Hint: It’s not all good news. Lawmakers, of course, had to repeatedly hit pause as the pandemic took hold and their colleagues tested positive for COVID. The stops and starts and economic crisis that followed the pandemic meant many proposed laws were either pulled by their creators or eliminated from consideration as time ran out. Here are winners to watch for and losers, for now, to remember when the Legislature returns in January:
• Senate Bill 932 from Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, cleared the Legislature and is headed to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk for a signature. It would require electronic communicable-disease reporting tools used by the California Department of Public Health and local health officials to collect and report data relating to the sexual orientation and gender identity of people diagnosed with all communicable diseases. Originally, the bill focused on people diagnosed with COVID-19, to better understand its impact on the LGBTQ community. It’s an urgency statute and will take effect immediately if the Legislature passes it and Newsom signs it; he has until Sept. 30 to sign bills. Bills he signs that don't have urgency statutes would take effect Jan. 1 unless otherwise specified.
• Other legislation that cleared the statehouse includes SB 980 from state Sen. Tom Umberg, D-Santa Ana. It would create the “Genetic Information Privacy Act”; bar “a direct-to-consumer genetic or illness testing services company from disclosing a person’s genetic information to a third party without obtaining the person’s prior written consent”; and keep COVID-19 testing companies not covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) from sharing consumers’ biometric data without explicit consent.
Assembly Bill 713 from Assemblymember Kevin Mullin, D-San Mateo, is now headed to Newsom’s desk. It aims to “harmonize” the California Consumer Privacy Act’s definition of deidentified data with the long-used HIPAA standard and avoid possible “widespread disruption to healthcare and biomedical research.” Among its stipulations, it would exempt from the CCPA information that has been deidentified per federal law, or derived from “medical information, protected health information, individually identifiable health information, or identifiable private information,” also consistent with federal policy.
AB 904 from Assemblyman Ed Chau, D-Monterey Park, a member of the California Legislative Technology and Innovation Caucus, is also headed to Newsom for a signature. It would expand the definition of a tracking device from an “electronic or mechanical device that permits the tracking of the movement of a person or object” to include “any software that permits the tracking of the movement of a person or object” – with implications for law enforcement. However, AB 2280 on the definition of personal health information and AB 2442 on social media disinformation, both from Chau, stalled in committee late in the session.
• Newsom’s early focus on ending homelessness when he debuted his proposed 2020-2021 Fiscal Year state budget in January changed, understandably, as the pandemic took hold and officials confronted a projected $54.3 billion shortfall. But lawmakers passed AB 1845 from Assemblymember Luz Rivas, D-Arleta. It would create an Office to End Homelessness in the governor’s office and a Secretary on Homelessness whom Newsom would appoint. It also would formally name the Homeless Data Integration System, now in procurement; mandate that local Continuums of Care populate it with data; and protect the privacy of health or personal information in that data. Will Newsom sign it? The governor said last week that he already has a homeless czar.
• One high-profile casualty is SB 1130, the “Broadband for All” act by state Sen. Lena Gonzalez, D-Long Beach, which would have eased the way for local governments and Internet service providers (ISPs) to access money in the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF), to do high-speed broadband projects in unserved and high-poverty areas. The state Assembly sent it to the inactive file – effectively killing it – on Aug. 30. In a tweet that Gonzalez retweeted, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a sponsor, called that “outrageous”; Gonzalez Tweeted on Aug. 31, the session’s last day, that she was “still waiting on the other house … .”
