Capitol Briefs: The race to the finish begins

Newsom signs AI, abortion access bills: With the end of session safely in the rearview, Gov. Gavin Newsom is now deep into considering the mountain of bills on his desk. He recently signed some notable pieces of legislation:

• SB 53 by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), which enacts the recommendations of a working group of artificial intelligence experts convened by Newsom to establish what the senator calls “commonsense guardrails” for rapidly evolving AI technology. Among other things, the bill creates “CalCompute,” which is described as a “public cloud compute cluster that provides AI infrastructure for startups and researchers.”
• AB 260 by Assemblywoman Cecilia Aguiar-Curry (D-Winters), which ensures that the abortion pill mifepristone remains legal and available in California in the wake of Trump administration efforts to restrict access to reproductive healthcare. “As Planned Parenthood fights to keep health centers open to provide the reproductive health care so many Californians rely on, PPAC is grateful to Governor Newsom for signing Assemblymember Aguiar-Curry’s bill, AB 260,” said Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California CEO and President Jodi Hicks in a press release.

Newsom has two weeks left to act on many more significant measures, including:

• SB 41 by Sen. Scott Wiener, which would implement significant reforms on pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), the prescription drug middlemen who buy prescription drugs from manufacturers and wholesalers and then subsequently sell them to pharmacies and health plans. But PBMs also routinely keep the discounts they receive on those drugs for themselves, while also charging a fee for their services. Critics contend these practices are major drivers of rising medication costs in California. Opponents of the bill argue that PBMs actually save money for consumers by negotiating down the price of the most expensive drugs often used to treat serious health issues. As always, Newsom will be the last word.
• SB 7, which would regulate the use of automated decision systems (ADS) in the workplace. Among several things the bill would require employers to let workers know in writing at least 30 days in advance before an ADS can be deployed for decisions on hiring, termination or promotions. It would also give employees the right to appeal decisions made through the use of the AI program and prevent employers from inferring “a worker’s protected status under Section 12940 of the Government Code. c) Identify, profile, predict, or take adverse action against a worker for exercising their legal rights, including, but not limited to, rights guaranteed by state and federal employment and labor law.”
• AB 692, a bill that would ban so-called “Stay or pay” clauses, employment contracts that require the worker to repay an employer, training provider, or debt collector for a debt (such as training costs), if the worker’s employment ends.
• SB 464, a pay data reporting proposal that would require employers to store pay equity data, including demographic information related to race, ethnicity, or gender, separately from personnel records and create a civil penalty for employers that fail to submit pay data reports to the California Civil Rights Department.
• AB 642, which would bar an employer from “paying employees at wage rates less than the rates paid to employees of another sex instead of the opposite sex” and extend to three years the deadline for employees to file a civil action to recover wages. The bill would also allow workers to obtain damages for up to six years of employment.

For the numbers nerds among us: Capitol law professor and lobbyist Chris Micheli is an intrepid collector of legislative numbers. He recently compiled a breakdown of all the bills from 2023 to date in 2025 that apply to one of California’s 29 legal codes. Micheli noted the “relative consistency” in the numbers, proving that once again the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Gubernatorial ins and outs: By now you’ve probably all heard that former Assemblymember Ian Calderon has jumped into the governor’s race and former Assembly Speaker and Senate pro Tem Toni Atkins has dropped out. This brings the current list (according to Wikipedia anyway) of those in and out to 13 Democrats, 11 Republicans, one each from the Libertarian, Green and Peace & Freedom parties, and two more with no listed party preference. Yep, that’s 29 total candidates. In case you are wondering why most media outlets don’t include every single candidate in our debate forums.