California New Laws 2024: You Shall Comply

The California Legislature passes thousands of bills every year. We don’t really need more laws – at all. However, here are some of the new laws the 40 million California residents will be facing in 2024.

The California Legislative Women’s Caucus & Future of Abortion Council introduced a lengthy package of 17 bills earlier in 2023 on “Reproductive Justice & Abortion Rights.” These are the 10 bills signed into law by Gov. Newsom:

• AB 254 (Bauer-Kahan) Adds CMIA/HIPAA protections for data collected by menstrual, fertility, and sexual health apps and websites.
• AB 352 (Bauer-Kahan) Enhances privacy protections for medical records related to abortion, pregnancy loss, and other sensitive services through electronic health record sharing and health information exchanges.
• AB 571 (Petrie-Norris) Ensures that medical malpractice insurance includes coverage for comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care.
• AB 1194 (Carrillo) Ensures that California Privacy Rights Act protections always extend to accessing, procuring, or searching for services regarding contraception, pregnancy care, and perinatal care, including abortion services.
• AB 1481 (Boerner-Horvath) Clarifies Presumptive Eligibility for Pregnant Individuals (currently called PE4PW) coverage policies and ensures PE4PW patients can access abortion services regardless of other health coverage.
• AB 1646 (Nguyen) Expands access to abortion and gender-affirming care by allowing out-of-state medical school graduates to practice in California for up 90 days.
• AB 1707 (Pacheco) Provider Protections
• SB 345 (Skinner) Provides legal protections for medication abortions and gender-affirming care.
• SB 385 (Atkins) Seeks to extend many of the updated training rules from SB 1375 last year to additional providers (i.e. physician assistants, etc.)
• SB 487 (Atkins) Provides additional safeguards for California abortion providers and other entities and individuals that serve and support abortion patients that reside in states with hostile abortion laws.

A few other notable bills:

• Assembly Bill 12 limits the amount landlords can charge for a security deposit to just one month’s rent.
• Senate Bill 4 removes certain barriers to allow churches, religious organizations and colleges to build “affordable housing” on land they own.
• Senate Bill 567 will require property owners or their family members to move into the property within 90 days and live there for at least 12 months when landlords make tenants move out so they can move in (April 1, 2024 bill goes into effect).
• Assembly Bill 1309 requires nursing homes to offer residents copies of any information that explains why they’re being discharged, transferred or evicted within 48 hours.

Gov. Newsom published a list of his clear favorites:

AB 352 requires companies that manage electronic health records to protect all Californians’ and visitors’ electronic medical records related to abortion, gender-affirming care, pregnancy loss, and other sensitive services.

SB 345 protects providers and people from enforcement action in California of other states’ laws that criminalize or limit reproductive and gender-affirming health care services.

(‘Reproductive and gender-affirming health care services’ – abortion and sex change transitions and surgeries)

SB 616, which expands the number of sick days available to workers from 3 to 5.

SBX1-2 grants the California Energy Commission new authority to penalize refineries and set a maximum gross gasoline refining margin if necessary to help combat price gouging. It also creates a new independent state watchdog to investigate market or price manipulation.

Gov. Newsom signed a package of “sweeping legislation” in September to achieve statewide carbon neutrality as soon as possible, and no later than 2045, by establishing an 85% emissions reduction target, capping oil wells, slowing oil and gas permitting, making it impossible to increase refining capacity, and entirely phasing out oil and gas starting in two years. And that’s just the start.

SB 4, known as the “Yes in God’s Backyard” bill, allows housing to be developed on property owned by religious or independent higher education institutions.

There was one good and terribly important bill – Sen. Shannon Grove (R-Bakersfield) authored Senate Bill 14, to once again make sex trafficking a felony. It was signed into law by Governor Newsom in September. But it was no easy feat to get this bill passed… it took some shaming… SB 14 was blocked in the Assembly Public Safety Committee by Democrats in July, after passing unanimously in the Senate. Eventually two days later, the committee was pressured by the public and lawmakers to reconsider their vote, and passed SB 14.

SB 14 to steepen penalties for human trafficking of minors in California. The law designates human trafficking of a minor for purposes of a commercial sex act as a serious felony.

Expect to see lawsuits over many of these dubious bills.

The Globe also just reported that notably, California is now the only state in the country to fund health care for illegal immigrants.

Gov. Newsom’s final expansion of full-scope Medi-Cal went into effect Monday, January 1, 2024, making more than 700,000 illegal immigrants residents between ages 26 and 49 eligible for full health care coverage – closing the remaining gap of those not already insured – at a very precarious time with his $68 billion budget deficit.

In October, Gov. Newsom signed SB 770 by Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) “to force all Californians out of their existing health coverage – including Medicare, employer-based coverage and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) plans – and into a new untested government-run system, with no ability to opt out or choose private coverage instead,” the Globe reported.

SB 770 braces California for universal healthcare – most notably – as a single-payer system that leftists have been agitating for on their march toward fully socialized, government-run health care.