This year we were tracking a number of high-profile labor-backed bills that would have imposed burdensome and costly new procedures on schools and impacted the local collective bargaining process. These included efforts to require school employers to first offer any classified vacancy internally, make striking workers eligible for unemployment benefits, and require schools to pay for a third-party hearing officer to oversee any classified disciplinary appeals. However, while Governor Newsom has long been a strong ally for labor, with so many labor bills going to the his desk in 2023, and his eyes on the national stage, school employers saw a surprising number of Human Resources (HR) victories.
Governor vetoes classified vacancies bill after strong advocacy effort by education management.
AB 1699 by Assembly Member Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento) was a priority opposition bill for school employers throughout the 2023 legislative session. Under the bill’s requirements, TK-14 employers would have been required to offer any classified vacancy to their current classified employees at least 10 days before the general public could apply and provide them with first right of refusal if eligible for the position. Backed by the California School Employees Association (CSEA), the California Federal of Teachers (CFT), and the Service Employees International Union California (SEIU), the sponsors had argued that this bill would make local hiring more efficient while also providing more opportunities for current part-time classified employees to earn more hours and potentially qualify for benefits.
The bill was opposed by a broad coalition of school management groups, including the Association of California School Administrators (ACSA), the California School Boards Association (CSBA), the Small School Districts’ Association (SSDA), the School Employers Association of California (SEAC), and the California County Superintendents, as well as a number of individual school and community college districts. The coalition argued, among other things, that the bill would inhibit the ability of employers to select the candidate that would be the best fit for the job, even amongst internal candidates, and preclude locally bargained alternatives.
These concerns appear to have resonated with the Administration, as reflected in the Governor’s veto message on AB 1699. In the message, the Governor wrote that while he supported the goal of AB 1699, “this bill may have unintended consequences that are not in the best interest of students.” The Governor also noted the impact the bill would have had on the local collective bargaining process, acknowledging that, “Educational employers and classified staff already have the ability to bargain this issue, and many already have agreements that meet the goals of this bill. Unfortunately, this bill also prohibits future bargaining agreements from implementing their own locally determined process.”
Bills provide schools with additional flexibility to bring back retired teachers, keep substitutes longer.
In an effort to provide schools with more tools to address the state’s ongoing teacher shortage, SB 765 by Senator Anthony Portantino (D-Pasadena) will temporarily remove or lessen certain post-retirement rules for California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) retirees returning to service, beginning July 1, 2024 and sunsetting July 1, 2026. Despite moving through the Senate without a single no vote, the bill’s future was put in doubt when it was initially stopped in the Assembly Committee on Public Employment and Retirement, after the Committee’s chair
refused to set the bill for hearing. However, after amendments were taken in the committee to address concerns raised by the California Teachers Association and to move them to neutral on the bill, SB 765 passed out of the committee and eventually made it to the Governor’s desk. While the earlier version of the bill sought to completely exempt a retired teacher that returns to service from the CalSTRS post-retirement earnings limit, as signed, SB 765 will do the following:
- Increase the post-retirement compensation earnings limit for retirees from 50% to 70% of the median final compensation of all members who retired for service during the fiscal year ending in previous calendar
- Authorize an alternative process for educational employers to hire a retired CalSTRS member prior to satisfying the statutory 180-day separation from service requirement, if the superintendent seeks an exemption and submits documents to CalSTRS with certification, under penalty of perjury, as to each of the following:
- The nature of the employment
- That the appointment is necessary to fill a critically needed position before the 180 days have passed
- That the CalSTRS member is not ineligible for application of these provisions
- That the termination of employment of the retired member with the employer is not the basis for the need to acquire the services of the member
- That the employer did not have a reduction-in-force layoff within the prior 18 months
To better inform future efforts on how to address the teacher shortage, SB 765 also requires CalSTRS, on or before February 1, 2027, to submit a report to the Legislature that includes, among other things, the total number of requests received from a school or community college for an exemption to the 180-day requirement, the total number of retired members who performed retired member activities with an exemption during the period of temporary relief, and the compensation/remuneration paid to each retired member who performed retired activities during the period of temporary relief.
