by Tracy Rosenberg
Every year, the 120 members of the CA State Legislature introduce 3000+ proposals, of which about 20% eventually become new laws. The process of culling them down involves multiple policy committees, financial assessments, a whimsical governor with unchallenged veto powers and a “third house” of well-connected inside lobbyists. Into this process, grassroots advocates try to push and pull things in the right direction at least some of the time.
Here are a few reports from the frontlines this year in the areas of policing, surveillance, privacy and civil rights.
Policing and Prisons
It has been a year of blowback against law enforcement reforms and systematic change. Sacramento was no different.
Dozens of great proposals withered on the vine including a ban on most uses of solitary confinement, mandatory civilian oversight commissions, banning the encryption of police radios, and more mental health care in prisons.
The laws that were enacted increased property crime penalties (although not as much as Prop 36 on the ballot in November proposes to do), sped up response times for law enforcement warrants sent to social media companies, and made it easier to impound cars at sideshows.
The good news? Some mild reforms to the prison system including fresh water requirements for pregnant and post-partum people, greater availability of menstrual products, more robust inspections of sexual assaults in prisons and a restorative justice accountability letter program.
And if CA ever reinstates the death penalty, it will no longer be possible to kill intellectually disabled prisoners.
Critical Resistance
Surveillance
In the area of surveillance, literally nothing happened.
Many bad bills were defeated and many good ones were as well. A proposal to explicitly allow police use of facial recognition was defeated, as were proposals to ban weaponized drones and robots, phase out the use of Chinese-manufactured drones and limit the retention of scans from automated license plate readers to 30 days.
Civil Rights and Dissent
The Freedom to Read Act will prevent CA public libraries from banning books for viewpoint diversity, protected characteristics or legal sexual content. And in prisons, the state Inspector General will investigate complaints about books being withheld in state prisons.
California also passed a statewide ban on the implementation of local laws requiring voters to show ID prior to voting at voting facilities.
On the bad side: in response to Palestinian liberation protests on college campuses, campuses have been charged with preparing regulations that ensure “every student feels safe attending classes” which will likely be weaponized against Free Palestine protesters. A proposal to provide crushing penalties for protests that block freeways was defeated.
And the State of California will formally apologize for chattel slavery and segregation as a part of a reparations process, although funds for financial reparations have not yet been provided.
The 2025 legislative year will get underway on January 1, 2025
Tracy Rosenberg is the advocacy director for Oakland Privacy, a citizens coalition that advocates for privacy protections, civil rights and community consent. https://oaklandprivacy.org