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  "description": "LegInfo, the website officially charged with publicly posting California's laws and bills, made a change to make the site more publicly accessible after Inland Empire Law Weekly made multiple inquires about a site policy and told site administrators it would publish a story on the issue.",
  "path": "/no-38-state-database-improved-sign-in-judge-martha-bellinger-obituary/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-02-22T15:00:38.000Z",
  "site": "https://ielaw.news",
  "tags": [
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    "Rizio Lipinsky Heiting",
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    "Please subscribe",
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    "file was changed to read",
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    "In Memoriam: Judge Martha Bellinger (Ret.)",
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    "a letter",
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    "just two weeks ago",
    "California lawmakers blocked from entering Otay Mesa Detention Center despite prior clearance",
    "temporarily suspended that restriction",
    "California schools face a new budget hit: Soaring insurance costs after sex abuse lawsuits",
    "that law",
    "California prisons have life-saving addiction treatment. Doctors say the parole board is undermining it"
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  "textContent": "_A couple of editorial notes before we dive into the news:_\n\nI've improved the sign-in process. I've heard from some of you that the sign-in link would instead direct you to the sign-up page. I didn't realize, those of you that talked with me, which sign-up link you meant, and so I unfortunately thought the problem was already fixed. I've properly fixed the problem now by changing the link in the paywall. If you have been unable to access the site for any period of time due to this error, please send an email to editor at ielaw.news. I will comp you the appropriate weeks of paywalled access for the weeks you were unable to take full advantage of your subscription.\n\nI also have been publishing an abbreviated podcast version of my weekly editions, thanks to the good help of Robert Sides, an experienced voiceover specialist and audio technician. You can find those audio editions on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or our website. These editions are free to listen to, and are produced thanks to the sponsorship of Rizio Lipinsky Heiting. Give them a listen, and tell your friends!\n\nYou can find this publication now, not only on those audio sites, but also on LinkedIn, Facebook, BlueSky, and, of course, this website and your email inbox. Please follow this publication across those other platforms to boost our reach.\n\n\n\nHelp me build a staff:\n\n Please subscribe \n\n* * *\n\n## California's legal code repository increases site accessibility after Inland Empire Law Weekly inquiries\n\nLegInfo, the website officially charged with publicly posting California's laws and bills, made a change to make the site more publicly accessible after Inland Empire Law Weekly made multiple inquires about a site policy and told site administrators it would publish a story on the issue.\n\nSince 2022, LegInfo had blocked search engines, including Google, from indexing the site, causing it to drop lower in rankings for Google, Bing and Safari users. The issue was present in the \"robots\" text file, a publicly accessible file that directs search engines how to index sites.\n\nOn Jan. 1, 2022, the robots file simply told search engines to wait ten seconds before indexing the site. By August 1, 2022, the file was changed to read \"User-agent: * Disallow: /\". This directs all search engines to not index webpages on the site. The robots file gave the same direction until at least Jan. 1, 2026.\n\nSince the change in 2022, LegInfo has fallen lower in search results. Searching on Google for \"Senate Bill 1537,\" the bill introduced by Sen. Eloise Gomez Reyes this year which would prevent courthouse arrests by federal agents, brings results of the bill as hosted by LegiScan, CalMatters' Digital Democracy database and TrackBill. (Search results will vary by user). Searching for \"Assembly Bill 1537 LegInfo\" causes the LegInfo site to be at the top of the search results—but with Google's explanation that the site won't allow it to be read.\n\nOn Aug. 14, Inland Empire Law Weekly sent an email to the Office of the Legislative Counsel (OLC), which manages the website. After two poor explanations of the reason for the file's language, the OLC stopped responding to requests to update the site.\n\nOn Feb. 12, this publication asked the OLC for a final comment, to accompany an article that would be published on the file either last Sunday or today.\n\nOn Feb. 18, the OLC responded: \"We have changed the robots.txt file to allow crawling by Google. Over the next few weeks, the bill descriptions should populate on Google search results.