Assembly Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee, Tuesday, April 21, 2026
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Assembly Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee California State Assembly
Ihren Sitzungen folgenRedner 4
At the same time, AB seventeen ninety eight is carefully balanced, and this type of policy is already being implemented in states like Florida. It does not prevent insurers from accessing medical history or asking about family history. It simply makes clear that genetic data, whether obtained directly or indirectly, cannot be used to make underwriting decisions. In other words, insurers can still evaluate risk, but they cannot rely on that data that is uniquely sensitive, speculative in nature, and often uncertain. It is extremely important to note that genetic data is fundamentally different than traditional medical data.
As emphasized by the American Medical Association, it often reflects only a possibility, not a diagnosis. Many genetic markers indicate risks that may never materialize. And in many cases, the science is still involving or correlational, not causational. Thank you to the opposition for their thoughtful engagement. I'm committed to continuing collaboration as we move forward.
We all agree that people should not pay more or be denied coverage because of who they are. Then we must also agree that they should not be penalized for what is written in their DNA. Ultimately, this bill is about balance. AB seventeen ninety eight ensures that genetic testing leads to better health. It protects privacy, promotes early detection, and reinforces trust in both our health care and insurance system.
I would like to now induce introduce my two witnesses, Craig Mull, a scientist at UCSF working on gene editing therapies, and a fellow with the global brain health, as well as Miguel Bastidas. Was Bastidas? Is right?
Redner 4
Okay. Good. Chief deputy legislative director for the California Department of Insurance. Are you going first? Miguel?
Redner 6
Good afternoon, chair and committee members. My name is Miguel Vastidas. I'm the chief dep oh, sorry about that. Good afternoon, chair and committee members. My name is Miguel Vastidas.
I am the chief deputy legislative director for the California Department of Insurance here under the leadership of insurance commissioner Ricardo Lara. With me today is Beverly Brand, assistant chief counsel for the department's policy regulation and approval bureau to help answer any technical questions that you may have. As a proud sponsor of a b seventeen ninety eight, commissioner Lara would like to thank assembly member Wilson for her leadership in authoring this important measure, which protects California's genetic information and life and disability insurance underwriting. Californians should never have to fear that genetic test results will be used against them when they apply for life or disability insurance. Instead, individuals should be encouraged to get tested early and to to take proactive steps to protect their health.
Doing this not only helps individuals stay healthier, but also leads to healthier risk pools for insurers. Federal law already prohibits genetic discrimination in health insurance and employment. AB seventeen ninety eight extends that same logic to genetic tests in any form that predict the potential for disease and are performed in the absence of symptoms or disease. Genetic information is distinct from traditional underwriting factors because it is immutable and most often suggests a remote chance of future diseases rather than a reasonably anticipated risk. It's also distinct in that it reveals deeply personal and private information about the patient and the patient's family.
Redner 16
Genetic tests often cannot reliably predict whether a disease will actually occur or at what age and therefore should not be used to penalize individuals who are currently healthy. California law already recognizes that certain genetic traits must be predicted. Insurers are currently and rightfully prohibited from refusing to insure, sell, or renew life or disability insurance or try charging higher premiums for individuals who carry genetic traits associated with Tay Sachs, sickle cell, thalassemia, or X linked hemophilia. This bill strengthens consumer privacy, promotes fairness, supports genetic research, and empowers individuals to make informed medical decisions without sacrificing their financial security. I respectfully ask for your vote.
Redner 7
Good afternoon, chair and assembly committee members. My name is Greg Moll. I'm a scientist at UCSF. I work on developing gene editing therapies, and I also work as an Atlantic fellow to help ensure equitable access to new technologies. I'd
Redner 7
thank assembly member Wilson for her leadership and offering this bill. And as Miguel said, sequencing and genetic testing are at the cusp of providing amazing benefits to people and patients and are becoming a standard part of clinical care. Sequencing can be used for diagnosis, early cancer screening, and even to identify which medicines will work for a given disease. Just last year, a baby was healed with a personalized gene editing therapy for the first time, and this is just the beginning. The NIH is currently piloting using newborn whole genome sequencing as a standard screening tool.
GINA and CalGINA allow life and disability insurers to use genetic information for underwriting. This disincentivizes patients to get life saving potentially life saving genetic testing. Genetic discrimination is a major barrier preventing people from getting genetic testing. A study from the MedSeq project found that twenty eight percent of people who actively decline sequencing cited genetic discrimination fear as their primary reason. I've spoken to gene carriers and their family members, many of whom have refused to participate in clinical research or get genetic testing due to these fears.
Redner 17
We can close these loopholes while maintaining a robust insurance market. Florida, France, Canada, and Australia do not allow life and disability insurers to use genetic testing and underwriting. All of these countries and Florida have robust insurance markets that have not been destabilized or hurt by this policy. In several countries, insurers have actually voluntarily imposed a moratorium on themselves. The opposition has said that a b seventeen ninety eight will cause increased prices, market disruption, and information asymmetry that will undermine their ability to underwrite.
Redner 7
These claims are exaggerated. The data are clear. Family history is sufficient for insurers to price risk. Genetic data is probabilistic, not diagnostic in the absence of symptoms. The opposition also proposes solutions including not solely relying on genetic testing or based on sound actuarial principles, but these amendments would make the law unenforceable and leave existing insurer practices unchanged.
We need strong, clearly enforceable genetic discrimination protections to remove barriers for patients so they can access life saving care and accelerate innovation. For these reasons, I respectfully ask for your I vote. Thank you.
Redner 1
Thank you so much. Anyone else here in support of this legislation? Name, organization, and position, please.
Redner 11
Sarah Nacito on behalf of the California Chronic Care Coalition and GeneDx in support.
Redner 12
Sumaya Nehaar here on behalf of the Children's Specialty Care Coalition in support.
Redner 14
Good afternoon, chair and members. Tracy Rosenberg on behalf of Oakland Privacy in support.
Redner 1
Thank you. Anyone here in opposition to this bill? Come on up. We may need one of these seats if you guys don't mind. Thank you.
Hi.
