions have drawn debate, relying on "Google AI" summaries.

• Recommendation: Retain (Yes).
• Describes a concurrence in Brown v. Los Angeles Unified School District warning about unreliable expert testimony.
• Describes a dissent in Hohenshelt v. Superior Court objecting to strict voiding of arbitration agreements over late fee payments.
• Says he has criticized automatic reversals of dependency rulings over minor lapses in Native American heritage inquiries.

LAist's explainer on Court of Appeal retention races lists Wiley with his appointing governor; it says his State Bar evaluation rating is not available online and offers no assessment of his record.

• Lists Wiley as an associate justice appointed by former Gov. Jerry Brown.
• State Bar evaluation rating: "Not available online."
• Explains that retention votes are yes/no and that no California appellate justice has lost a retention election since the 1930s, per a state analysis.

The Secretary of State's official list of judicial contests for November 3, 2026 includes a retention question for Associate Justice John Wiley, Second District, Division Eight.

• Ballot question: "Shall Associate Justice JOHN WILEY be elected to the office for the term provided by law?"
• Listed under Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District (Los Angeles, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura).

Court listing of Wiley's published Division Eight opinions, October 2024 to October 2026: 42 authored opinions and 10 separate opinions (5 dissents, 5 concurrences), counting modified re-filings separately. Covers published opinions only; most appellate decisions are unpublished.

• About 17 authored entries are criminal or juvenile matters (People v. ..., In re ...); the rest are civil, including several suits against L.A. Unified and other public entities.
• Separate opinions: dissents in Chin v. DoorDash, Lakeshore v. Now Solutions, Leviss v. Madix (original and modified), and Diaz v. Thor Motor Coach; concurrences in In re Miguel J. (twice), P. v. Maldonado, P. v. Gresham, P. v. Gudiel.
• Several entries are modified or re-filed versions of the same case (e.g., Buchheim v. Anaya appears three times), so counts overstate distinct cases.
• Most recent: P. v. Thomas, 2026-10-22.

Wiley's opinion for a unanimous panel orders a gun suppressed: police impounded and searched a legally parked, properly plated rental car without probable cause, and the prosecution offered no community-caretaking reason that would make it a valid inventory search.

• Holds the inventory-search exception cannot be used when the officers' goal was to investigate a suspected crime.
• Puts the burden on the prosecution to justify a warrantless search; it did not question the officer about her motive and the trial court made no finding.
• Rejects search-incident-to-arrest and automobile-exception theories as well.
• Closes by acknowledging gun crime's dangers while insisting police develop probable cause.

Wiley's opinion affirms summary judgment for Burbank Unified against a teacher who refused the COVID-19 vaccine on religious grounds: unpaid leave was a reasonable accommodation under FEHA because it removed the conflict and the district's undue-hardship evidence went uncontroverted.

• Rejects the teacher's reading that a regulation barring accommodations that 'segregate' an employee rules out unpaid leave.
• Relies on Ansonia Bd. of Educ. v. Philbrook (U.S. 1986) that unpaid leave can be a reasonable religious accommodation.
• Treats the teacher's claim that one more unvaccinated person posed no hardship as "argument, not evidence."
• Notes the district granted every exemption request and treated all exempted teachers alike.

Wiley dissents from Scherb's majority, which held an employee waived the federal Ending Forced Arbitration Act by withholding a known sexual-harassment claim until after arbitration was compelled. Wiley calls the conduct a costly blunder, not waiver, because the employee's whole aim was to escape arbitration.

• Defines waiver as purposely relinquishing a known right and says the plaintiff never relinquished a court trial.
• Uses a chess analogy: losing a queen to an unseen bishop is a blunder, not a purposeful surrender.
• Calls the delay "lamentable" and says he would be sympathetic to fee sanctions against plaintiff's counsel.
• Would affirm the trial court's refusal to compel arbitration.

Wiley dissents from a Stratton majority that voided a $1.5 million liquidated-damages clause in a business settlement as a penalty. He argues Civil Code section 1671(b) puts the burden on the party attacking the clause, the borrower offered no evidence, and courts should enforce deals sophisticated, represented businesses negotiate.