\"\n\nThe file now carves out an exemption for Google to access the site:\n\nUser-agent: Googlebot\nAllow: /\nUser-agent: *\nDisallow: /\n\nIn their first response, on Aug. 14, the OLC told Inland Empire Law Weekly that the real reason for the site not being indexed was that Google cannot index dynamically generated files.\n\nInland Empire Law Weekly responded with documentation from Google that says it can index dynamically generated pages, and screenshots of indexed bill pages on the LegInfo site that Google indexed before the robots file was changed. The documentation is available here, here and here.\n\n\"The current text of the robots file is the basic text to tell search engines to stay away from your site,\" Inland Empire Law Weekly wrote.\n\n\"Leginfo traditionally did not have this text. After the text was changed, multiple people have noticed a drop in search engine ranking, and previews no longer appear. This is the natural result of writing the robots file the way it is. For the sake of discussion, let's say that search engines cannot index leginfo based on the way the pages are developed. I still see no explanation as to why the robots file was changed on February to disallow search result indexing,\" Inland Empire Law Weekly wrote on Aug. 14.\n\nAfter not hearing a response for a week, this publication followed up. The OLC retracted their explanation and supplied a new one:\n\nInland Empire Law Weekly replied by saying that the site could allow only Google to index the site. This publication provided the necessary code, and asked for an explanation of the OLC's reasoning if they chose not to implement it. This publication did not receive a response until it told the OLC that an article on the correspondence would be published today.\n\n* * *\n\n## In Memoriam: Judge Martha Bellinger (Ret.)\n\n\n\nJudge Martha Bellinger passed away on February 11, 2026. Bellinger was a respected retired jurist whose distinguished career reflects a lifelong commitment to justice, public service, and compassion. Her professional path was uniquely shaped by five interconnected callings—faith, law, teaching, writing, and judicial service—each of which informed and strengthened her impact on the communities she served.\n\nBefore entering public office, Martha Served as an ordained parish minister in the United Methodist Church and next as a probation officer for Madison County, New York. As a Methodist pastor, she developed a deep foundation in ethics, pastoral care, and advocacy for fairness and human dignity. Her ministry instilled in her a strong sense of moral responsibility and a commitment to service that would guide her throughout her legal career.\n\nRead it here\n\n* * *\n\n## Reading\n\n\n\nThis week's book recommendation is that of the late Judge Martha Bellinger's autobiography. From Robe to Robe: A Lesbian's Spiritual Journey details Bellinger's time in seminary, her recognization of her sexuality, her experience with her partner, her time in law school, her process of coming out as a lesbian, and her belief that God created her with her sexuality in mind.\n\n$14 from your local bookshop\n\n* * *\n\n## The Declaration: **He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers**\n\nIn celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Inland Empire Law Weekly is reviewing each of the 27 reasons for independence. Today's reason finally deals with our reader's favorite subject: the law.\n\nThis issue appears to have been more clear than others: The North Carolina governor refused a bill that would have established courts in 1773. Governor Josiah Martin wrote about it in a letter to colonial Secretary of State William Legge.\n\nMartin took issue upon issue with the concisely titled bill: \"An Act for dividing the Province into six several Districts, and for Establishing a Superior Court of Justice in each of the said Districts; and for Establishing Inferior Courts of Pleas and Quarter Sessions in the several Counties of this Province, and regulating the Proceedings therein.\"\n\nMartin vetoed the bill in its entirety because it would have offered jurisdiction over suits that King George objected to. He wrote it would have allowed civil suits against debtors who lived outside of the colonies, and it would have allowed those suits to seize the debtors' lands in the colonies, both of which would have gone against King George's wishes.\n\n\"I think this Act authorizes proceedings against the effects of Persons who have never resided in the Colony, repugnant to His Majesty's additional Instruction,\" Martin wrote.\n\nAs Ryan Williams wrote in the Duke Law Journal, this veto completely halted the administration of justice in the colony.\n\n\"The resulting impasse effectively terminated judicial authority in North Carolina and left the residents of the colony without a fully functioning court system for more than three years,\" Williams wrote.\n\n* * *\n\n## This day in history\n\nAs Justice Stanley Mosk wrote in his book, Democracy Day by Day, February 22nd \"has been an auspicious day in American history.\"\n\nGeorge Washington was born on this day in 1732. On Feb. 22, 1770, the first American was killed in the American Revolution. Ebenezer Richardson, a customs officer, tried to disperse a protest in front of a loyalist's shop by firing a gun into the crowd. He fatally shot Christopher Seider, an 11-year-old boy. The Boston Massacre would happen the next month, partly in response to anger over Seider's death.