Redner 10
afternoon, chair and members. Matt Powers with the Association of California Life and Health Insurance Companies. Our members write the life disability income and long term care policies that a b seventeen ninety eight, would impact. Thank you to the assembly member and staff, for their sincere time and and work with us, but we must remain, respectfully opposed as as amended. It is a difficult issue, that goes to people's health and personal information.
Insurers want people to get access, to genetic testing, improve their health, and live longer. We're aligned on that. Where we differ is how this information is treated. We do not see genetic information as fundamentally different from other health data used to assess insurance risk. We have concerns that genetic information is especially sensitive, sorry.
Excuse me. We have heard concerns that genetic information is especially sensitive because it's predictive and may never manifest. This is also true of many other tests used in underwriting, such as cholesterol, weight, glucose, and blood pressure. Like genetic testing, these are all predictive of future risk, and they're permitted under the insurance code and subject to strict consent standards. Furthermore, the appropriate use of this information has improved predictions of mortality and morbidity and supported a strong affordable life and disability market in California.
Redner 18
It's also important to clarify that our focus is on clinical physician ordered genetic tests, not direct to consumer tests like 23andMe or Ancestry, which are not taken for medical purposes. We've offered amendments to take those completely off the table, and that leaves really physician ordered tests and research testing, and we're open to limits on research testing. However, clinical grade tests ordered by a doctor to assess and manage medical risk, a part of an applicant's medical file, should remain available, we believe. If a physician orders a test that has material health information, it can predict it can predict risk, rule out conditions tied to family history, and support better underwriting outcomes, often enabling coverage. Insurers are in the business of writing coverage, and accurate information supports that goal.
Redner 10
Finally, even though individuals with higher sorry. Excuse me. Finally, even with, individuals with higher medical risk can access coverage through group insurance and guaranteed issue products that do not require underwriting. This bill is about medically underwritten policies for carriers that need more insight into their long term financial risk, often over decades. And as part of that, we are asking to preserve access to an applicant's medical file.
With that, I'd like to turn it over to my counterpart, doctor Deb, representing ACLI.
Redner 12
Good afternoon to the chair and the committee members. My name is doctor Deborah Vendomilan, and I have been a medical director in the insurance industry for over fifteen years. My training is in family medicine with degrees in public health and genetics. I'm here on behalf of the American Council of Life Insurers. Underwriting, the process by which an insurer looks at reviewing medical records to determine risk and appropriate pricing has actually lowered the cost of coverage for the majority of consumers and allowed more families to afford protection.
But that math unfortunately falls apart when individuals who are at the highest risk for premature death are forced into the lowest risk pools. It only takes a few of these people of higher risk put into the wrong pool to undermine that system. The United States lacks a purchase mandate that exists in many other countries that were previously listed, And those mandates allow that risk to be spread off a spread over a large enough pool that it is not necessarily a problem for policy owners. That does not exist here. As well, this industry is highly regulated.
We follow unfair discrimination laws. We follow direct to consumer genetic testing privacy, which I believe came out of this body, and we follow HIPAA. We never access sensitive information without consent. Insurers are committed to respecting and protecting that private information of our policyholders and our applicants, but genetic information is not, from our perspective, any more sensitive than the histories that we see of addiction, mental illness, and STDs in medical records. What this bill does is give special status to a subset of consumers at the expense of others who may not have the discretionary income to afford the rising costs of food, housing, gas, and life insurance.
So I thank you for your time today.
Redner 1
Thank you. Anybody else here in opposition to this bill? Name, organization, and position, please. You're all by yourself. Good
Redner 18
afternoon. Sherry McHugh representing the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors, respectfully opposed unless amended, look forward to continuing to work with the author. Thank you.
Redner 1
Thank you so much. Seeing nobody else in opposition, we'll bring it back to the committee. Questions, concerns, comments? Miss Sylvia Burwin?
Redner 19
Yeah. I'm I'm trying to understand how and and I wasn't here right at the beginning of your presentation. How do the insurance companies get the genetic information? Who is it that actually gives it up? It couldn't be doctors can't give it up.
Right? Or and I thought volunteer like, you couldn't be, required to give the information to the insurance
Redner 4
into play is the insurance, companies have access to the medical file. And within the medical file, a patient could note that they took a test that was a direct to consumer. The doctor could have ordered a genetic test, and so that is how they find out about the genetic test. And so what we're saying is that the doctor who has the primary is the primary care physician who's assessing the risk of the information that they're getting through testing is the one who should be assessing that risk and noting that. And they have they still have access to that information.
But they can't look and see that there's a genetic test, take those results, and then assess risk based on that. They have to use the doctor's assessment of that risk, not the genetic test itself.
Redner 19
Okay. I I didn't realize they they can have access to the entire, medical record and completely unwritten. And the the genetic test, if it's if it's a commercial one, you don't necessarily share the results with your
Redner 4
What happens is now in the advent of, AI tools within the medical field. You are, your doctor previously, before AI, would write what he thought or she thought, they thought, what was medically relevant. They might not note the '23 and me or something like that. But with the event of AI, it's actually being recorded, and that whole transcript is included. So if the person mentioned it, that would be a part of the file, and they could.
They do not, right now, use genetic information at all in their underwriting. So what we're saying is we want to hold the line that you won't be able to at all. Alright.
Redner 19
And I don't know who made the argument, but I can see that if the insurance companies are using this genetic information, it's definitely a disincentive to Mhmm. Testing because all sorts of things could show up. I don't know if that's was by he's nearby if
Redner 7
Oh, okay. Sure. Yeah. There have been several studies where it depends a little bit on the genetic test and a lot on the education level of the patient, but it's anywhere from ten to forty percent of people who decline sequencing cite genetic discrimination fears as their primary reason.
Redner 4
And I would like to note, if I can't do the chairs, that as a reminder, genetic testing is not just about you, it's about your family. And so someone else could be discriminated against because they are related to you within that underwriting process because now your genetic material is being used and you happen to be related to somebody. They don't have that genetic testing but could be aware of the familiar relationship and be able to do that. They do not do that now, but those are the types of things that we are guarding against.
Redner 19
But but for but for a hundred years, you've been able to accurately assess the risk of people just based on their their physical health, right, or their parent what happened with their parents.
