"But for more than 30 years this part of the state constitution has received from Sacramento the same collective eye-rolling as the constitutional deadline for the state budget.
Residency requirements nationally had been viewed as unconstitutional and in the 1970s the California Supreme Court in two cases applied an equal protection test to residency requirements and found them unconstitutional. The language has remained in the state constitution, but it is no longer enforced, and candidates know that the one-year rule is the “fake” requirement.
But things have changed. After our California courts balked at the one-year standard, the Supreme Court affirmed New Hampshire’s seven-year residency requirement and in another case found that there is no constitutional right to be a candidate.
In what will likely be the highest profile case regarding residency requirements, the President’s former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, is trying to get on ballots in Chicago, and being tripped up by their one-year residency requirement. And in the dozens of pages of testimony, filings, the decision and dissent, the constitutionality of such limits was not raised once. Outside of California the constitutionality of residency requirements is not even an open question."
California residency rules, once toothless, are taking on new meaning
Capitol Weekly:
