Opinion
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County Super. Ct. No. BC347921 Maureen Duffy-Lewis, Judge.
Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, Michael M. Berger, Lara M. Krieger for Plaintiff and Appellant.
Office of General Counsel, State Bar of California, Marie M. Moffat, Lawrence C. Yee, Danielle A. Lee for Defendants and Respondents.
BOREN, P.J.
Plaintiff Nasrin Morrowatti, an unsuccessful applicant for admission to the State Bar of California (the State Bar), sued among other defendants the State Bar, its Committee of Bar Examiners, and the State Bar’s senior executive for bar admissions, Gayle Murphy (hereinafter collectively referred to as the State Bar). Morrowatti’s complaint alleged that she suffers various physical and mental impairments and disabilities, that the testing accommodations granted to her by the State Bar were inadequate, and that she should be awarded damages and declared to have passed the February 2004 general bar exam.
The trial court sustained without leave to amend the State Bar’s demurrer on several grounds and dismissed the action. Because the Supreme Court has exclusive jurisdiction over matters involving the admission of attorneys (Bus. & Prof. Code, § 6066), we affirm.
All further statutory references are to the Business and Professions Code, unless otherwise indicated.
FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL SUMMARY
As alleged in her complaint, Morrowatti suffers from physical and mental impairments requiring special accommodations. These disabilities include arthritis, asthma, allergies to mold and mildew, attention deficit disorder, and an unspecified vision problem affecting the fast reading of testing material. After Morrowatti graduated from law school, she applied to take the February 2004 California bar exam, informed the State Bar of her disabilities, and asked the State Bar for accommodations.
The State Bar granted some of Morrowatti’s requested accommodations, but denied others because her documentation was insufficient. The State Bar, for example, did not accommodate her with a separate testing room for herself and did not have the exam questions printed in a certain font. However, Morrowatti was permitted to use a medically prescribed oxygen supply while taking the exam, and she was given extra time to complete the exam.
For the February 2004 bar exam, Morrowatti was assigned to take the exam in a location allegedly infected with mold and mildew, which caused her to exhaust her oxygen supply. In addition, Morrowatti had to bend down on her hands and knees to plug her word processor into the electrical outlet, which was difficult with her arthritis. Morrowatti also alleged that the State Bar improperly “flagged” her exam in some manner to the graders as an exam taken under accommodations, and the State Bar imposed a surcharge on the use of her word processor, an item she deemed a necessary accommodation. Morrowatti failed the exam and attributed her failure to the actions of the State Bar.
For the July 2004 exam, the State Bar refused to further accommodate Morrowatti. Her exam site was the same site she had been at before, which she found unacceptable to accommodate her disabilities. The only other sites with accommodations offered by the State Bar were in San Diego and San Francisco, located far from Morrowatti’s Los Angeles home. Morrowatti thus decided not to take the July 2004 exam. The State Bar refused to refund her application fee for the July 2004 exam, and she allegedly could not afford the application fee for the July 2005 exam.
In February of 2006, Morrowatti filed the present lawsuit in propria persona. She alleged, among other claims, causes of action for violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (42 U.S.C. § 12101 et seq.; hereinafter, ADA) and the Unruh Civil Rights Act (Civ. Code, § 51; hereinafter, Unruh Act), premised on the refusal to accommodate her disabilities, and claims of negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, breach of contract, battery, unjust enrichment, misrepresentation, violation of privacy rights, and res ipsa loquitor. Morrowatti’s complaint asserted that she should be awarded damages and declared to have passed the February 2004 general bar exam.
The State Bar demurred. Following a hearing, the trial court sustained the demurrer without leave to amend. The demurrer was sustained on the grounds that the Supreme Court has sole and exclusive jurisdiction over matters involving the admission of attorneys (§ 6066), that the State Bar and its employees are statutorily immune from suit for failure to certify an applicant for admission (Gov. Code, § 818.4), and that Morrowatti failed to allege the filing of the requisite government tort claim necessary to sue a public entity for money damages (Gov. Code, §§ 905, 911.2).
The court then dismissed the action, and this appeal ensued.
DISCUSSION
I. The standard of review.
A demurrer tests the legal sufficiency of the complaint. (Hernandez v. City of Pomona (1996) 49 Cal.App.4th 1492, 1497.) On appeal from an order of dismissal after an order sustaining a demurrer, our standard of review is de novo, and we deem true all material facts properly pled. (Moore v. Regents of University of California (1990) 51 Cal.3d 120, 125; Traders Sports, Inc. v. City of San Leandro (2001) 93 Cal.App.4th 37, 43.)
II. The Supreme Court has exclusive jurisdiction over matters involving the admission of attorneys (§ 6066); thus, this court lacks subject matter jurisdiction.
The State Bar is a public corporation (Cal. Const., art. VI, § 9; § 6001) within the sphere of the judicial branch of government (see §§ 6008, 6008.2), and is the California Supreme Court’s agency that administers attorney admission, discipline and reinstatement. (In re Attorney Discipline System (1998) 19 Cal.4th 582, 598-600.) Although the State Bar administers the bar exam and other related matters, the Supreme Court controls all admissions and discipline matters. (Saleeby v. State Bar (1985) 39 Cal.3d 547, 557-558 (Saleeby).) The Supreme Court has characterized the State Bar as its administrative arm or adjunct that assists in attorney admission and discipline. (Id. at p. 557; In re Attorney Discipline System, supra, at pp. 599-600.)