Redner 12
Right. We what what I would say is family history is critically important and has been something we've had access to in the past, and it was probably what we would call the first genetic test before we even knew what a gene was. But there are restrictions on our access to family history and how we are allowed to ask those questions, especially in our application process, which can be somewhat problematic in solely relying on that. But there is additional risk, what I'd say, and I know there's concern about what is association versus causation, what is a predictive test versus a diagnostic test. And what I would say is that in the underwriting process, we are looking at things holistically.
If somebody has a genetic marker for increased risk, whether that's cancer, Alzheimer's, many different things, we look at it in what are they doing to prevent it, how is the rest of their health, and so it's not one piece of information. Just like when I had a clinical practice, I would look at that as well. But it is important from a predictive standpoint. For instance, if I look at certain tests for whether it's cholesterol, People don't die of high cholesterol. They die of the ramifications of it down the road, the heart attack.
Redner 47
And so we're looking at genetic testing as the same type of predictive tool that it's not guaranteed 100%. But there are many places where if we look at somebody who has lung cancer, only ten to twenty percent of people who are heavy smokers end up with lung cancer. If we look at end stage liver disease, only ten to fifteen percent of those people end up with or it's from heavy drinking. So if you look at, unfortunately, for a condition like ALS that is very devastating, If you look at the pathogenic, the known pathogenic genes and mutations, they can be fifty percent, seventy five percent, sometimes ninety percent predictive that they will manifest that disease down the road. That is five to 10 times the predictive capability of other health information
Redner 1
But so I I So I don't mean to interrupt you, miss Elmer, but I have a quorum, and today, I might lose it. Okay. Okay. So if we can just call the wrong.
Redner 2
Marocahan. Here. Marocahan. Here. Mucido.
Brian. DeMio. Hoover? Erwin? Here.
Irwin here. Lowenthal?
Redner 2
Ortega here. Patterson? Here. Patterson here. Pellerin.
Petrinors. Ward. Wicks? Here. Wilt Sorry.
Sorry. Wicks here. Wilson. Here. Wilson here.
Redner 19
So I I would just say, like, for me, insurance is about spreading the risk over a large number of people. And now what you would have is if you saw that somebody, you know, is is eighty percent likely to have Parkinson's, you certainly wouldn't insure them. So you're going to end up with, you know, a number of people that have high probability of Alzheimer's that are not going to be able to be insured or, you know, certain types of cancer. So that's my concern. I think it goes away from the idea of spreading the risk.
Let me first of
Redner 12
all say one thing about the purpose of underwriting, which is what I my medical expertise and how I apply it. And the purpose of underwriting is to stratify the known risk, which we're required to do appropriately because the actual insurance that's being purchased is to cover the unknown risk between now and indefinitely into the future. So that's the importance to think about. And unfortunately, there are people, although I think there are assumptions at the number of people that cannot get insurance the traditional way. There are many, many conditions that we insure.
We may charge them a little bit more than the discounted rates we charge the extremely healthy people, but most of them can get coverage. If they do not want to disclose that information, as mentioned by my colleague, there is guaranteed issue, there are employments, there are simplified issues. You probably hear on the radio companies like Ethos, Ladder, who have a very different underwriting model and a different product model that may be more conducive to people who cannot access insurance other ways.
Redner 4
Through the chair, I'd like to note though, and pass it over, is that we don't disagree given the example that she talked about, ALS. But that would be through your doctor who ordered that genetic testing and determined that risk and then note and did a diagnosis or noted in the file that there is a risk for this, I want you to do X, Y, Z. They can actually use that information from the doctor. It's the test they can't use on its own to underwrite. But the information that the doctor writes about it, where the doctor has assessed the risk and what treatment options they're giving or what medicine they should be taken to push that out.
All of that is known to them and allowed to be used by them. And I'll turn it over to our experts.
Redner 55
Oh, I just want to say from a technical standpoint Oh. From a technical standpoint, when you look at underwriting, it's to fairly differentiate risk between the different classes and to reasonably anticipate risk. So it's not just stratifying it down to the most minute level. Right? You're trying to be fair across classes and as you ultimately spread the risk.
Redner 17
Yes. Good afternoon. I have a couple of questions. Given the historical disparities in health care and insurance access, do you, ensure genetic data isn't used in a way that disproportionately harms certain communities?
Redner 12
I think we we go where the data takes us from the standpoint of we are not looking for ways to have outcomes differentially harm populations. But let me take it
Redner 1
I know you want to talk to the assembly member, but we need to get you on the
Redner 12
are conditions outside of genetics that affect different populations differently. And we still have to understand that hypertension can affect different communities differently, certain types of cancers. As a woman, I'm more likely, and I've had breast cancer. So I know that's part of my underwriting when I apply. But that doesn't mean just because it can affect different populations differently that I say, well, you can't consider breast cancer as a risk because it is going to affect women more than men.
And so, I think it's we're not looking at the genetics, we're looking at what it tells us from a disease and what the future holds and how what kind of life expectancy we can have. So, hopefully, by doing that and following the science, we are getting past some of the it's more of a a consideration of disparate impact, but it should be minor. It shouldn't be major.
Redner 17
Well, with the excuse me. In the medical field, there's so much built in systemic racism that it's something that, like, our community would not trust. I mean, I'm I'm with my colleague. If a doctor is ordering this, that's one thing. But to to do genetics and then have you guys underwrite it on that, I think that's a way to to to, to kind of weed people off out of insurance.
So I'm I'm very skeptical of that. Let's see. You told us about, underwrite Underwriting. I think, assembly member Erwin asked you about this. Isn't it true that underwriting has always been involved managing uncertainty?
Why should genetics be treated differently? And and another thing, when you mentioned breast cancer, ten years ago, when you're when you got if you got insured ten years ago, I'm sure the insurance company didn't underwrite you to have breast cancer ten years ago.
Redner 12
They didn't. And I think that brings up an excellent point that we encourage, as an industry, people to apply for insurance as early as possible so they are as healthy as possible to get the best rates. Because as you get older, you are more likely to manifest health conditions or have risks identified. But we can't, therefore, ignore those risks when they do come up later, when we're trying to put people in to those appropriate groups that the insurance, laws require us to do?