• Lists five 'problems' with the majority: misapplied statute, conflict with Gormley v. Gonzalez (2022), illogic, unfairness, economic harm.
• Distinguishes Ridgley v. Topa Thrift (1998) as a consumer case the statute treats differently.
• Compares the clause to the roughly $4.4 million the lender sought by 2024, not the $450,000 discounted settlement.
• Draws on Judge Posner and law-and-economics scholarship; warns the ruling will make business credit costlier.
• Calls the borrower's defense a "hey neener neener, gotcha sucker" tactic (quoting Gormley) and urges further review.

Wiley dissents from Viramontes's majority, which held reality-TV star Ariana Madix's alleged copying and sending of a private sex video of Rachel Leviss was not protected activity under the anti-SLAPP statute. Wiley says the #Scandoval affair was a matter of public concern and the claims are mixed public and private, so he would remand to sort them out.

• Argues that when a mass audience names a scandal, the issue is of public concern.
• Notes Leviss's counsel said damages would include public scorn and ridicule, which he says makes the case mainly about public discussion.
• Would apply Baral v. Schnitt (2016) and remand on the mixed claims.
• Questions the trial court's illegality ground, reading Madix's declaration as describing blanket consent to search the phone.
• The record holds the 2026-08-14 modification order (correcting a year in the dissent's citation) plus the opinion.

Wiley's opinion affirms dismissal of a trip-and-fall suit against West Hollywood because the plaintiff sued before the Government Claims Act's 45-day waiting period ran, and refiling did not cure it.

• Opens by stressing that taxpayers fund claims and "have a powerful interest in managing their government's purse."
• Compliance is mandatory even if the city knew of the claim; the premature suit deprived the city of time to investigate.
• Distinguishes Malear, whose "narrow" substantial-compliance holding applies only when the original complaint was never served.
• The plaintiff forfeited a meet-and-confer argument by not raising it below.

Wiley dissents from a ruling that an RV maker's Indiana forum-selection clause is unenforceable against California lemon-law buyers, arguing unconscionability doctrine should not police an ordinary competitive purchase.

• The majority (Viramontes, Acting P.J.) followed Lathrop and Hardy, both under Supreme Court review, and reversed the stay.
• Wiley: "Applying the doctrine of unconscionability to this ordinary shopping situation is a bad use of a good law."
• He reasons that buyers of a $400,000 luxury item can walk away, so there is no oppressive bargaining power, and calls form contracts "contracts of convenience."
• He would sever the offending terms, as Kim v. Airstream did, and rejects shifting the burden to the manufacturer.
• He warns lemon-law costs may be passed on, raising RV prices for Californians.

Wiley's opinion holds that a plaintiff who beat a bond motion in a derivative suit is still liable for the winning defendant's ordinary costs.

• The LLC derivative-suit bond statute contains no words exempting losing plaintiffs from costs; the opinion quotes it at length to "prove this negative."
• Follows Brusso (1991): the bond statute is a special procedural rule that does not displace general cost rules.
• Freeman and West Hills are "not on point."
• Cursory claims, including of trial-court bias, were forfeited for lack of reasoned argument and citations.

Wiley's 2020 opinion affirms summary judgment against two Black employees' promotion-discrimination claims against staffing agencies and a harassment claim against an executive as time-barred.

• Staffing agencies that had no role in promotion decisions were not liable.
• Joins "the vast majority" of courts in reviewing summary-judgment evidentiary rulings for abuse of discretion, citing the volume and pace of trial-court rulings.
• Calls the hearsay question "a close call" and adds a lesson for litigators: "know your Evidence Code."
• Holds a failure-to-promote claim accrues when the promotion is offered and accepted, not when the new job starts.

The court's official profile of Wiley, opening with his statement that equal justice under law is "our national ideal," covers his career as a law professor, federal prosecutor, trial judge from 2002, and Division Eight justice since 2018.

• Profile statement: judges "do their best" every day to make equal justice "come true" for litigants.
• Appointed to the Superior Court in 2002 and the Court of Appeal in 2018.
• Clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. and First Circuit Judge Frank Coffin.
• Tenured at UCLA Law School (Distinguished Teaching Award); visiting professor at Harvard; former federal prosecutor.
• Lists publications in major law reviews and the American Economics Review.