In the area of admission to practice law, the “examining committee” (§§ 6060, subd. (g), 6064)--the Committee of Bar Examiners (the Committee)--constitutes one portion of the State Bar’s administrative arm. The Committee was established by the State Bar’s board of governors to examine applicants, administer admission requirements, and certify successful applicants to the Supreme Court. (Greene v. Zank (1984) 158 Cal.App.3d 497, 505; see § 6064.) Applicants must pass the bar exam to be certified. (§ 6060, subd. (g).) The State Bar acts solely in an advisory capacity, and the Committee’s certification or refusal to certify is only a recommendation (Greene v. Zank, supra, at p. 505), as the Supreme Court retains its authority to admit individuals to practice law. (§§ 6064, 6066; see In re Rose (2000) 22 Cal.4th 430, 453.)
As stated by the Supreme Court, “[A]n applicant is admitted [to practice law] only by order of the Supreme Court which, upon certification by the bar’s examining committee that the applicant fulfils the admission requirements, ‘may admit such applicant as an attorney at law in all the courts of this State . . . .’” (Saleeby, supra, 39 Cal.3d at p. 557, quoting § 6064.)
If the Committee refuses to certify an applicant for admission to the bar, the applicant may petition the Supreme Court. (§ 6066.) The Supreme Court noted this petition process in Saleeby, supra, 39 Cal.3d 547. Saleeby involved a client’s claim for funds in the State Bar administered Client Security Fund (CSF) for losses allegedly incurred through attorney misconduct, and the court concluded that future aggrieved claimants must seek initial review through writ petitions in the superior court. (Id. at p. 559.) Pertinent to the present case, the court observed that “the grant or denial of reimbursement from the CSF [did] not involve discipline or admission of attorneys” (id. at p. 558), and that such discipline and admission matters are the only types of bar determinations and recommendations “directly reviewable by this court.” (Id. at p. 557.)
The statute providing for the Supreme Court’s direct review of the refusal to certify an applicant for admission provides as follows: “Any person refused certification to the Supreme Court for admission to practice may have the action . . . reviewed by the Supreme Court, in accordance with the procedure prescribed by the court.” (§ 6066.) According to Morrowatti, the statutory scheme does not define what constitutes “admission,” does not define the scope the Supreme Court’s exclusive jurisdiction, and could not have been intended to embroil the Supreme Court in a myriad of insignificant bar admission issues.
The prescribed procedure is set forth in California Rules of Court, rule 9.13 (former rule 952). (Saleeby, supra, 39 Cal.3d at pp. 557-558.) Rule 9.13(a), (b) and (c) describes the Supreme Court petition process following initial State Bar Court review of matters involving the disbarment or suspension of members of the bar. Rule 9.13(d) describes the Supreme Court petition process for the “review [of] any other decision of the State Bar Court or action of the Board of Governors of the State Bar, or of any board or committee appointed by it and authorized to make a determination under the provisions of the State Bar Act . . . .” (Italics added.) One such committee is the Committee of Bar Examiners. (Greene v. Zank, supra, 158 Cal.App.3d at p. 505; see § 6064.)
However, Morrowatti’s argument belittles the significance of her own ADA and Unruh Act claims. Moreover, the Supreme Court’s plenary and inherent power to admit applicants is unchallenged, and its original jurisdiction over the “admission to practice” (§ 6066) is broad and unconstrained by any statutory language. The Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction encompasses, for example, even disputes over the examination fee a bar applicant is charged. (Smith v. State Bar (1989) 212 Cal.App.3d 971, 976-978 [applicant unable to take the bar exam for which he had registered improperly sued in the superior court to compel State Bar to transfer his fees to a subsequent test].)
Morrowatti’s reliance on McEldowney v. National Conference of Bar Examiners (C.D.Cal. 1993) 837 F.Supp. 1062 (McEldowney), is unavailing. In McEldowney, the unsuccessful bar applicant challenged the grading of some of his answers on the multistate portion of the bar exam, petitioned the State Bar to review and correct the supposedly erroneous scoring of his exam answers, and then filed a diversity action in federal district court. The district court dismissed the lawsuit because the third party beneficiary breach of contract claim had no substantive merit and the negligence claim was barred by the statute of limitations. (Id. at pp. 1064-1065.)
However, the court in McEldowney preliminarily opined that it had subject matter jurisdiction because “the state supreme court’s exclusive jurisdiction over ‘bar admission matters,’ is limited to proceedings which directly challenge the admission process or the refusal to admit an applicant.” (Id. at p. 1063.) Even assuming the validity of such a limiting interpretation, the present case does indeed challenge the admission process because it challenges the fairness of the requisite exam.
Accordingly, Morrowatti was a “person refused certification to the Supreme Court for admission to practice” who thus may have the matter “reviewed by the Supreme Court” (§ 6066), and the trial court properly sustained the demurrer and dismissed the action. Finally, because Morrowatti should have proceeded by original petition in the Supreme Court which has exclusive subject matter jurisdiction, we deem it unnecessary and inappropriate to address either the merits of Morrowatti’s contentions or the other defenses raised by the State Bar.
DISPOSITION
The judgment of dismissal is affirmed.
We concur: ASHMANN-GERST, J., CHAVEZ, J.