IN THE SUPREME COURT OF CALIFORNIA THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. TONY HARDIN, Defendant and Appellant. S277487 Second Appellate District, Division Seven B315434 Los Angeles County Superior Court A893110 March 4, 2024 Justice Kruger authored the opinion of the Court, in which Chief Justice Guerrero and Justices Corrigan, Groban, and Jenkins concurred. Justice Liu filed a dissenting opinion. Justice Evans filed a dissenting opinion. PEOPLE v. HARDIN S277487 Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. California’s youth offender parole statute offers opportunities for early release to certain persons who are incarcerated for crimes they committed at a young age. (Pen. Code, §§ 3051, 4801.) When it was first enacted in 2013, the statute applied only to individuals who committed their crimes before the age of 18; the purpose of the statute was to align California law with then-recent court decisions identifying Eighth Amendment limitations on life without parole sentences for juvenile offenders. In more recent years, however, the Legislature has expanded the statute to include certain young adult offenders as well. Under the current version of the statute, most persons incarcerated for a crime committed between ages 18 and 25 are entitled to a parole hearing during the 15th, 20th, or 25th year of their incarceration. (Pen. Code, § 3051, subd. (b).) But not all youthful offenders are eligible for parole hearings. The statute excludes, among others, offenders who are serving sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole for a crime committed after the age of 18. (Id., subd. (h).) Appellant Tony Hardin is currently serving a life without parole sentence for a special circumstance murder he committed at age 25. He contends that the youth offender parole statute violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection guarantee by irrationally discriminating against young adult offenders sentenced to life without parole — including, in 1 PEOPLE v. HARDIN Opinion of the Court by Kruger, J. particular, those sentenced to life without parole for special circumstance murder. Agreeing with Hardin and disagreeing with other appellate decisions to address the issue, the Court of Appeal held the life without parole exclusion invalid for lack of a rational basis. We now reverse. The standard we apply here, rational basis review, is necessarily deferential. The law recognizes that “[i]t is both the prerogative and the duty of the Legislature to define degrees of culpability and punishment, and to distinguish between crimes in this regard.” (People v. Turnage (2012) 55 Cal.4th 62, 74.) Respect for the Legislature’s proper role — and ours — means that we may not strike down its enactment under a rational basis standard unless the challengers demonstrate that “there is no ‘rational relationship between the disparity of treatment and some legitimate governmental purpose.’ ” (Ibid.) Without foreclosing the possibility of other as-applied challenges to the statute, we conclude that Hardin has not demonstrated that Penal Code section 3051’s exclusion of young adult offenders sentenced to life without parole is constitutionally invalid under a rational basis standard, either on its face …
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