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In November 2011, the California Supreme Court decided that ProtectMarriage, the conservative coalition that sponsored Proposition 8, had standing to defend the ballot initiative in the federal appellate process.

The answer wasn’t obvious to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals — which had certified the standing question to the state court — but Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye and the gang concluded that individual citizens have the right to defend ballot initiatives when public officials refuse to do so.

Maybe SCOTUS thinks the Supreme Court of California got it wrong. Maybe the Justices are just using standing as an excuse to avoid the greater issue of marriage equality. The only thing that is certain is that standing isn’t certain in the Hollingsworth v. Perry.

Here at FindLaw, we understand the pressures of being a legal professional -- most of us are recovering lawyers -- so we want to help by tossing you that preferred life preserver of the legal profession, the short list. Today's offering: National Security Letters.

National Security Letters are the "Fight Club" of legal documents. The first rule of National Security Letters is: Do not talk about National Security Letters. But that's changing. On Friday, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco ordered the government to stop issuing NSLs, though she tempered that order with a 90-day stay to give the feds a chance to appeal, Wired reports.

Before the appeal happens, here are five things you should know about NSLs:

Los Angeles is firmly committed to seizing stuff from the city’s homeless population.

After losing in both a district court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the city has filed a petition for certiorari with the Supreme Court, asking the Court to overturn an injunction that stops the city from clearing unattended belongings off the streets, Reuters reports.

According to the Ninth Circuit, “The Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments protect homeless persons from government seizure and summary destruction of their unabandoned, but momentarily unattended, personal property.” But there’s more than just property at stake: City Attorney Carmen Trutanich says that the city is trying to prevent a public health crisis, such as the tuberculosis outbreak that has affected an estimated 4,500 people on Skid Row.

Score one for organized labor.

On Thursday, the California Supreme Court upheld state labor laws granting union members the right to picket in front of privately owned businesses. The ruling reverses a 2010 decision by Sacramento's 3rd District Court of Appeal that found the laws unconstitutional.

A little over a year ago, the California Supreme Court made a decision that could affect one of the biggest cases of this generation: Hollingsworth v. Perry.

It wasn't the court's first time to consider California Proposition 8. In 2009, the court upheld the Prop 8 ban on same-sex marriages, but ruled that couples who married before voters approved the initiative would remain married. In 2011, however, the court was considering a different issue: Whether Prop 8 proponents had standing to defend the law in federal court.

At the time, the case -- then captioned Perry v. Brown -- was before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Tuesday, California voters approved Proposition 35, a measure to increase fines and prison sentences for sex trafficking, as well as require convicted human traffickers to register as sex offenders and disclose internet activities and identities, the Huffington Post reports.

The measure would affect approximately 73,000 currently-registered sex offenders in the state, and require human trafficking convicts to register as sex offenders.

At first blush, it seems like a no-brainer. Human trafficking is bad, and we should punish it. But a number of groups opposed the proposition, citing concerns like a lack of victim restitution, costs, unintended consequences for those who willingly choose to be sex workers, and privacy concerns.

We all know that San Francisco has a reputation as a liberal bastion, even in famously left-leaning California, but City Supervisor Scott Wiener is trying to curb the city’s naked enthusiasm on street curbs. This week, Weiner introduced a proposal to ban the exposure of genitals or buttocks on all city sidewalks, plazas, parklets, streets and public transit, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

While public nudity is an arrestable offense in most cities, San Francisco takes an unusual approach: Police don’t cite exhibitionism unless a naked dude is aroused or a private person complains that he is offended. The city’s relaxed approach has led to nudists congregating daily at a plaza in the Castro district.

Over the weekend, Gov. Gerry Brown signed SB 1172, a bill prohibiting mental health providers from engaging in sexual orientation change efforts with patients under 18 years of age. The soon-to-be-banned "conversion" or "reparative" therapies include a wide variety of techniques, (like counseling, shock therapy, and exorcism), used in an attempt to "cure" individuals of their homosexual and transgender leanings.

Gov. Brown explained, "This bill bans non-scientific 'therapies' that have driven young people to depression and suicide. These practices have no basis in science or medicine and they will now be relegated to the dustbin of quackery."

Most Californians carry some form of tracking device, like a smartphone or a tablet, but California law currently does not address whether police need a warrant to track a suspect through electronic devices.

That could soon change.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has announced that the California Location Privacy Act (SB 1434), written by Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), is currently awaiting Gov. Jerry Brown's signature. The bill passed both the California Assembly and Senate earlier this summer.

The California Supreme Court upheld the death sentence in the killing of a police officer, reports the Los Angeles Times.

The unanimous decision came down on Monday, where the court rejected the appeal of Enrique Parra Duenas. Duenas was behind the fatal shooting of Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Michael Hoenig in 1997, according to Patch.