Redner 17
Well, I actually really think that this, thank you for the bill, assembly member. I would love to be a coauthor. We do have to make sure that those those deep systemic racism, we're trying to weed that out of the health care, and I don't think that this helps. I mean, I think that you guys, opposing this the way that you wanna use genetics. I don't think that that helps us at all.
I think that they should have guardrail we should make sure that there's guardrails around.
Redner 12
And I think there are guardrails that we're continuing to talk about. We are not at all saying there should be no guardrails and it's the Wild Wild West. There are many ways that we see there are
Redner 5
Great, thank you. Question regarding I clearly don't have life insurance or well, I do have term, but when you're applying, is it you know, and a person goes out, maybe gets a blood test, or uses now one of the services out there that perform blood tests, and maybe a practitioner will go through it, or maybe AI will go through it. But are those is that kind of information right now requested by insurance companies through this process, through the application process?
Redner 10
I think the simplest answer is it depends on the type of product. So if the insurer is medically underwriting that process, then yes, they are going to ask for your medical records. This is all standard practice. That could include a genetic test currently. They may ask you to take, blood pressure.
Had they sent a phlebotomist to your house, take blood pressure, do a blood draw. So it really depends on the type of coverage that you're seeking. I think that's one of the points that we've we try to make is that there's a variety of different options in the marketplace for different people that are differently situated. But if you're applying for life insurance, we want symmetry of information is what we're calling it. We wanna know what the applicant knows.
And other otherwise, there can be adverse selection. If there's a very high likelihood of you developing any disease that we were not aware of, you may take out more coverage, that affects the risk pool. So I think that's really what we're arguing for is that, we want to continue to have access to the medical record. The assembly member earlier was asking about, you know, direct to consumer 23andMe. We're fine to take that off the table.
That's those are not we we we recognize those are not, solid clinical tests. We're fine to take that off the table. But if your doctor has ordered I mean, similar similar to what the assemblyman woman is saying, putting the doctor in the driver's seat. You know, if the doctor has ordered the test and that is in your medical record, we think it's appropriate to be able to see, to to see that. I think there's a subtle distinction
Redner 4
And I know when the doctor orders it, he's opining or they're opining on this information. And then that's the information that they can use, not the ex exact genetic testing. And he noted symmetry, informational symmetry. We already limit what insurers can use when fairness demands it. We say right now, through California law, that you can't use characteristics like race, sexual orientation, even if those things are sex even those things are statistically relevant, because they're civil rights issues and they outweigh, purely actuarial considerations.
Redner 54
And so we're saying genetic information is the same thing. And we know now that genetic information does not necessarily lead to diagnosis or or it talks about the probability, but it's really the assessment of the doctor that determines, based on other factors, what that should be. And they are currently relying on that information, and we're not stopping them from relying on that information. So they have access to the file, but they don't have access to the genetic testing. And they can't base their underwriting on that, only the doctor's, opinion surrounding that genetic testing.
Redner 22
If the question was whether or not the we see companies or the department sees companies using the procedure in current law to actually request genetic tests, there's an informed consent procedure and some privacy protections under the law, and the answer to that is no. To the extent we've seen it, not that we see everything, of course, through exams, it's been, accessed through the medical records. So the legislature did put in place an informed consent process, that specific to genetic testing. Of course, the authorization for medical records, there's consent to that as well.
Redner 10
okay to, you know, concede on the point that we won't require a genetic test. So we wouldn't ask the applicant for that genetic test. So our our position is based on what's in the medical file, so what the doctor has then ordered.
Redner 5
Okay. So, excuse me. Now I'm a little confused. So your bill right now, under current law, you can, get access to the medical record that might include some genetic or assessment or something by the doctor.
Redner 4
It would you can get access to the medical file. And if it includes genetic testing, they have full access and can use that today under current law. They're they're not requiring it, but they can. Okay. And so what we're saying is you can access the opinion of the doctor who's assessed that, but just the genetic testing, you can't make you can't underwrite based on genetic testing.
It has to be based on the doctor and what the doctor says around that, not the genetic testing. You will no longer have access to genetic testing, just the doctor's assessment of that genetic testing.
Redner 22
can use it if it's, actuarially sound. It doesn't mean that in certain instances, they might use it and the department and the exam might look at it and say, hey. That was not okay. Right?
Redner 5
I missed the opening presentation. So is this an actual prop going on right now and not
Redner 1
We have so kind of so many bills. We cannot repeat all the presentations. We appreciate people coming in and out.
Redner 4
It's becoming an issue. And so that's why we brought the bill because it is becoming an issue. So we don't want it to be, more than what it is right now. We wanna stop it and then roll back a little bit.
Redner 1
Okay. Seeing and hearing no further, debate, I will just say I wanna thank you for this bill, and, actually, I'd like to be added as a coauthor as well. And I feel glad
Redner 1
I appreciate that. You know, I'm a rare disease mom. I have many people in my life who have benefited just so much from genetic testing. And in many ways, even the opposition said, lifesaving ways. You know, these tests for especially rare disease patients, getting a diagnosis can lead to treatments that otherwise one may never know about unless we can actually diagnose these individuals.
And I will tell you that a physician family member of mine who has breast cancer history, you know, was opting not to get genetic testing for this exact reason because she didn't want the discrimination that may come with it. And I love her so much and I said I want you to get testing because I know it might save your life one day to know what you should be doing and how you should be reacting in the medical field. And so I I believe the data because I've known it firsthand. And so this is just really important that we help people have the protections to go get the care they need to live longer and healthier lives. And in the end, it will mean less payouts.
So it will be a win win. With that, would you like to close?
Redner 4
Absolutely. Thank you for the discussion and the questions from my colleagues and those who support and even the opposition. We've had great conversations. And if we continue to refine the bill, I'm always happy to do that. We have led the nation in recognizing that innovation must be matched with responsibility.
As genetic technology advancing advances, so too must our safeguards. We are standing at the intersection of innovation and policy, and the choices we make today will shape how Californians experience the future of medicine. AB seventeen ninety eight ensures that future is one of trust, access, and protection, not fear. With that, I thank you and respectfully ask for a high vote.
