This measure would call on Congress to enact legislation that restores and strengthens the full protections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and it would call on the President to sign the legislation.
Existing law establishes the California Community Colleges, under the administration of the Board of Governors of the California Community Colleges, the California State University, under the administration of the Trustees of the California State University, and the University of California, under the administration of the Regents of the University of California, as the 3 segments of public postsecondary education in the state. Existing law requires, on and after January 1, 2023, a student health center on a California State University or University of California campus to offer abortion by medication techniques, as specified. Existing law establishes the College Student Health Center Sexual and Reproductive Health Preparation Fund to be administered by the Commission on the Status of Women and Girls and continuously appropriates the moneys in that fund to the commission for specified activities related to providing abortion by medication techniques at student health centers. This bill would require a student health center on a California State University or University of California campus, on or before January 1, 2028, to promote awareness of the services for abortion by medication techniques that the student health center offers, provide information on those services to students, and post the availability of those services on its internet website. This bill would require a community college that has a student health center, upon appropriation by the Legislature, to, on and after January 1, 2029, offer access to abortion by medication techniques, promote awareness of those services, provide information on those services to students, and post the availability of those services on its internet website. The bill would require the commission to submit a report to the Legislature, on or before January 1, 2030, that includes, but is not limited to, specified information relating to abortion by medication techniques at or through community college student health centers. The bill would require the commission, in consultation with the office of the Chancellor of the California Community Colleges, to develop a standardized reporting framework that minimizes administrative burden and protects student privacy. The bill would authorize funds appropriated for these provisions to be used for implementation readiness activities and ongoing operational costs, as specified.
Existing law requires each law enforcement agency, on or before January 1, 2021, to maintain a policy that provides a minimum standard on the use of force. Existing law requires that the policy include, among other things, training standards and requirements relating to demonstrated knowledge and understanding of the law enforcement agency's use of force policy by officers, investigators, and supervisors. Existing law prohibits a law enforcement agency from authorizing the use of a carotid restraint or choke hold by any peace officer employed by that agency. This bill would, until January 1, 2030, prohibit a law enforcement agency, including a federal law enforcement agency, from using a wearable electroshock device within the State of California. The bill would also prohibit a law enforcement agency from using state funds to purchase a wearable electroshock device. The bill would require a law enforcement agency to update their use of force policies to prohibit the use of a wearable electroshock device. By increasing the duties on local law enforcement, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program. The bill would require the Division of Law Enforcement within the Department of Justice to conduct a study on the safety and community impacts of wearable electroshock devices and provide recommendations for appropriate standards and safeguards for their use, and would require the department to report to the Legislature on the findings and recommendations of the study on or before January 1, 2029. The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement. This bill would provide that, if the Commission on State Mandates determines that the bill contains costs mandated by the state, reimbursement for those costs shall be made pursuant to the statutory provisions noted above.
Existing law vests the Public Utilities Commission with regulatory jurisdiction over public utilities, including electrical corporations. Existing law requires each public utility to furnish and maintain adequate, efficient, just, and reasonable service, instrumentalities, equipment, and facilities, as are necessary to promote the safety, health, comfort, and convenience of its patrons, employees, and the public. Existing law prohibits a public utility from making or granting any preference or advantage to any corporation or person, as provided. This bill would require, until January 1, 2030, San Diego Gas and Electric Company (SDGE) to energize construction-ready projects within specified timeframes, as provided. Existing law requires the commission to establish annual reporting requirements for electrical corporations to report customer energization projects in order to evaluate the electrical corporation's fulfillment of timely electrical service. Existing law requires the commission to require each electrical corporation to retain an independent third-party auditor to review the electrical corporation's business practices and procedures for energizing new customers and how the electrical corporation is planning for demand growth, including new customer energizations. Existing law requires the third-party auditor to report to the commission on a biannual basis. This bill would require, only until January 1, 2030, reporting on the energization of those construction-ready projects to be included in SDGE's biannual energization reporting submitted to the commission. Under existing law, a violation of the Public Utilities Act or any order, decision, rule, direction, demand, or requirement of the commission is a crime. Because the provisions of the bill would be part of the act and a violation of a commission action implementing the bill's requirements would be a crime, this bill would impose a state-mandated local program. The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement. This bill would provide that no reimbursement is required by this act for a specified reason.
