LOS ANGELES – The ACLU of California (ACLU CA) made significant progress toward protecting the civil liberties of all Californians through the state Legislature in 2013. This year, the ACLU played a central role in getting to the governor’s desk 16 bills, dealing with a wide range of civil liberties issues including privacy, criminal justice and drug law reform, immigrant rights and LGBTQ rights. We are pleased to report that the governor signed 12 of those bills, of which most will become law on January 1, 2014.
Of particular importance are the TRUST Act, AB 4 (Ammiano), which restores community relationships with police by making it clear that local jails should not hold people on immigration-based detention requests when they pose no threat to public safety, and AB 154 (Atkins), which expands access to early abortion care for women across the state, while many states across the nation are restricting access to the legal procedure.
“In my 25 years leading the ACLU’s office in Sacramento, I have seen legislative years come and go, but this year stands as one of the most robust in advancing our civil liberties,” said Francisco Lobaco, legislative director of ACLU CA. ACLU CA is a collaboration of the ACLU of Southern California, the ACLU of Northern California and the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties.
The governor also signed several bills to enact critical civil liberties protections, including those limiting indefinite military detention (AB 351), requiring videotaping of some interrogations of juveniles (SB 569) and instituting some due process in gang databases (SB 458). He also signed ACLU-backed bills that protect the privacy of health records (SB 138), require public schools to respect students’ gender identity (AB 1266) and facilitate compensation of the wrongfully convicted (SB 618).
Sadly, the governor’s vetoes included three critical ACLU priorities for this year: SB 467 (Leno), which would have updated California privacy law so that our private email and online documents would finally have the same warrant protection as letters in our house and files on our computer; SB 744 (Lara), which would have prevented school districts from forcing students to be transferred to non-mainstream schools after actions for which they could have been expelled, placing a disparate impact on students of color and SB 649 (Leno), which would have allowed counties to reduce the wasteful and counterproductive incarceration of people for low-level drug possession by revising the penalty to either a misdemeanor or a felony, instead of an automatic felony as it is now. In his SB 649 veto statement, however, the governor promised to “examine in detail California’s criminal justice system, including the current sentencing structure.”
“We have a lot to celebrate this year, and a lot more work to do,” said Clarissa Woo Hermosillo, director of policy advocacy of ACLU SoCal. “In 2014, we’ll work to implement the protections that we won this year and will continue to fight for equal protection under the law for all people. In particular, the governor has signaled a historic opportunity for criminal justice reform, and we are committed to keeping the pressure on Sacramento to follow through.”
The following is a brief summary of ACLU CA priority legislation passed by the state legislature and signed by the governor in 2013.