2025 Bills CPC Is Watching on the Governor’s Desk September 15, 2025
California Policy Center has been tracking the following bills that passed off the floors of both the Assembly and Senate last week and are headed to (or on) Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk. The governor has until October 13th to sign or veto these bills.
AB 715 (Zbur) – At a time of increased hostility and anti-Semitism in California’s K-12 public schools and higher education, AB 715 establishes various offices and programs at a state and local level to monitor, prevent and mitigate anti-Semitism on campus while still leaving a decisively anti-Semitic ethnic studies in place.
SB 414 (Ashby) – As a response to a very punitive proposal, AB 84 (Muratsuchi), meant to regulate charter schools out of existence, SB 414 was introduced and sponsored by a few charter school associations in an effort to provide for a more modest approach to charter school accountability without forcing them to close. When it was clear that AB 84 could not get the necessary support for passage, SB 494 (Cortese) was gutted and amended late in the session to extend the moratorium on new non-classroom based charter schools, but shelved when the moratorium was added to SB 414. Unfortunately, SB 414 also adopted several of the bad parts of AB 84 before it was passed out of the legislature.
AB 495 (C. Rodriquez) – In response to enforcement of illegal immigration by the Trump Administration, this bill puts forward an affidavit process that could easily allow for increased kidnapping and human trafficking of our children. The guardrails for this bill are insufficient and the proposed law is riddled with logistical problems that don’t require authority figures to verify that a child is being surrendered to a legitimate adult in the case of a parent being detained, as is the case with designated emergency contacts, court sanctioned standby guardians or when Child Protective Services gets involved.
AB 1207 (Irwin, Rivas) – As energy and commodity prices continue to go higher and no one is following California’s climate agenda, the legislature decided to extend the failed cap and tax program that drives business and manufacturing from the state until 2046 with no serious reforms or considerations of the costs of bearing this virtue signaling alone.
SB 237 (Grayson, Hurtado, McNerney, and Richardson) – When gas prices continue to rise in California and as refineries shutter down operations throughout the state, the legislature realized that they either allow for more drilling in Kern County, or fuel resources are not going to be within the reach of the millions of drivers in the state. This bill reduces some targeted environmental regulations for drilling and pumping fuel in the state.
SB 627 (Wiener) – In a fight with the Trump Administration over its enforcement of illegal immigration and against the loud protestations from local law enforcement, SB 627 makes it a crime for a law enforcement officer to wear a facial covering in the performance of the duties, while exempting the state highway patrol. Due to the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution, this bill cannot apply to federal law enforcement officers and will chill those local law enforcement officers who are assisting in enforcing federal immigration law.
AB 1370 (Patterson) – This bill prohibits the use of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) in the conduct of legislative business, keeping the process open and transparent.
SB 79 (Wiener) – This bill would allow a housing development project to override local zoning laws if it’s within a certain distance to a transit-oriented development (TOD) station. Such development could materially affect the nature of a neighborhood in ways that local residents and property owners may object to.
AB 699 (Stefani) – Sacramento, cities and school districts constantly want to raise more taxes. AB 699 would obscure tax increase proposals set before the voters and instead of honest transparency, it would make it easier to manipulate the ballot title without requiring municipalities to identify tax measures.
SB 595 (Choi) – As local governments seem to be in no rush to share their fiscal status with the public, SB 595 requires financial statements be processed more quickly to provide for more municipal transparency and accountability. Supported by California Policy Center, SB 595 passed out of the legislature with unanimous support.
SB 53 (Wiener) – As federal policymakers wrestle with the proper level of regulations for artificial intelligence, California is surging ahead on multiple fronts trying to assume a senior statesman position by virtue of being the home of Silicon Valley. While SB 53 may be a good faith effort to address some legitimate deficiencies in current AI oversight, it’s likely to cause more problems than it solves, while inducing more confusion and uncertain rules everyone will try and leverage.