While the flexibilities provided in SB 765 do not kick in until July of next year, current year relief was provided by budget trailer bill language signed into law in September. SB 141, until July 1, 2024, extended the ability of any holder of a substitute credential or permit issued by the Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) that authorizes them to substitute teach in a general, special, or career technical education assignment, to serve in a substitute teaching assignment aligned with their authorization for up to 60 cumulative days for any one assignment. As a budget bill, this authorization took effect immediately upon the Governor’s signature on September 13, 2023.
New laws provide employees with additional protection against workplace violence, harassment.
In response to a rise in workplace violence incidents in recent years, the Governor signed a pair of bills that put in place enhanced protections and safety measures for employees while on the job. The first bill, SB 553 by Senator Dave Cortese (D-San Jose) requires, beginning July 1, 2024, employers to develop, implement, and maintain an effective workplace violence prevention plan (WVPP) to establish procedures to help employers and employees respond to violent incidents. The plan must include, among other things, effective procedures to respond to workplace violence emergencies, procedures to identify, evaluate, and correct workplace violence hazards, maintenance of violent incident logs for every workplace violence incident, and provision of annual training on the elements of the WVPP.
SB 533 is in part a follow up to a bill from 2014 that required the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, otherwise known as Cal/OSHA, to adopt a health care industry specific workplace violence prevention standard [SB 1299 (Padilla)]. While Cal/OSHA has been developing new general industry regulations on Workplace Violence Prevention that would extend similar violence protection to workers in non-healthcare industries since 2017, it has yet to begin the formal rulemaking process for the standard. To this end, SB 553 also establishes a timeline by which Cal/
OSHA must finally take action on the new standard, requiring the agency to propose, no later than December 31, 2025, and the standards board to adopt, no later than December 31, 2026, standards regarding the WVPP and any additional requirements deemed necessary and appropriate to protect the health and safety of employees.
Secondly, SB 553, beginning January 1, 2025, expands the current law authorizing an employer to seek a temporary restraining order and an injunction on behalf of an employee who has suffered unlawful violence or a credible threat of violence from any individual that can reasonably be construed to be carried out or to have been carried out at the workplace, to also authorize a collective bargaining representative of an employee to seek a temporary restraining order and an injunction on behalf of the employee. The second bill, SB 428 by Senator Catherine Blakespear (D- Encinitas), further extends this authority to also include, beginning January 1, 2025, a temporary restraining order and an injunction on behalf of an employee who has suffered harassment. “Harassment” under the bill is defined as, “a knowing and willful course of conduct directed at a specific person that seriously alarms, annoys, or harasses the person, and that serves no legitimate purpose. The course of conduct must be that which would cause a reasonable person to suffer substantial emotional distress, and must actually cause substantial emotional distress.”
While both SB 553 and SB 428 establish additional protections against violence and harassment at the workplace, Governor Newsom seemed less willing to provide additional protections to employees during non-work hours. Despite increasing reports of school employees experiencing harassment from disgruntled parents, the Governor vetoed another bill that would have made it a misdemeanor for a person to subject a school employee to threats or harassment related to the employee’s course of duties while the employee is away from a schoolsite or after school hours. In his message announcing his veto of SB 596, authored by Senator Portantino, the Governor cautioned against “exacerbating tensions by implementing additional laws that can be perceived as stifling parents’ voices in the decision-making process.”
Bill expands number of required paid sick days to five.
Beginning January 1, 2024, employers will now be required to provide employees access to at least 40 hours or 5 days of paid sick leave in each 12-month period of employment. Originally looking to require 56 hours or 7 days of paid sick leave, Senator Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach), the author of SB 616, cites the success of supplemental paid sick leave during the COVID-19 Pandemic as the impetus for her introduction of the bill, writing:
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the lifesaving impacts of paid sick leave policies, while clearly exposing the gaps in our existing safety net for working families….Temporary expansions of paid sick leave policies, which have all expired, are not enough to provide a reliable safety net for workers and adequate protect public health year-round…In times of illness, workers shouldn’t have to resort to going to the emergency room for medical care because they couldn’t take time off during the workday, or worse, neglecting their health out of fear of losing income.
It is important to note that while SB 616 requires an employee have access to additional sick days, it does not change the accrual rate at which they earn them. Under the bill, an employee must have access to 40 hours or 5 days of sick leave by the 200th calendar day of the employee’s employment while current law requires an employee have access to 24 hours or 3 days of sick leave by the 120th calendar day of employment.