Redner 2
Item number two, a b seventeen ninety eight by assembly member Wilson. The motion is due passed to appropriations committee by Arcahan. Aye. Arcahan. Aye.
Masito. Brian. DeMio. Hoover. Erwin.
Aye. Erwin. Aye. Luenthal. Aye.
Mckinner. Aye. McKinnon. Aye. Ortega.
Aye. Ortega. Aye. Patterson. No.
Patterson. No. Pelerin. Petrie Norris. Ward?
Wicks? Aye. Wicks, aye. Wilson? Aye.
Wilson, aye.
Redner 1
Thank you so much. That bill has seven votes. It will stay on call. And that with that, we're gonna take up the consent calendar. Do we have a motion on the consent calendar?
Motion and a second.
Redner 2
Aye. Baruchan, aye. Masito, Brian, De Mayo, Hoover, Irwin. Irwin. Irwin, aye.
Lowenthal?
Redner 2
Lowenthal, aye. McKinnar? Aye. McKinnar, aye. Ortega?
Aye. Ortega, aye. Patterson?
Redner 2
Patterson, aye. Pellerin, Petrinoras, Ward, Wicks? Aye. Wicks, aye. Wilson, aye.
Redner 1
That has seven. We'll leave it on call. Thank you, mister Wallace, for helping us, accommodate, assembly member Wilson. I appreciate your patience.
Redner 1
your witnesses. And I think we may need to move our interpreters as well so that everyone has access. Wanna make sure that our interpreters were in the right place, and they are. With that, when you're ready, mister Wallace.
Redner 31
Good afternoon, madam chair and committee members. I have before you today assembly bill twenty one ninety, which takes an important step towards improving website accessibility in California. First, just wanna thank the committee for its hard work on this bill and for the thoughtful analysis. We appreciate the effort that's gone into refining it and accept the committee's proposed amendments. The challenge before us is clear.
Today, approximately 96% of major websites still contain accessibility barriers. That means nearly one in four California adults living with disabilities face real obstacles when trying to access essential online services like banking, health care, and employment opportunities. AB twenty one ninety offers a thoughtful and balanced path forward. It establishes clear accessibility standards based on widely recognized WCAG guidelines, encourages businesses to take proactive steps to address barriers, and provides protection for those acting in good faith. At the same time, it ensures accountability for technology providers and aims to reduce unnecessary and costly litigation.
Redner 14
We have engaged extensively with stakeholders across the business and technology sectors as well as disability rights community and have provided updated language that we believe addresses many of the concerns that were raised. We're continuing that dialogue and look forward to their feedback as we work to further strengthen the bill. I think it's a practical and long overdue framework. It reflects California's long standing leadership in advancing disability rights while supporting responsible businesses and ensuring broader access in an increasingly digitally reliant world. Here with me to testify in support are Mary Anne Haas, the first blind delegate to attend the California Republican Party Convention, and Tim Elder, elected president of the National Federation of the Blind California.
Redner 15
good afternoon, everybody. I'm Mary Anne Haas. I was born blind, and I use adaptive technology, screen reading software, and I had several problems with accessibility. Luckily, I have people that will help me if I need help with buying something. But we know that it is more and more that stores are closing.
Redner 33
And even if stores are open, for a lot of blind people, it's difficult for them to find and get those to those stores to buy stuff. So they have to buy things online. Equally important is it for people who live in rural areas that are blind and that may not have any sighted companions like I do. So this is why I really would appreciate a yes vote on this bill.
Redner 9
And, hello. My name is Tim Elder. I'm the president. I'm the elected president of the National Federation of the Blind of California, the largest organization of and for blind people here in the state of California. I represent hundreds of thousands of blind, low vision, and deaf blind individuals.
And by my day job, I'm an attorney and litigator, and helped, draft some of the language, in the bill today. So I really just wanna highlight three points for you, as you consider this very important civil rights and ADA compromise bill. The current law is not currently sufficient to promote compliance. I hear from many of our blind members, like Mary Anne and others, that they're having problems with the Internet. Anything from booking an appointment to get a dog grooming to picking up coffee to go, it increasingly is a digital issue.
I personally experienced many websites and even some barriers, including last night just trying to book the Capital Corridor train down here. We don't wanna file lawsuits every time we encounter a barrier. It would make us all professional litigants, which I don't recommend. My second point is if we leave the status quo in place, we're going to see that. We're going to see the continued use of these serial plaintiffs resorting to unethical lawyers who are often, extorting, monetary settlements that don't have any remediation within these settlement agreements.
Instead, we are proposing this solution, which would promote proactive compliance and focus on actual fixes. The third point, we really need to go upstream because of the nature of the way that, technology has changed. The coffee shop, the barber shop, they're not building their own websites. They're licensing templates and outsourcing platforms, from Internet resource providers. And often, those frontline ADA businesses that are getting hit with some of these lawsuits, even if they wanted to fix their coffee shop website, they can't because it's it's under the control of the platform, resource provider.
Redner 11
We don't think that's right. We think the purse the entity that holds, responsibility for remediating and the ability to control the fixes should be the one who holds and shares some of that liability. My community vigorously supports a b twenty one ninety. It's a reasonable strategy to help modernize California's civil rights protections while providing a carrot to businesses that want to comply and increase their customer base. So, I appreciate that some in the business community really support this bill and that others have some concerns that I'm committed to work, with them and anyone, on additional language, as we continue to make this, a a success story and follow-up in the true bipartisan nature of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Redner 1
Thank you so much. Anybody else here in support of this bill? Name, organization, and position.
Redner 34
Good morning. Tramelle Watson with Disability Rights California in Thank strong you.
Redner 1
Thank you. Seeing no additional witnesses in support, do we have opposition on this bill? Come on up. There's two chairs.
Redner 35
Good afternoon, madam chair and members. Thank you so much. Annalie Augustine here on behalf of the Civil Justice Association of California. We first would like to thank the author and his staff and witnesses and stakeholders involved. We sincerely do appreciate multiple meetings we've had on the topic, and they have offered amendments that we are reviewing in detail to be as thoughtful as we can about this process, given that this is such a critical issue.
