You are correct: the land of fruits and nuts comes up with left-coast marxist legislation and within 15 years, due to the full faith and credit clause, legal fads spread across the whole country. Two of the very worst things for this nation were signed into law early on by Reagan as governor of California: abortion and "no-fault" divorce. He deeply regretted both.
coincidentally, we have an article coming up on the latter, which was the brainchild of a prof at Berkeley