Under existing law, the residence address, telephone number, and email address of a registered voter is confidential, except that under certain circumstances a county elections official must disclose that information to any candidate for federal, state, or local office, to any committee for or against any initiative or referendum measure, and to any person for election, scholarly, journalistic, political, or governmental purposes. Existing law exempts from that disclosure requirement the residence address, telephone number, and email address of a federal, state, or local elected official or candidate, unless the official or candidate opts out or the information is sought for bona fide journalistic or governmental purposes. Voters in life-threatening circumstances and voters who participate in specified confidentiality programs may also have their residence address, telephone number, and email address exempted from the disclosure requirement. This bill would expand those exemptions to apply to the voter's entire voter registration record, except as specified. The bill would recast the provisions creating the exemption for the voter registration record of an elected official or candidate. The bill would permit the information of an elected official's immediate family member who lives at the same residence to be made confidential. For an elected official or candidate's voter registration record to be confidential, the elected official or candidate would be required to make a written request to the county elections official, and a candidate would also need to qualify to appear on the ballot. The Secretary of State would be required to notify county elections officials when a state or federal candidate qualifies to appear on the ballot, and it would require county elections officials to notify the Secretary of State under certain circumstances if the confidential designation is added to, or removed from, a federal or state elected official or candidate's voter registration record. The Secretary of State and county elections officials would be required to implement the provisions creating the exemption immediately once the statewide voter registration database and county election management systems have made conforming changes, but the bill states that it does not authorize any reduction in current, ongoing implementation efforts. The bill would require the Secretary of State to develop and implement a process by no later than September 30, 2027, for a person with confidential voter status to vote at a polling place or vote center and retain confidential voter status. To the extent the bill imposes additional requirements on local elections officials, the bill imposes a state-mandated local program. The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement. This bill would provide that, if the Commission on State Mandates determines that the bill contains costs mandated by the state, reimbursement for those costs shall be made pursuant to the statutory provisions noted above.
Existing law, the Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act, prohibits an operator of an addictive internet-based service or application from providing an addictive feed, as defined, to a user unless the operator does not have actual knowledge that the user is a minor, as specified, or the operator has obtained verifiable parental consent to provide an addictive feed to the user who is a minor. Existing law, the Digital Age Assurance Act, beginning January 1, 2027, requires a person who owns, maintains, or controls a software application, as defined, to request age bracket data sent by a real-time secure application programming interface or operating system with respect to a particular user from an operating system provider or a covered application store when the application is downloaded and launched. This bill would prohibit a covered platform, as defined, from providing an addictive feature, as defined, to a user who is under 16 years of age and would require a covered platform to implement reasonable measures to ensure that users under 16 years of age are not offered or provided any addictive feature on the covered platform. The bill would also authorize the Attorney General to adopt regulations to implement and enforce the bill in order to further the purpose of protecting minors online, including by altering the scope of "covered platform" if the Attorney General determines that doing so is necessary to ensure that "covered platform" applies to internet websites, online services, online applications, or mobile applications that make addictive features, as defined, available to users under 16 years of age. This bill would impose a civil penalty upon a noncompliant platform and would require its provisions to be enforced by a civil action brought only by the Attorney General or a local public prosecutor, as specified. This bill would also establish the e-Safety Advisory Commission within the Department of Justice as an independent advisory body that is only for administrative purposes to advise state government on certain matters related to online safety and would require the commission to, on or before January 1 of each year, report to the Legislature and the Governor on, among other things, its activities under the bill.
The Public Employees' Retirement Law (PERL) establishes the Public Employees' Retirement System (PERS) to provide a defined benefit to members of the system based on final compensation, credited service, and age at retirement, subject to certain variations. Existing law creates the Public Employees' Retirement Fund, which is continuously appropriated for purposes of PERS, including depositing employer and employee contributions. Under the California Constitution, assets of a public pension or retirement system are trust funds. The California Public Employees' Pension Reform Act of 2013 (PEPRA) establishes a variety of requirements and restrictions on public employers offering defined benefit pension plans. In this regard, PEPRA restricts the amount of compensation that may be applied for purposes of calculating a defined pension benefit for a new member, as defined, by restricting it to specified percentages of the contribution and benefit base under a specified federal law with respect to old age, survivors, and disability insurance benefits. Existing law, the Teachers' Retirement Law, establishes the State Teachers' Retirement System (STRS) and creates the Defined Benefit Program of the State Teachers' Retirement Plan, which provides a defined benefit to members of the program, based on final compensation, creditable service, and age at retirement, subject to certain variations. This bill, for service performed on and after January 1, 2027, would prohibit the pensionable compensation for calendar year 2027 used to calculate the defined benefit paid to a new member of a retirement system subject to PEPRA who retires from the system from exceeding specified percentages of the contribution and benefit base under the specified federal law with respect to old age, survivors, and disability insurance benefits. The bill would make related, conforming changes to these provisions on pensionable compensation. The bill also would require a new member of STRS to be subject to specified limits of the Teachers' Retirement Law. PEPRA requires each retirement system that offers a defined benefit plan for safety members of the system to use one of 3 formulas for safety members, 2% at age 57, 2.5% at age 57, or 2.7% at age 57. This bill would establish new retirement formulas, for employees first hired on or after January 1, 2027, as 2.5% at age 55, 2.7% at age 55, or 3% at age 55, subject to certain exceptions. For new members hired on or after January 1, 2013, who are safety members, the bill would require employers to adjust the formulas for service performed on or after January 1, 2027, to offer the formula that has the same fraction at age 55 as the fraction at age 57 in the formula the employer offered pursuant to existing law. The bill would authorize a public employer and a recognized employee organization to negotiate a prospective increase to the retirement benefit formulas for safety members and new safety members, consistent with the formulas permitted under PEPRA, including the new formulas described above. This bill would authorize an employer and its employees to agree in a memorandum of understanding to be subject to a higher safety plan or a lower safety plan, subject to certain requirements, including that the memorandum of understanding is collectively bargained in accordance with applicable laws. By increasing the contribution to continuously appropriated funds, and by increasing expenditures from those funds, this bill would make an appropriation.