We are respectfully opposed unless amended to AB 2,190. We appreciate the goal of improving website accessibility and support clear and workable standards that help businesses address barriers and avoid shakedown lawsuits in this space. As drafted, we see AB 2,190 as risking increasing litigation without providing the meaningful or achievable compliance pathways. We have four main areas of concerns that we are committed to continue working through with the author and stakeholders. First, we wanna make sure that the affirmative defenses offered are workable and feasible for businesses.
We also wanna make sure there's an appropriate timeline for remediation. We're gathering feedback, and given the technical complexities involved with these compliance issues, we wanna make sure that whatever is in statute is workable for the businesses to make sure that they can achieve the same accessibility goals. We also wanna in address pass through liability for resource service providers who might not have control about the web content. And then also, are concerned about the new pathway for intentional discrimination to be added if a business does not remediate within forty five days. Again, very much appreciate the author and stakeholders here, and we are very committed to working through these issues.
Thank you.
Redner 1
Thank you. Anybody else here in opposition to this bill? Name, position, organization, please.
Redner 37
Good afternoon, chair members. Reiterating Jose Wetecna reiterating all the concerns from CJAC.
Redner 37
Hello. Jacob Brent with the California Retailers Association. Respectful opposition.
Redner 4
This got ran over. Laura Bennett, behalf of California, chamber of commerce, oppose unless amended.
Redner 1
Thank you. Seeing no additional opposition in the room, we will bring it at back up to the members.
Redner 19
Just I'll just I know we're trying to reach, but I one quick question. How how I guess I don't understand. How is there more liability with this bill when it offers a cure than there is with the current situation where you have where we see a lot of predatory lawsuits? So what what is it that makes this bill how does this worsen the situation?
Redner 5
Sorry. Thank you, Asami Woman. Great question. I would offer one example of public disclosure of issues that businesses for for the first pathway right now for affirmative defenses, a business would have to disclose the accessibility issue that they find. And so publicly offering an issue that they are working on that could give more information to attorneys that are trying to then go after businesses.
Redner 9
Yeah. Yeah. So I would say that the first affirmative defense category, which involves the publication of a DAR, a disability access report, is sort of like a notice. We are fixing these things. It's analog to the physical construction that we currently have under California physical access requirements, where if the business posts a notice while they're working on something, they get some period of immunity while they're in good faith fixing those things that they've identified in their notice.
This is the equivalent of that in the digital space. I don't think it would increase. I also think that it was an alternative to affirmative defense option, so no one has to no one has to publish it to get the affirmative defense. They could opt for the the subsection b pathway where they take a bunch of things and are not publishing the DARs, are getting the affirmative events through a different set of requirements. So I don't think it would, in fact, increase.
The DAR report provision was really meant for small businesses that are operating primarily in California where they're not going to be as concerned. Right? Because they're getting immunity if they publish that notice. So in my opinion, it doesn't increase litigation.
Redner 19
And I I really do like the goals of this bill. I will be supporting it, but I I hope you continue to work with the opposition and make sure that this does not increase liability as as they have expressed concern about.
Redner 1
Thank you, Assembly Member. Anybody else? Seeing no further questions or comments, I really want to thank you, Assembly Member, for wading into what is a hard area of legislation, and I think doing so with the disability rights community at the front and center, which is so critical to getting this right. And none of us it was I loved I'm not gonna remember your name, I'll call you counselor. Counselor, loved what you said about courts aren't great for anybody.
I absolutely agree. I actually said that earlier in judiciary. Even the lawyers don't wanna be there. So, I think, you know, everybody wants there just to be access. And so if that's what we achieve through this bill without costly litigation on small business, but giving the disability community what they need, which I think, Mary Anne, you did such an eloquent job of articulating, our lives are so dependent on online access right now.
And so this needs to be meaningful, because if you can't read a website for whatever reason, we have to fix that,
Redner 1
giving businesses the opportunity to do exactly that. And I think modeling this after physical laws that have been in place for a long time is a really elegant way to do it. So with that, I'm happy to support it today. Would you like
Redner 2
Item number one, AB 2,190 by assembly member Wallace. The motion is due pass as amended to appropriations committee. Baruchan.
Redner 2
Masito. Aye. Brian. DeMio. Hoover.
Aye. Hoover. Aye. Erwin. Aye.
Erwin. Aye. Lowenthal. Lowenthal. Aye.
McKinnar. Aye. McKinnar aye. Ortega? Pat Patterson?
Aye. Patterson? Aye. Pellerin? Aye.
Pellerin? Petrie Norris? Ward? Wicks?
Redner 1
That bill has nine votes. It's outfall. We'll leave it open for absent members. Assembly Member Koreo, you've been waiting patiently. Come on up.
And let's give everyone a minute to clear, Can if you don't someone give? When you're ready, Assembly Member.
Redner 42
Thank you. Good afternoon, madam chair and members. Thank you for allowing me to present assembly bill twenty seven twenty one. Before I begin, I want to thank the chair and her staff for working with my office and proposing amendments, which I'm accepting. And these amendments brought focus and clarity to the bill.
Thank you. Members, I'm here today to present assembly bill twenty seven twenty one, a measured common sense bill sponsored by United Local eleven that simply directs hotels to disclose via public notice on-site, visible to hospitality workers and guests in the reservations they know of or should be aware of with US Customs and Border Protection and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Members, I also want to emphasize this is a Latino caucus priority bill. Public notice by hotels visible to hospitality workers and guests shall remain prominently displayed for the duration of the reservation with a notice clearly identifying the agency with the reservation and the length of the reservation. This bill does not ask hotels to take sides.
It asks for transparency. Clear, neutral disclosure protects hospitality workers and guests without recurring businesses to endorse or oppose any public or any policy or agency. We did not put hotels in the middle of politics. The actions of the federal government did that to all of us when they started targeting our workforce and misusing hotels as facilities in violations of US oversight laws. We listen constructively to a point raised that an earlier draft of the bill applied too broadly by targeting all federal agencies.
With much appreciated and valuable assistance from the chair and staff, we took amendments to ensure the bill brings transparency to the federal agencies we're rightly concerned by rather than all federal agencies. The core concern is the presence of federal operations that may impact the workplace environment. A uniform standard gives workers and guests awareness when those agencies are on the premises. Hotels are already navigating complex regulatory environments every day. This is a straightforward workplace notice requirement similar to existing labor postings, not a mandate to engage in political disputes.
