Sour Grapes in California

Calif. Stem Cell Agency Still in Limbo
By PAUL ELIAS

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - California's $3 billion stem cell research institute won an important victory with a court ruling rejecting challenges to its constitutionality, but the agency's finances remain in limbo while the expected appeals block much of its funding.

A state judge ruled Friday that the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine is a legitimate state agency and that two lawsuits challenging it have no merit.

The ruling came a month after a four-day trial in which lawyers with connections to anti-abortion groups claimed the country's most ambitious stem cell research agency violated California law because it wasn't a true state agency and its managers had a host of conflicts of interest.

But Alameda County Superior Court Judge Bonnie Lewman Sabraw wrote in a 42-page ruling that the lawsuits failed to show the voter-approved law that created the agency in 2004, ``is clearly, positively and unmistakably unconstitutional.''

Lewman Sabraw's ruling becomes official in 10 days unless the losing attorneys come up with new and dramatically different arguments.

The litigation, however, has prevented the Institute for Regenerative Medicine from borrowing any of the $3 billion it is authorized from traditional Wall Street bond buyers. That won't change until the expected appeals of the verdict are exhausted, probably sometime next year.

``It's unfortunate that the plaintiffs, after losing at the polls, went to court to frustrate the voters' will,'' California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said. ``The sooner this legal fight is over, the sooner California can move to where the people want it - in the forefront of stem cell research.''