Budget makes changes to recently implemented wage overpayment procedures.
Last year’s budget included budget trailer bill language that established a formal process for when a school employer determines that one of its employees has received an overpayment of wages. The process included requiring the employer to notify the employee of the overpayment and provide an opportunity for the employee to respond before beginning recoupment actions. This year, SB 114 made various changes to this new process, including:
- Clarifying that the notice of the overpayment must be made in
- Adding a requirement that if the school employee disputes the existence or amount of the claimed overpayment, the school employer must first initiate a legal action and obtain a court order or binding arbitration decision validating the claimed overpayment amount before the employer may recover the
- Prohibiting a school employer from recovering overpayments made to a school employee more than three years before the school employer initiates the action.
- Clarifying the requirement that when a school employee is separated from employment before full repayment, the amount withheld for full repayment from any money owed to the employee upon separation must still ensure the state minimum wage is paid to the employee.
As a budget bill, these changes went into effect immediately upon the Governor’s signing on July 10, 2023.
Bill that would have required third-party hearing officer to hear classified disciplinary appeals vetoed by Governor.
Looking to build on previous successful efforts to establish parity between certificated and classified staff, including 2021’s AB 438 that extended the March 15th layoff notice deadline to classified workers, SB 433 by Senator Cortese sought to provide classified employees with the same due process rights as certificated staff. Sponsored by CSEA, the bill would have required, if a permanent classified employee of a district requests a hearing on the charges lodged against them, the appeal be decided by an impartial third-party hearing officer, to be paid for by the school district. The bill was opposed by a coalition of education management groups and individual local educational agencies (LEAs), who raised concerns not only about the increased costs the bill would impose on employers, even if they prevail on the appeal, but also about the potential delay in decisions due to increased caseloads and hearing officer capacity.
When vetoing the bill, Governor Newsom acknowledged that, because the bill would require employers to bear the full costs of a disciplinary appeal hearing, regardless of the outcome, this bill could “increase the number of appeals and would create significant costs for the State and must be considered in the annual budget in the context of all state funding priorities.” In what became a common refrain in many of his veto messages, the Governor noted that, despite the uncertainty surrounding state revenues, legislators sent him bills that would have added nearly $19 billion in costs to the state that were not accounted for in the budget.
Governor vetoes bills that would have strengthened rights of employees during a strike.
Following what many were calling a “hot labor summer” that saw labor unions authorizing potential strikes throughout the state, Senator Portantino introduced SB 799, which would have made striking workers eligible for unemployment insurance (UI) benefits after two weeks on the picket line. A late gut and amend that emerged with less than a month left in the legislative session, the bill moved quickly through the process but still garnered widespread opposition from employers. While concerns that the bill would only exacerbate the state’s already heavily indebted unemployment insurance fund were not enough to prevent legislators from passing the bill, they proved persuasive enough with the Governor. In vetoing the bill, he wrote, “Any expansion of eligibility for UI benefits could increase California’s outstanding federal UI debt [which is] projected to be nearly $20 billion by the end of the year… Now is not the time to increase costs or incur this sizable debt.”
The Governor signed the following human resources bills:
CTC
- AB 872 (Committee on Education) – Elementary and secondary education: omnibus bill
AB 872 is the annual K-12 education policy omnibus bill, which makes technical, clarifying, conforming, and other non- controversial revisions to a number of provisions in the Education Code and Health and Safety Code. Among other things, this bill prohibits a person who does not possess a valid credential issued by the CTC from being elected or appointed to office as county superintendent of schools and would require all county superintendents of schools to instead possess a valid administrative credential issued by the commission.
Chapter 273, Statutes of 2023 - AB 908 (Committee on Education) – Education finance: National Board for Professional Teaching Standards Certification Incentive Program: local control funding formula
Authored by the Assembly Education Committee, this bill authorizes teachers participating in the National board for Professional Teaching Standards Certification Incentive Program to receive grant funding for the renewal of their certification and deletes an inoperative education code section related to the average-daily-attendance of migratory students. As an urgency statute, this bill took effect immediately upon the Governor’s signature.