We're not burdening hotels by asking them to print and post a visible notice. We're not specifying the front location or signage of the notice. We're asking them to give a heads up to the people that keep their businesses profitable. California has long standing role in setting balanced work focused standards. This bill is narrowly focused on transparency and safety, not targeting individuals or viewpoints and should be understood in that context.
The bill's intent is not to identify individuals, but to inform workers about operate conditions that may affect their safety. Thoughtful rollout can ensure disclosures remain general and identify only the agency without compromising anyone's security. This bill does not regulate the actions of the federal government or create long term burdens even if federal policy changes. The notice outlines is minimal and consistent with existing policy and obligations. For these reasons and more, I respectfully ask for your vote on a b twenty seven twenty one.
I have with me today Juan Munoz with Unite Here Local eleven to testify and insights as to why this bill is needed and what problem it is solving for.
Redner 1
Just just to clarify, I heard you accept the amendments, but staff did not. Did you accept the amendments?
Redner 8
Great. Thank you so much, assembly member. Good afternoon, chair Bauer Cahan, vice chair Massedo, and members of the committee. My name is Juan Munoz, and I'm here on behalf of Unite Here Local eleven, proud sponsor of AB twenty seven twenty one, representing over 32,000 hospitality workers. Our members are largely women, immigrants, and people of color, and they are the backbone of California's hospitality industry.
AB twenty seven twenty one is a simple common sense consumer protection bill that aligns existing law requiring businesses to disclose information to consumers. It does not regulate federal law enforcement. It does not regulate consumers. It regulates hotel activity by establishing a uniform disclosure requirement on contracts for two specific federal agencies. Today, when hotels enter into arrangements with federal law enforcement, workers and guests are left in the dark.
Redner 48
Our members have raised serious concerns about the presence of federal agents in hotels, including safety risks. In some cases, conditions are serious enough that workers must be allowed to refuse unsafe work. Hotel workers did not sign up to work in environments with armed agents or situations that can escalate quickly. They deserve to know the conditions of their workplace before they walk in, and neither did the public. Families on vacation and people traveling for work did not sign up to stay somewhere with an undisclosed federal law enforcement presence.
Redner 8
Hotels already notify guests when the pool is closed or a restaurant is unavailable. It is only common sense that people should also be informed when there is a federal law enforcement presence on-site. Without transparency, communities are left trying to figure out what is happening in real time, leading to confusion and fear. Clear, neutral disclosure ensures everyone has the same basic information. Most hotel workers in California are not unionized.
Many are hired through temporary staffing agencies with fewer protections and less information. They are often the most vulnerable and the least informed. People should not have to walk into a hotel in the dark about what is happening inside. We respectfully ask for your I vote.
Redner 1
Thank you. Anyone else here in support of this bill, name, organization, and position, please?
Redner 38
Hello, madam chair and members of the committee. Yvonne Fernandez with the California Labor Fed in support.
Redner 1
Thank you. Seeing no additional witnesses in support, do we have a witness here in witness or witnesses here in opposition? Come on up. When you're ready.
Redner 43
Good afternoon, madam chair. Armand Feliciano on behalf of the California Hotel Lodging Association. CHLA understands the intent and the rationale for AB twenty seven twenty one. However, CHLA is opposed, respectfully opposed to the bill for the following reasons. Number one, CHLA believes that this bill contradicts the right to privacy.
Even if the bill does not state that the hotel must disclose personal information of their guests, Complying with AB twenty seven twenty one is likely to violate one's right to privacy under the California constitution. Second, the hotel operator knows or should know language remains problematic. How would the hotels know if a guest is a federal employee without violating their privacy rights? Hotel staff would be forced to ask about occupation before a guest can reserve or check-in into a room. And if AB twenty seven twenty one passes, federal employees subject to these are likely to conceal their information.
Third, CHLA sees a lot of liability on this bill. So if the if the hotel fails to comply, the AG, the DAs, and city attorneys can bring actions against the hotel. Second, if the hotel does comply, and provides the notice and a mass demonstration takes place, some of them are peaceful, some are not, and hotel guests gets injured, staff, properties are damaged, they're likely to be sued. And then you still have the California constitution right to privacy, which is a lot broader than any protection there is today. Also, a b twenty seven twenty one, as proposed to be amended, it is a slippery slope.
Redner 13
Right? Once you head down the road of publicly disclosing hotel guests, this bill sets a precedent that other groups can be singled out as well. Nobody wants that. To close a b twenty seven twenty one as amended is unlikely to resolve the issues it is attempting to address and could lead to many unintended consequences. So for these reasons, we respectfully urge your no vote.
Redner 1
Thank you so much. Anyone else here in opposition to this bill name, organization, and position?
Redner 1
Thank you. Seeing no additional witnesses in opposition, we'll bring you back up to the dais. So member Erwin.
Redner 19
Alright. I guess we're starting at this end again. I I completely agree with the the goal of of this bill, which is to warn employees that that might have concerns about ICE and so I understand that. I I just don't understand how it will work. How does it if reservations are made a week ahead of time, are you asking people if if it's if they are with ICE?
If if guests are coming in, are you asking if they're with ICE? I'm I'm I'm just concerned about some of the privacy issues, and also will will ICE be disclosing? How
Redner 42
is second practice? I don't think the the requirement is to ask who the guest is or who they are with. I think it's just based on what we've seen on the streets. When anybody can make a reservation whether online or via a phone call. Right?
But when you see them, the agents, the way that we see them on the streets and what we see on television and everywhere, I think that that's when the hotels would be required to post a notice, just a single piece of paper notifying guests and their employees that there is presence of these federal agents specific to ICE and customs so that they know that they have these guests staying there so that they know how to react.
Redner 19
So if so if so it's not, oh, somebody in plainclothes is coming in. Are you with ICE? It's more that you see the presence of ICE as they're checking in or if they're on the streets
Redner 42
and they wear masks. That's see them wearing a mask, that's what they're doing. Right?
Redner 19
But so it's so it's more that you that that you see the presence as opposed to trying to discern when somebody is trying to make a reservation whether they are with ICE or not.
