Press Release: 66% of Californians want an autonomy commission. It shouldn’t take an initiative to get them one.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 27, 2025

Coyote Codornices Marin (they/them)
Independent California Institute
director@ic.institute

66% of Californians want an autonomy commission. It shouldn’t take an initiative to get them one.

Carlsbad, CA: An initiative just went into circulation whose primary effect is to create a commission to study California’s independence from the United States. The initiative is sponsored by CALEXIT, a limited liability company.

Independent California Institute (ICI), a non-profit think tank which has studied California independence since 2018 has some friendly advice for CALEXIT: why not just make it a bill in the state legislature?

“An independence commission is a great idea, but why go through all the expense, organization, and delay of the initiative system?” asked Jeanne Rosenmeier, ICI Board Chair. “We already know it’s a popular policy. California’s legislature could get an independence commission up and running in 2025, whereas with this initiative, it’d be 2027 at the earliest.” Neil Longhust, ICI Secretary added, “California has already set aside $50 million to protect California’s autonomy by suing the Trump administration. Creating an independence commission would complement this effort.”

A commission to help California gain more autonomy from the federal government is not a new idea; it goes at least as far back as an initiative filed in 2017, which failed to collect sufficient signatures. That commission, had it been created, would have taken a 13-prong approach to helping California gain greater autonomy, including studying “how the state of California can buffer its residents against chaos, dysfunction, and uncertainty at the federal level.”

Three of the initiative’s five official sponsors went on to found the Independent California Institute in 2018. “We thought, until California has its own commission studying independence, there should at least be a think tank working on it,” said founding board member Dr. Timothy Vollmer.

As for the big question: Can California secede from the U.S.? According to the oldest article on ICI’s website, the answer has always been yes—if Congress and the President approve. “If the federal government is on board, there are at least four different ways to do it, using only powers everyone agrees that states and the federal government can exercise,” said ICI executive director Coyote Marin. “The U.S. Constitution is no barrier to peaceful, mutually agreed-upon secession.”