Broussard Attacks Effort to Oust Bird, Calls It ‘Power Play’

State Supreme Court Justice Allen E. Broussard Saturday denounced the attempt to oust Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird as a conservative “power play” and “a politically motivated attempt to pack this court.”

Broussard’s speech before the Black American Political Assn. of California here was the strongest public statement made so far by a justice about the campaign by several organizations to remove the controversial Bird from her post in the November, 1986, election.

Broussard, a liberal, criticized conservatives for what he said was an attempt to remove any justice “who won’t dance to the conservative tune.”

He also directed some critical remarks toward Gov. George Deukmejian, who as attorney-general in 1982 led an unsuccessful campaign to remove Bird, Broussard and Justice Cruz Reynoso from the Supreme Court. (Deukmejian did not oppose conservative Justice Frank K. Richardson, an appointee of President Reagan when Reagan was California governor.)

The three justices Deukmejian opposed “just incidentally happened to have been the appointees of our former Democratic governor,” Broussard said, referring to Edmund G. Brown Jr.

“Our present governor has been heard to say publicly how he would relish the opportunity to appoint more of ‘his kind of people,’ ” Broussard said.

“We need judges to be free to make tough decisions without reprisals,” he told the audience of about 150 black political activists at Sacramento Convention Center.

Broussard, who was reconfirmed in 1982, is the only one of the seven justices who does not come before voters next year. Bird, Reynoso, and Joseph Grodin all have been targeted for opposition by the court’s conservative critics. Also up before voters next year are Malcolm Lucas, a Deukmejian appointee and the court’s only conservative; a still unnamed replacement for Otto Kaus, who has announced that he will retire, and Stanley Mosk, a liberal who has said he may retire before the election.

If Mosk does not retire, Broussard predicted, “He, too, will be on that hit list. If he does retire, the new person will not be opposed as long as he fits into that conservative mode.”

He urged the audience to support all of the justices on the ballot next year, “to support the court as an institution.”

Broussard drew his loudest applause when he declared that the Supreme Court should not hand down decisions based on what is currently “politically popular,” and then made a comparison between the justices and baseball umpires.

“You have two teams competing for the baseball championship of the world and that seventh game has come to the bottom of the ninth inning. The score is tied 2-2, two runners on base, three balls and two strikes. That next pitch is important. Pitcher pitches, batter swings and hits. The runner breaks for the plate. The fielder throws. The catcher tags. It’s a close play. But we don’t worry, because the umpire is right on top of the play, he sees it all.

“But does he call the play? No. He backs away, puts his hand to his ear to listen to the roar of the crowd, because he wants to make a popular decision. Baseball won’t let that happen. My plea to you today is that you not make that mistake.”