After the University of California removed the name of its namesake benefactor from its San Francisco-based law school, the family of that namesake Serranus Hastings took the university to court.
The lawsuit dates back to October 2022, after the University of California officially changed the name of UC Hastings School of Law to UC Law San Francisco. The name change, which was done through state legislation, was undertaken as part of a national reckoning with the name of instutions and public spaces after figures with racist pasts. In the case of Serranus Hastings, it was his leadership of a 19th Century genocide of Indigenous Californians.
A San Francisco court previously tried to toss this lawsuit from the descendants of Hastings back in February 2024. It was appealed to the First District Court of Appeal, which ruled last year that the university and the state had not violated the California constitution by reversing the 1878 legislation that gave the school its name, with the duration of “forever.”…