Existing law establishes the California College Promise, under the administration of the Chancellor of the California Community Colleges, to provide funding, upon appropriation by the Legislature, to each community college meeting prescribed requirements. Existing law authorizes a community college to use that funding to waive some or all of the fees for 2 academic years for first-time community college students and returning community college students, as defined, who are enrolled in 12 or more semester units or the equivalent, or fewer for students certified as "full time" by a staff person in the disabled student services program, as specified, and who complete and submit either a Free Application for Federal Student Aid or a California Dream Act application, except as provided. This bill would instead require, for purposes of eligibility for the California College Promise, that students be enrolled in 9 or more, rather than 12 or more, semester units or the equivalent, or fewer for a student certified as eligible, based on a commitment by the student that is analogous to the 9-semester-unit or equivalent workload, by a staff person in the disabled student services program. The bill would additionally require, as a condition of receiving funding for the California College Promise, community colleges to provide a written notification to initial recipients of the California College Promise that includes specified information related to the 2 academic years of eligibility for the California College Promise.
Existing law requires a health facility, clinic, physician's office, or office of a group practice that uses generative artificial intelligence to generate written or verbal patient communications pertaining to patient clinical information, as defined, to ensure that those communications include both (1) a disclaimer that indicates to the patient that a communication was generated by generative artificial intelligence, as specified, and (2) clear instructions describing how a patient may contact a human health care provider, employee, or other appropriate person. Existing law exempts from this requirement a communication read and reviewed by a human licensed or certified health care provider. This bill would require developers and deployers, as defined, of an artificial intelligence system that produces a prediction, classification, recommendation, evaluation, or analysis that aids decisionmaking related to diagnosis or treatment, known as a clinical decision support system, to make reasonable efforts to identify clinical decision support systems developed for use by deployers that are known or have a reasonably foreseeable risk for biased impacts resulting from deployment of the system in health programs or activities. The bill would require developers to make a statement describing the intended uses and known or reasonably foreseeable risks associated with the use of the clinical decision support system and certain documentation available to deployers, as specified. The bill would require developers to make reasonable efforts to mitigate known or reasonably foreseeable risk for biased impacts resulting from use of the clinical decision support system in health programs or activities. The bill would require deployers to regularly monitor clinical decision support systems and take reasonable and proportionate steps to mitigate known or reasonably foreseeable risk of biased impacts. The bill would specify that a person, partnership, state or local governmental agency, or corporation may be both a developer and a deployer.
Existing law sets forth provisions, under the California Constitution, regarding the fundamental right to choose to have an abortion. Existing law, the Reproductive Privacy Act, prohibits the state from denying or interfering with a pregnant person's right to choose or obtain an abortion prior to viability of the fetus, or when the abortion is necessary to protect the life or health of the pregnant person. This bill, the Access to Safe Abortion Care Act, would make legislative findings about medication abortion, with a focus on use of the drugs mifepristone and misoprostol. Under the bill, the Legislature would reaffirm that it has been, and would continue to be, lawful to cause the delivery of, or mail, ship, take, receive, or otherwise transport, any drug, medicine, or instrument that can be designed or adapted to produce an abortion that is lawful in the State of California. The bill would set forth provisions regarding the lack of civil or criminal liability, or professional disciplinary action, for accessing or administering brand name or generic mifepristone or any drug used for medication abortion that is lawful under the laws of the state, on or after January 1, 2020, with this provision applied retroactively, as specified. The bill would make its provisions severable.
