I blogged two weeks ago about Hansen v. Volkov, a then-nonprecedential decision on the subject (I quote that post below). Last Friday, Prof. Aaron Caplan (Loyola) and I—who have both written about First Amendment limits on harassment restraining orders—filed a letter asking the California Court of Appeal to "publish" the decision, which is to say to make it precedential; and I'm delighted to say that yesterday the court agreed, ruling (in relevant part):
The opinion in this case filed September 18, 2023 was not certified for publication. It appearing the opinion meets the standards for publication specified in California Rules of Court, rule 8.1105(c), the nonparty's request pursuant to California Rules of Court, rule 8.1120(a) for publication is granted.
Prof. Caplan and I had done the same in 2020 with regard to Curcio v. Pels, another important case involving limits on harassment restraining orders. You can read the new precedential opinion in Hansen v. Volkov here, though it's very close to the nonprecedential opinion I discussed in the original post (the minor changes are described in the docket):