\n\nThe date continues with expansion. In 1819, John Quincy Adams, serving as Secretary of State, signed a treaty in which Spain agreed to give up Florida and the United States agreed to give up claims to Texas. In 1848, the Treaty of Guadalape Hidalgo was submitted to the Senate to end the Mexican-American War. Mexico would cede California, Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado and Arizona in exchange for $18 million ($738 million today, after adjusting for inflation.) The treaty said that any residents of these new territories could choose to remain Mexican citizens or become naturalized Americans, without any threat of removal to Mexico or deprivation of property. In 1889, President Grover Cleveland signed a bill admitting the Dakotas, Montana and Washington as American states.\n\nThe date's prominence in American history ends with division. On Feb. 22, 1856, the Republican Party organized at its first national convention in Pittsburgh. Six years later to the day, after the Republicans carried Abraham Lincoln to the White House, Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as president of the Confederate States of America.\n\nOn a lesser note, on this date in 1879, Frank Woolworth opened the first Woolworth store in Utica, New York. San Bernardino's vacant Woolworth's building caught fire just two weeks ago.\n\n* * *\n\n## California lawmakers blocked from entering Otay Mesa Detention Center despite prior clearance\n\nSan Diego County Supervisors Terra Lawson-Remer, left, and Paloma Aguirre, right, walk next to U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, center, after he was denied a visit to the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego on Feb. 20, 2026. Padilla's visit comes amid reports of inhumane conditions at the detention center following the Trump Administration’s surge of immigration enforcement efforts. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters\n\nFederal immigration officials blocked two San Diego County supervisors and U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla from inspecting the Otay Mesa Detention Center Friday.\n\nPadilla made an unannounced visit under a federal law that authorizes members of Congress to conduct oversight at detention facilities, with or without prior notice. The Department of Homeland Security had required lawmakers to provide seven days notice for visits, but a federal judge in December temporarily suspended that restriction, affirming that lawmakers can conduct real-time oversight of detention centers.\n\n“It was beyond disappointing, but sadly, not surprising,” Padilla said. “The big question I come with is, what do they have to hide?\"\n\nRead it here\n\n* * *\n\n## California schools face a new budget hit: Soaring insurance costs after sex abuse lawsuits\n\nSince California made it easier for sexual abuse survivors to sue government agencies, victims have brought forth more than $3 billion in claims. But even agencies that haven’t been sued are facing financial hardship as a result of the law — through skyrocketing insurance premiums.\n\nSchool districts, counties and other public agencies in every corner of California have seen their liability insurance premiums soar, in large part because of that law, which passed in 2019. Some districts have seen their yearly insurance costs jump by $1 million or more.\n\nTo pay the premiums, schools have had to leave teacher vacancies unfilled, scrap renovation projects and make other cuts that affect students. Counties have cut back on public safety, roads, health care and social services.\n\n“It’s become unmanageable,” said Dorothy Johnson, a legislative advocate for the Association of California School Administrators. “We desperately need guardrails, or the situation will become very dire.”\n\nRead it here\n\n* * *\n\n## California prisons have life-saving addiction treatment. Doctors say the parole board is undermining it\n\nCalifornia’s parole board is using unreliable drug test results in decisions about releasing incarcerated people despite flaws that were exposed in a rash of false positives two years ago, more than a dozen state prison doctors and state-appointed attorneys say.\n\nAs a result of the practice, which conflicts with policies governing prison health care, more and more incarcerated people are walking away from life-saving addiction treatment over fears that a false positive could cost them their freedom.\n\nRecords obtained by CalMatters show that 11 prison physicians last fall urged the parole board to stop using drug tests, which they wrote are prone to error, to determine whether to release someone. The practice, they said, erodes trust and has already begun dissuading their incarcerated patients from seeking help.\n\nFallout from addiction treatment comes at a critical time for the prison health system, which is trying to reverse a 39% increase in fatal overdoses among the people it served between 2019 and 2023.\n\nRead it here",
  "title": "No. 38: state database, improved sign in, Judge Martha Bellinger obituary",
  "updatedAt": "2026-02-22T22:16:41.097Z"
}