Chapter 819, Statutes of 2023 - AB 1251 (Rivas, Luz) – Teacher credentialing: computer science instruction: workgroup
Contingent upon an appropriation by the Legislature for this purpose, AB 1254 requires the CTC, on or before July 1, 2024, to convene a workgroup on credentialing for instruction in computer science, as provided, to determine, among other things, which credentials should also authorize teaching computer science. The bill also requires the CTC, on or before July 1, 2025, to provide a report of the workgroup’s findings and recommendations to the Legislature.
Chapter 834, Statutes of 2023 - SB 223 (Menjivar) – Pupil personnel services: child welfare and attendance services
Current law establishes the minimum requirements for the services credential with a specialization in pupil personnel services, which include, among others, completion of a commission-approved program of supervised field experience that includes direct classroom contact, jointly sponsored by a school district and a college or university. This bill modifies these requirements to instead require, for a services credential with a specialization in pupil personnel services in the area of child welfare and attendance services, the completion of (1) the above-described college- or university-sponsored supervised field experience requirement or (2) a commission-approved program of professional preparation offered by a LEA.
Chapter 175, Statutes of 2023
Human Resources
- AB 472 (Wicks) – Classified school district and community college employees: compulsory leaves of absence: compensation
AB 472 clarifies that the current authority of a school district governing board to grant leaves of absence and vacations with or without pay applies only to voluntary leaves of absence and vacations. For when a school district places an employee on an involuntary leave of absence during a period where the employee is charged with a criminal offense, is under investigation, or is waiting due to administrative delay for necessary job-related administrative determinations, the bill instead requires the school district, upon the conclusion of proceedings in favor of the employee, to pay the employee’s full compensation for the period of the involuntary leave of absence, once the employee returns to service in the district.
Chapter 331, Statutes of 2023 - AB 897 (McCarty) – Certificated school employees: probationary employees: service credit
AB 897, beginning July 1, 2024, requires probationary employees of an adult education program who work at least 75% of the number of hours constituting a full-time position for adult education programs in a school district, to be deemed as having served a complete school year. Also provides that if this conflicts with a provision of a collective bargaining agreement entered into by a public school employer and an exclusive bargaining representative before July 1, 2024, the provisions will not apply to the district until the agreement expires or is renewed.
Chapter 548, Statutes of 2023 - AB 1273 (Bonta) – Classified employees: Classified Employee Staffing Ratio Workgroup
This bill requires the California Department of Education (CDE), in consultation with the Division of Occupational Safety and Health, the Department of Industrial Relations, the Labor Commissioner, representatives of employee organizations, and representatives of voluntary LEAs, to convene the Classified Employee Staffing Ratio Workgroup on or before December 31, 2024. The workgroup will be required to group classified assignments in a reasonable manner that reflects the environmental setting of the assignment, the type of work to be completed, the impact on the assignment made by enrollment at a schoolsite, specialized needs, including certifications or licenses, and other reasonable factors, and to recommend reasonable staffing ratios per grouping. The bill requires the workgroup to report its recommendations to the Legislature on or before December 31, 2025.
Chapter 364, Statutes of 2023 - AB 1355 (Valencia) – Employment: benefits: electronic notice and documents
AB 1355, until January 1, 2029, allows employers to provide information to their employees regarding the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Unemployment Insurance (UI) Program via email to an email account of the employee’s choosing, if the employee affirmatively, and in writing or by electronic acknowledgment, opts into receipt of electronic statements or materials.
Chapter 277, Statutes of 2023 - SB 428 (Blakespear) – Temporary restraining orders and protective orders: employee harassment
Current law authorizes any employer, whose employee has suffered unlawful violence or a credible threat of violence from any individual that can reasonably be construed to be carried out or to have been carried out at the workplace, to seek a temporary restraining order and an injunction on behalf of the employee and other employees of the employer. SB 428, beginning January 1, 2025, additionally authorizes an employer to seek a temporary restraining order and an injunction on behalf of an employee who has suffered harassment.
Chapter 286, Statutes of 2023 - SB 497 (Smallwood-Cuevas) – Protected employee conduct
Current law prohibits a person from discharging an employee or in any manner discriminating, retaliating, or taking any adverse action against any employee or applicant for employment because the employee or applicant engaged in protected conduct. SB 497 creates a rebuttable presumption in favor of the employee’s claim if an employer engages in any action prohibited by this provision within 90 days of the protected activity specified in this provision. The bill also expands the remedies available for an employee who is discharged, threatened with discharge, demoted, suspended, retaliated against, subjected to adverse action, or in any other manner discriminated against in the terms and conditions of their employment because among other things, the employee engaged in protected conduct, to include a civil penalty not exceeding $10,000 per employee for each violation of this provision.
