Some 2025 California Legislative Session Tidbits

The 2025 California Legislative Session was unique in a number of ways. It was the first year of the biennium session with nearly 1/3 of legislators entirely new. It began with the deadly fires in Los Angeles and Ventura Counties, and ended with a mid-decade redistricting effort on the ballot, and a wild end-of-Session with lots of important bills arriving on the Governor’s Desk.

A few tidbits of note from my perspective:

How Many Bills Were Handled?

SENATE BILLS – Regular Session

Introduced 864

Passed Senate 600 (69% of introduced bills passed house of origin)

ASSEMBLY BILLS – Regular Session

Introduced 1,533

Passed Assembly 936 (61% of introduced bills passed house of origin)

Large Number of Bills Moved to Inactive Files

Assembly has 33 bills on its Inactive File: 14 ABs and 19 SBs

Senate has 58 bills on its Inactive Files: 5 SBs and 53 ABs

These can be considered again during the 2026 Session

Three Bills Failed on the Assembly Floor at the end of Session

AB 592 – on concurrence 

AB 1231 – on concurrence

SB 259 – on third reading

House of Origin Suspense Files

ASSEMBLY

666 measures

3 ACAs

663 ABs

435 were Do Pass/Do Pass as Amended = 65% passage

231 were held (with 14 2-year bills) = 35% held (basically the same from last spring)

SENATE

432 measures

432 SBs

307 were Do Pass/Do Pass as Amended = 71% passage

125 were held (with 11 2-year bills) = 29% held (up from last spring’s 25.5%)

Redistricting Package

Both houses passed and the Governor signed:

SB 280 (Cervantes) – Calls special election Nov 4; designates ACA 8 as Prop 50; local election costs reimbursement

AB 604 (Aguiar-Curry) – New Congressional maps

ACA 8, but that goes directly to voters on November 4. The Governor does not sign/veto constitutional measures placed on the ballot by the Legislature under Article 18.

End-of-Session Hearings

Why are some of the hearings this week taking a vote on a bill and having an informational hearing on another or several bills at the same hearing? Under Assembly Rule 77.2 and Senate Rule 29.10, bills that are substantially amended in their house of origin or the other house must have a hearing in a policy committee. At the end-of-Session, primarily due to gut-and-amend bills, these “new” bills need to have a public hearing and vote.

However, a committee only has possession of a bill from the other house that they are amending. That is the bill(s) they can vote on. They hold an informational hearing on a bill in the other house because they do not have possession of it and therefore cannot vote on it. As a result, the bill(s) in the other house only get an informational hearing.

But this info hearing satisfies the AR 77.2/SR 29.10 hearing requirement so that when the bill(s) return from the other house, there is not another hearing on the amended bill in its house of origin policy committee. I applaud the two houses (and particularly Speaker Rivas and PT McGuire and leadership and policy committee staff) for ensuring all bills get a policy committee hearing, albeit sometimes short and sweet and without the ability to amend. However, they always treat all bills alike in this regard, which is the right way of doing it.

Delaying the end-of-Session

The Assembly Rules Committee, along party lines, approved a suspension of Joint Rule 61(a)(14) “to permit bills to be taken up after midnight, Friday, September 12, 2025.” Joint Rule 61 provides legislative deadlines, and JR 61(a)(14) establishes Sept. 12––Last day for each house to pass bills.

The Assembly adopted the JR 61 suspension (often incorrectly referred to as a “rule waiver”). The Senate suspended JR 61 and JR 51 (dealing with the legislative calendar) earlier in the day. As a result of these actions, both houses continued to consider legislation after the originally scheduled adjournment date.

Note that the adjournment date for the first year (the odd-numbered year) of the Legislative Session is determined by Joint Rule, which can be suspended by the two houses. On the other hand, the adjournment date for the second year (the even-numbered year) of Session is determined by the CA Constitution.

The Conclusion of Session

The Legislature finished its work for the 2025 Session in the mid-afternoon yesterday, Saturday, September 13. Now we await the fate of hundreds of bills on Governor Newsom’s Desk over the remaining 29 days.

I wanted to share two pieces of good news as we look forward to the 2026 Session that convenes on Monday, January 5:

1. There won’t be an extra day of Session like this year. The Legislature next year will have to finish basically all of its bills by midnight on Monday, August 31 (with five exceptions that won’t amount to more than a dozen bills or so). Of course, expect to be working the weekend preceding adjournment.

2. Assuming all legislators introduce their maximum allotment of 35 bills, there will still be 500 fewer bills introduced in the second year of Session. Of course, there are lots of 2-year bills remaining and a high volume of bills that got moved to the Inactive Files.