At our March meeting, the Club membership approved the package of bills recommended by the Club’s Executive Board and Legislative Committee. Letters of support have been sent to the authors of the bills. Our Club has signed on to letters written by organizations ad-vocating for these bills and, as the Politics and Elections Chair, I have submitted letters on behalf of the Club to the state legislative ad-vocacy portal. I also sit on the Santa Monica Democratic Club’s Legislative Committee and have won that club’s endorsement for many of the bills that our Club voted to support this year and over the past two years.
The legislative committee has identified a new consent calendar of bills for your consideration in May. Some of these bills were brought to my attention when the Santa Monica Democratic Club voted to endorse them. Please review them and feel free to ask any questions at our meeting. Links are provided for those of you who want to do a deeper dive. The bills will go before the Executive Board who will vote on endorsement and then to Club membership at our May meeting. Anyone can pull any of the individual bills from consent. We can decide as a Club to vote on the entire package—or pull certain individual bills off the consent calendar for individual discussion.
LGBTQIA Rights/Civil Rights/Criminal Justice Reform SB 97 (Weiner) Legally protected health care activity/transgender state of refuge. This bill would protect the privacy and safety of indi-viduals seeking gender affirming health care in California by: 1) protecting sensitive data from being disclosed to out-of-state law en-forcement seeking to prosecute people receiving care that is legal in California 2) establishing criminal penalties for accessing sensitive health data without a warrant 3) expanding the protections for transgender people by strengthening California’s Confidentiality of Med-ical Information Act to protect privacy of patients seeking gender affirming care and 4) stating the intent to protect teachers who are affirming of transgender youth. Fact Sheet SB 18 (Menjivar) Health care coverage/nondiscrimination. The bill would strengthen nondiscrimination protections in health care cov-erage by protecting access to gender-affirming care, including for transgender and intersex individuals. The bill ensures that health care providers and insurers cannot impose discriminatory restrictions or cost barriers, reinforcing legal accountability and expanding equita-ble health care access. Fact Sheet AB 58 (Alvarez) -Criminal procedure/privacy—OPPOSE. Per the ACLU this bill “would unnecessarily weaken the ‘nation’s best digital privacy law,’ the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act (CalECPA), and expose Californians’ private electronic information to warrantless searches. Further, the exception contemplated by AB 358 would violate individuals’ Fourth Amendment rights.” Assembly-members Isaac Bryan and Tina McKinnor from AD 61 did NOT vote for this bill when it came to committee. ACLU opposition letter AB 489 (Bryan) Peace Officers. This bill would “require a law enforcement agency that issues a firearm to a peace officer it employs to have a policy prohibiting that officer from carrying the firearm issued by the agency when the officer has a blood alcohol concentration greater than 0.00%, whether the officer is on duty or off duty, unless the officer is on duty and engaged in an undercover assignment in the course of their employment as a peace officer…” Assemblymember Isaac Bryan says of the bill, “There is no standardized and con-sistent policy prohibiting police officers from carrying agency-issued firearms while consuming alcohol, creating significant risks to public safety and law enforcement accountability. Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) have only partially addressed the issue by lowering the legal blood-alcohol limit for armed officers from 0.08% to 0.04%. Unfortunately, this approach does not fully prevent firearm-related incidents, as seen in multiple cases where officers used their weapons while under the influence, leading to harmful consequences, in-ternal investigations, and erosion of public trust. AB 1489 addresses the absence of a standardized policy by mandating all law enforce-ment agencies to implement a policy prohibiting officers—on or off duty—from carrying their service firearms while consuming alcohol. By closing this dangerous loophole, the bill ensures that officers abide by clear, enforceable guidelines that protect both themselves and the communities they serve. National firearm safety organizations, including the NRA, emphasize that alcohol should never be used while handling weapons—yet police officers, entrusted with public safety, currently operate without a universal prohibition. AB 1489 will align law enforcement practices with fundamental firearm safety principles, preventing tragic, avoidable incidents and reinforcing trust and accountability between law enforcement and the public.”
AI—Artificial intelligence/Labor SB (McNerney) Employment/automated decision systems “no robo bosses act.” Co-authored by AD 55 Assemblymember Isaac Bryan and AD 57 Assemblymember Sade Elhawary, this bill would require human oversight of artificial intelligence systems in the workplace to
help prevent abuses. It would bar California employers from relying primarily on AI systems, known as automated decision-making sys-tems (ADS), to make hiring, promotion, discipline, or termination decisions without human oversight. SB 7 is sponsored by California Federation of Labor Unions and the AFL-CIO.
The Santa Monica Democratic Club has endorsed this bill. “No worker should have to answer to a robot boss when they are fearful of getting injured on the job, or when they have to go to the bathroom or leave work for an emergency,” said Lorena Gonzalez, President of the California Federation of Labor Unions, AFL-CIO, representing over 1,300 unions with 2.3 million union members. “When it comes to decisions that most impact our jobs, our safety and our families, we need human oversight.” Press Release
Environment/Utilities & Energy AB 42 (Calderon) Net energy metering/eligible customer-generators/tariffs. OPPOSE. The bill’s author, Assemblymember Lisa Calderon, who is a former SoCal Edison lobbyist, proposes that the state renege on its contract, pulling the rug out from under nearly two million solar customers, slashing their solar credit, and slapping them with a solar tax. If you invested in expensive solar panels expecting prom-ised energy credits would eventually cover the upfront costs, you will be out of luck if this bill passes. These new changes would apply to ALL solar customers who signed up for solar before April 2023 (NEM1 and NEM2). The LA Times reported that, per Open Secrets, “Southern California Edison and the other two big investor-owned utilities are among Calderon’s most generous corporate donors. Last year, the company gave Calderon’s campaign $11,000. Sempra, the parent company of San Diego Gas & Electric, also contributed $11,000, while Pacific Gas and Electric provided $8,000.” The Santa Monica Democratic Club has voted to OPPOSE this bill. Information from Solar Rights Alliance. LA Times Article: Former Edison executive Calderon, now a lawmaker, seeks to cut rooftop solar credits.