Chapter 612, Statutes of 2023 - SB 553 (Cortese) – Occupational safety: workplace violence: restraining orders and workplace violence prevention plan
SB 553 requires an employer, beginning July 1, 2024, to establish, implement, and maintain at all times in all work areas, an effective workplace violence prevention plan, to record information in a violent incident log for every workplace violence incidence, and to provide effective training to employees on the workplace violence prevention plan, when a new or previously unrecognized workplace violence hazard has been identified, and when changes are made to the plan. Additionally, the bill, beginning January 1, 2025, extends the current law authorizing an employer to seek a temporary restraining order and an order after hearing on behalf of an employee who has suffered unlawful violence or a credible threat of violence from any individual that can reasonably be construed to be carried out or to have been carried out at the workplace to also authorize a collective bargaining representative of an employee, to seek a temporary restraining order and an injunction on behalf of the employee.
Chapter 289, Statutes of 2023 - SB 616 (Gonzalez, Lena) – Sick days: paid sick days accrual and use
Current law requires an employer to provide no less than 24 hours or 3 days of paid sick leave that is available to an employee to use by the completion of the employee’s 120th calendar day of employment. SB 616 expands this requirement to also require an employer to provide no less than 40 hours or 5 days of paid sick leave that is available to the employee to use by the completion of the employee’s 200th calendar day of employment. Additionally, the bill expands the definition of “full amount of leave” to include “40 hours or 5 days in each year of employment, calendar year, or 12-month period,” beginning January 1, 2024.
Chapter 309, Statutes of 2023 - SB 700 (Bradford) – Employment discrimination: cannabis use
SB 700 makes it unlawful for an employer to request information from an applicant for employment relating to the applicant’s prior use of cannabis. The bill also provides that information about a person’s prior cannabis use obtained from the person’s criminal history is also subject to this prohibition, unless the employer is permitted to consider or inquire about that information pursuant to state or federal law.
Chapter 408, Statutes of 2023 - SB 848 (Rubio) – Employment: leave for reproductive loss
SB 848 makes it an unlawful employment practice for an employer to refuse to grant a request by an eligible employee to take up to 5 days of reproductive loss leave following a reproductive loss event, defined as a failed adoption, failed surrogacy, miscarriage, stillbirth, or unsuccessful assisted reproduction. The bill requires such leave be taken within 3 months of the event and pursuant to any existing leave policy of the employer. In the absence of an existing policy, the reproductive loss leave may be unpaid but the bill authorizes an employee to use vacation, personal leave, accrued and available sick leave, or compensatory time off that is otherwise available to the employee leave.
Chapter 724, Statutes of 2023
Professional Development
- AB 1127 (Reyes) – Teachers: professional development: Bilingual Teacher Professional Development Program: eligibility
The 2023–24 budget included $20,000,000 for the Bilingual Teacher Professional Development Program, to be available for grants totaling $4,000,000 each fiscal year, from 2023–24 to 2027–28. Current law requires the State Department of Education to allocate grant funding to eligible local educational agencies for purposes of providing professional development services to teachers or paraprofessionals who satisfy specified requirements. AB 1127 exempts participants who are currently enrolled in, or have completed, programs to support bilingual teacher education in languages in the classroom, such as Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese, and other languages, as represented in an instructional program, from those specified requirements, making them eligible for professional development services through the program.
Chapter 830, Statutes of 2023
Retirement/ PERS/ STRS
- SB 327 (Laird) – State teachers’ retirement: disability allowances and benefits
This bill reduces, effective on a date no later than January 1, 2026, determined by CalSTRS, the timeframe that a member of the system may backdate their service retirement or service retirement during evaluation of a disability application from as early as January 1, 2012, or June 1, 2014, respectively, to up to 270 calendar days prior to when CalSTRS receives their application.
