7 months ago
SACRAMENTO, CA - The California Supreme Court has ruled that a paralyzed UCD law school graduate can take the California Bar Examination on Tuesday.
The state's high court issued its opinion after Gov. Schwarzenegger sent a letter to justices earlier Monday requesting the court order the State Bar of California to allow Sara Granda admission to the exam.
Granda, 29, has been fighting to be able to take the exam after the State Bar informed her she would not be allowed to take it.
Granda previously told News10 a "ridiculous snafu" was preventing her from taking the exam now because her fee was paid by check instead of credit card online.
Granda said she had been in regular contact with state bar officials in recent months, and was told there were no problems with her application. "Nobody ever mentioned anything that I wasn't registered," she said.
But then on July 14, Granda received a call saying that her application was incomplete, and she would be unable to take the bar exam.
A federal court judge on Friday denied Granda's request for a restraining order prohibiting the State Bar from preventing her from taking the test.
In his letter to the state high court, Schwarzenegger said, in part,
I appreciate the State Bar's need to have an automated system to handle applications and fee payments. But the system was not designed to handle applications like this, when a disabled individual is paying by check from another state agency. The system needs to be flexible enough to accommodate extraordinary individuals like Sara Granda.
Granda's attorney, Stewart Katz, had said he planned to file an emergency petition Monday requesting the court to order the bar to test Granda on Tuesday.
A spokesman for the State Bar on the weekend said that while Granda was to be commended for extraordinary achievement, she had been been warned her application was not completed prior to the deadline.
If the supreme court had not ruled in Granda's favor, she would have had to wait until February 2010 to take the exam.
Following the ruling, Schwarzenegger issued this statement:
I am pleased to hear that Sara will not be penalized by a simple bureaucratic error that would have postponed years of hard work and created many more months of anticipation. Sara has overcome much in her life, is an inspiration to us all and I wish her luck on tomorrow's test.News10/KXTV
