2017 Legislative Victories for Women and Families in California

Dedicated to advancing the potential for women and girls, the California Women’s Law Center (CWLC) is proud to share that many of the important bills we supported this legislative session have been signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown. These bills will help ensure a more equitable California for women and girls.

Some of the highlights:

Assembly Bill 168 (Eggman) prohibit all California employers from asking for salary history during the hiring process. This measure is an important step in eliminating the gender wage gap by ensuring that historical gender pay discrimination is not a valid basis to support such discrimination moving forward.

Assembly Bill 557 (Rubio) strengthens aid to domestic violence victims receiving CalWORKs assistance. By ensuring that basic needs are met, it will increase the chances that survivors stay safe and can move forward.

Senate Bill 63 (Jackson) provides California workers at employers with 20 or more employees with job-protection for up to 12 weeks of parental leave. This measure will benefit up to 2.7 million California workers.

Senate Bill 239 (Wiener) updates California laws that criminalize and stigmatize people living with HIV by addressing HIV in the same manner as other serious communicable diseases, and eliminating extra punishment for people living with HIV, which disproportionately affects women and people of color.

Senate Bill 743 (Hernandez) ensures that Medi-Cal managed care enrollees continue to maintain flexibility in choosing family planning providers in the face of a federal repeal of this choice. Access to comprehensive reproductive health care and the ability to maintain continuity in family planning services is essential to women’s health.

Senate Bill 219 (Wiener) strengthens protections for LGBT seniors living in long-term care facilities against discrimination, such as refusing to use a resident’s preferred name or pronoun, denying admission to a long-term care facility, transferring a resident within a facility or to another facility based on anti-LGBT attitudes of other residents, or evicting or involuntarily discharging a resident from a facility on the basis of their actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression or HIV status.

CWLC is proud of our state for passing these important bills and working to protect and empower women and girls in California. However, some of the bills CWLC supported were vetoed by the Governor, including Senate Bill 169 (Jackson and De León) which would have amended the Education Code to codify existing Title IX sexual assault protections into California Law. Governor Brown also vetoed Assembly Bill 569 (Gonzalez Fletcher) which would have prohibited employment discrimination based on family planning decisions.

While we are disappointed by these setbacks, we are thrilled to celebrate the many victories on behalf of women and girls this year in our state.

To see the status of all the bills CWLC supported this legislative session, please visit our website by clicking here.