Chapter 708, Statutes of 2023 - SB 432 (Cortese) – Teachers’ retirement
SB 432 clarifies certain provisions of last year’s AB 1667 (Chapter 754, Statutes of 2022) related to the recovery of pension overpayments from the CalSTRS to retired teachers due to errors in reported compensation. For example, AB 1667 required CalSTRS to annually provide resources that interpret and clarify the applicability of creditable compensation and service pursuant to its laws and regulations. SB 432 requires CalSTRS to identify and provide those resources on its website and requires those identified resources to be relied upon and used for purposes of audits and other actions related to compliance by employers, unless the resource is revoked or superseded.
Chapter 215, Statutes of 2023 - SB 765 (Portantino) – Teachers: retired teachers: compensation limitation
This bill temporarily, from July 1, 2024 to July 1, 2026, increases the postretirement compensation earnings limit for CalSTRS, members from 50% to 70% of the median final compensation of all members who retired for service during the fiscal year ending in the previous calendar year. It also temporarily authorizes an alternative process for educational employers to hire a retired CalSTRS member prior to satisfying the statutory 180-day separation from service requirement, if the superintendent seeks an exemption and submits documents to CalSTRS with certification, under penalty of perjury, as to each of the following:- The nature of the employment
- The appointment is necessary to fill a critically needed position before the 180 calendar days have passed
- That the CalSTRS member is not ineligible for application of these provisions
- That the termination of employment of the retired member with the employer is not the basis for the need to acquire the services of the member
- That the employer did not have a reduction-in-force layoff pursuant to existing laws within the prior 18 month
Chapter 885, Statutes of 2023
- SB 885 (Committee on Labor, Public Employment and Retirement) – Public employees’ retirement
SB 885 is the annual technical clean-up bill that makes technical, conforming, and noncontroversial changes to various sections of the Education and Government codes necessary for the efficient administration of CalSTRS, the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS), and county retirement systems. Changes includes authorizing CalSTRS to collect specified criminal history information for employees of CalSTRS and applicants for employee with CalSTRS while a tentative offer is pending (if the position includes specified duties), extending the date by which CalPERS must report on the effects of the Turkey Divestment mandate to January 1, 2035 in order to conform to recent changes that extended the mandate to the same date, and capping the interest which CalPERS can change local agencies on unpaid due payments at a simple annual rate of 10%.
Chapter 159, Statutes of 2023
Teacher Shortage
- AB 934 (Muratsuchi) – Commission on Teacher Credentialing: public awareness campaign
This bill requires the CTC to contract with a public relations organization, or other organization with similar expertise, to develop a public awareness campaign that highlights the value and benefits of educational careers in California’s public schools, spanning TK-12. AB 934 requires the campaign to recognize the value of the contributions made by public school teachers, encourage individuals to enter the teaching profession, and include information about available high-quality teacher credentialing pathways and financial supports. The campaign may include the development and distribution of public service announcements related to teacher recruitment and outreach to high school pupils and college students.
Chapter 671, Statutes of 2023
Workers Compensation
- AB 489 (Calderon) – Workers’ compensation: disability payments
Current law, until January 1, 2024, allows an employer to commence a program under which disability indemnity payments are deposited in a prepaid card account for employees. AB 489 extends this authorization until January 1, 2025.
Chapter 63, Statutes of 2023 - SB 623 (Laird) – Workers’ compensation: post-traumatic stress disorder
Current law provides, until January 1, 2025, that, for certain state and local firefighting personnel and peace officers, including peace officers employed by a K-12 public school district, the term “injury” includes post-traumatic stress that develops or manifests during a period in which the injured person is in the service of the department or unit and creates a disputable presumption that the injury arises out of and comes in the course of employment. Current law requires the compensation awarded pursuant to this provision to include full hospital, surgical, medical treatment, disability indemnity, and death benefits. This bill extends the sunset date for these provisions to January 1, 2029 and requires the Commission on Health and Safety and Workers’ Compensation to submit reports to the Legislature analyzing the effectiveness of the presumption and a review of claims filed by specified types of employees not included in the presumption.
Chapter 621, Statutes of 2023
Capitol Advisors Group has produced a set of comprehensive client briefs detailing new education laws that were passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Governor Newsom in 2023. Each brief is organized by subject area and includes an executive summary highlighting major changes we think you should know about. Bills signed by the Governor take effect on January 1, 2024, unless the bill specifically states otherwise.