Housing/Renters Rights AB 46 (Bryan) Social Security Tenant Protection Act of 2025. Assemblymember Isaac Bryan gutted and amended his bill that originally sought to implement a rent freeze in LA County. The Club endorsed the original bill in March, and it now returns to the membership for their vote.
The current version of this bill would make it illegal to evict a renter for failure to pay rent if the tenant signs, under penalty of perjury, a statement that failure to pay is due to problems receiving Social Security benefits. This bill would prohibit a court, during a declared Social Security benefit payment interruption, from issuing a summons on a complaint for unlawful detainer (or eviction order) in any action that seeks possession of residential real property and that is based, in whole or in part, on nonpayment of rent or other charges, if the de-fendant experiences a loss of income due to the social security benefit payment interruption. The Santa Monica Democratic Club voted to endorse this bill. Bryan tells us:
If the Feds cut social security we will not let our seniors and neighbors with disabilities be evicted in California. The richest man in the world might not care about your livelihood and retirement but we do. And, we will fight to protect it. SB 08 (Caballero) Expediting Judicial Review of Improper Housing Project Denials. This bill would speed up resolution of housing en-forcement actions under state laws such as the Housing Accountability Act. We all know that delays in the approval process lead to higher housing costs. This bill is sponsored by California Attorney General Rob Bonta. Fact Sheet AB 157 (Kalra) The Affordable Rent Act. Co-authored by Culver City’s State Representatives Senator Lola Smallwood-Cuevas and Assem-blymember Isaac Bryan, this bill would enhance and extend the State Rent Cap that was established by the 2019 Tenant Protection Act (TPA), to 1) Limit allowable annual rent increases to Consumer Price Index + 2% or 5%, whichever is lower 2) remove the TPA’s exemption for single-family homes 3) Make the TPA -which was scheduled to sunset in 2030 -permanent. CALMATTERS coverage Fact Sheet AB 53 (Ward) Third Party Permit Review. Delays in the housing approval process lead to higher costs. This bill would allow applicants to hire third party licensed architects and engineers to review permit applications when cities are slow walking the approval process. This would end post-entitlement delays for single-family homes, ADUs, and missing middle projects, speeding projects through the permitting pipeline. Information from California Yimby. Fact Sheet AB 09 (Wicks) California Environmental Quality Act/exemption/housing development projects. This bill would exempt infill housing de-velopments from the usual delays and litigation associated with environmental review. It is intended to end housing development fights over CEQA. Information from California Yimby. Fact Sheet SB 9 (Weiner) Local government land/public transit use/housing development/transit-oriented development. This bill would allow mid rise multifamily housing near transit stations and empower transit agencies to build housing on their land. This bill would allow hundreds of thousands of units of transit-oriented housing to be built, providing transit agencies with needed ridership and funding. Information from California Yimby. Fact Sheet SB 77 (Weiner) Housing development: streamlined approvals. This bill would expand access to streamlined permitting and massively improve SB 9, the 2021 bill legalizing duplexes and lot splits statewide. The bill would make it as easy to build a duplex or small-lot home as it is to build an Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU). Information from California Yimby. Fact Sheet
Education AB 468 (Zbur, Addis) Ethnic studies/content standards, curriculum frameworks, instructional materials, and compliance monitoring. OPPOSE. This bill would require all ethnic studies curricula, instruction and instructional materials, to undergo public hearings, be vetted by the state, and be posted on the Department of Education’s website; and it mandates that ethnic studies instruction focus on “domestic experience and stories” and not cover “abstract ideological theories, causes, or pedagogies.”
In the proposed legislation, “there are so many layers of policing and surveillance that no other academic area has,” Tricia Gal-lagher-Geurtsen, co-chair of the San Diego Unified School District Ethnic Studies Advisory Committee and a lecturer in critical race and ethnic studies at UC Santa Cruz, told Truthout. “It’s absolutely unprecedented overreach, and it’s an arm of the state trying to censor what our children are learning [and] censor the truth of our students’ realities.” Truthout
Bay Area Jewish Voice For Peace posts:
Tell the California Assembly Education Committee to reject this MAGA-like effort to censor ethnic studies.
The Jewish Legislative Caucus…is once again trying to control Ethnic Studies in California public schools. AB 1468 uses MAGA like tactics to prevent individual school districts from tailoring their Ethnic Studies curriculum to local needs. Of course their real goal is to prevent open and honest discussion of Palestine.
They justify this censorship by falsely claiming that discussion of Palestine increases antisemitism, and they ignore that Califor-nia’s education code contains significant protection from bias for ALL students.