Mathew Tobriner

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Mathew O. Tobriner was an associate justice on the California Supreme Court from 1962 – 1982. As one of the three members on the Commission on Judicial Appointments, Tobriner cast the deciding vote in approving the nomination of Rose Elizabeth Bird as the first female Chief Justice on the California Supreme Court.

Justice Tobriner wrote the 1974 decision of Green v. Superior Court, 517 P.2d 1168, that established the doctrine of implied warranty of habitability in residential leases in California, which requires landlords to maintain leased dwellings in a habitable condition.

Justice Tobriner also wrote the majority opinion in People v. Woody, 394 P.2d 813 (Cal. 1964), overturning a conviction for peyote use by a Native American Church member on First Amendment grounds. Weighing the asserted compelling state interest in controlling drug abuse with the Free Exercise Clause, he found that the balance favored constitutional protection of the peyote use and practice, stating:

On the other hand, the right to free religious expression embodies a precious heritage of our history. In a mass society, which presses at every point toward conformity, the protection of a self-expression, however unique, of the individual and the group becomes ever more important. The varying current of the subcultures that flow into the mainstream of our national life give it depth and beauty. We preserve a greater value than an ancient tradition when we protect the rights of the Indians who honestly practiced an old religion in using peyote one night at a meeting in a desert hogan near Needles, California.

A native of San Francisco, Tobriner attended Lowell High School and was a member of its famed Lowell Forensic Society, the nation's oldest high school debate team.