Redner 1
And if I may just clarify something the opposition said. So from a legal perspective, the known or should have known standard, which is one that is a well established legal concept, has never required the affirmative obligation to seek information. I've never seen that. I don't believe the court would ever interpret it that way to the point of the assembly member. It's merely if you have knowledge or if it's so obvious that you can impute knowledge.
Redner 19
Alright. I I I think I had a misunderstanding about whether you had to to check all the the guests whether or not they were with these agencies.
Redner 44
Just to follow-up on that. So, you know, I guess where I'm struggling is I mean, the amendments obviously say should have known. So when should, the hotel have known? Right? And who's making these decisions?
So for example, in a lot of cases, you know, you may have a young employee, right, at the front desk who is are they gonna be put in a position where they're trying to make a determination that this person is federal law enforcement? Is this simply going to change the practice of federal law enforcement to make their reservations sort of, you know, in in a more secretive way so as not to be detected? I guess I'm trying to see what the the full scale result of this policy is actually gonna be.
Redner 42
Well, I would prefer that they change the way they operate because, again, with what we've seen, it's just they don't even care if it's a citizen that they're going after. But going specifically to the bill, to your question, if it's a young person at the desk, they would I would imagine that management would have to provide them with guidance on what they're supposed to do when these events happen. And, again, if they're trying to be sneaky, they're gonna be checking in in the middle of the night. You will be seeing them being prepared to do their operations, you know, whenever they're ready to do that. And it is clear what they look like and what they will be wearing as they deploy.
So that's when they should be posting that notice. Okay.
Redner 8
I was just gonna say one additional common thing is is when the hotel enters into contracts for a room block of of rooms. So
Redner 52
be another That would be a way you could detect something. I think just for the opposition, you know, my question is, is there a concern that this is gonna increase liability in term you know, for for hotels and businesses? And then the second question would be, you know, hotels are very, I would say, careful about protecting the privacy of those that are staying in their establishments. Is this sort of breaking that precedent sort of a a legal requirement to break that precedent?
Redner 43
I I think overall, it just puts the hotel in the middle. Right? This is there it's a place for rest and real relaxation. And this notice, right, if mass demonstrations happen and it's not peaceful, people get hurt. It's a lot of liability that they're looking at.
They're likely gonna get sued. Right? I got hurt in your hotel because you posted this notice, and now they came and then we got hurt, nobody wants that.
Redner 44
Yeah. I I do, I do remain concerned about also the safety of the officers, right, and the law enforcement, professionals as well. And then, you know, there's also, work that is done by these federal agencies that are not that is not enforcement related, that is not immigration enforcement related. Right? So whether they're participating in some other type of enforcement on human trafficking or something like that, this is obviously going to be a huge problem to notify the public, you know, that they are there.
So I think for those reasons, I won't be able to support the bill today, but, thank you for the conversation.
Redner 1
Thank you, madam. Oh, okay. Mister Patterson. I was trying to call him out of stock here.
Redner 5
Thanks. Well, mister Hoover took the last line, so of what I was gonna say, so I'll take take quick. But, yeah, I mean, I have a whole range of concerns. You know, obviously, I have a lot of respect for you, and I and I know what you're trying to do, but, you know, ICE and and customs and border patrol do a lot more than just immigration enforcement, including, you know, human trafficking, smuggling of children, you know, things like that. And so so I'd hate to, you know, for for reasons that I think you're doing this, Phil, you know, tie up those things.
I don't wanna tie any of it up, but even if just what you're trying to do gets accomplished, all those other things are gonna be impacted that I think are important mechanisms of those agencies. And feel free to respond if you want, but that was just sort of my
Redner 42
take on say that, what you bring up is legitimate work that these agencies do, but, again, that's not what we've seen. I'm all for following the law, doing their job the way that it's supposed to be done, not just throwing out people into an unmasked ban, a marked ban, because that's just what we are seeing. I do respect the work that they are supposed to be doing, but, again, there is just no way to tell when this administration will follow the law. And that's my my intention with this to protect our communities.
Redner 18
Thank you, madam chair. And I just really wanna kinda separate things for just a second and talk specifically about the hotels. Hotels don't want to be political. They're in the hospitality business. So I understand the goal you're trying to achieve, but I think we have to to think about the hotels specifically.
And let's talk about the patrons of those hotels that aren't ICE agents. You know, I'm let's just say I'm a mom on a road trip with my kids. I'm at a hotel. I get there. I made a reservation on my phone really quickly, you know.
Redner 38
So, you know, I'm not gonna get my money back for that hotel because I see that there's agents there that I'm worried for the safety of my kids. And then it just, in general, I think it's it's just going so far past the point of privacy that when we check into hotels as legislators, we want to have the kind of privacy that we can have a safe space for the night that we can disagree with the work that they're doing. But I do think it's very important to note, especially with the upcoming big events that we have in the state of California, that these agents might be here in the capacity, like my colleague talked about, with sex trafficking, drug trafficking, and all kinds of things, and there is coordination with federal agents on that. So I think there's a lot of work that needs to be done to get to what you're trying to do, which is to prevent there being violent situations or unsafe situations. But I think this bill actually could create more unsafe situations Because with that post, what about people that don't have the choice?
Redner 18
They have to stay there for the night. If there's protests outside or things like that, I think it's just putting a spotlight on an issue that out in the public, people have absolute First Amendment right to express their disdain for what they're doing. I don't believe hotels are the platform to do that and then to expose them to this type of risk. And then to your what I'm understanding is, essentially, if I'm an ICE agent and I check-in in plainclothes and you don't post that, but then I leave the hotel the next day, you know, in full gear, there's a gray area there. So I guess unless you spell out in the bill that they show up or they have the reservation ahead of time like you mentioned, But, you know, I travel all the time and I show up in sweatpants, doesn't mean that that's how I'm gonna, you know, I'm there or maybe in professional capacity.
So I can I totally sympathize with what you're trying to do to protect a community of people that you're very passionate about? And I I I know that about you, I think that's great. I just think we need to separate the two and focus on the issue that we're putting hotels in, that they did not ask to be a part of this fight. That's a fight that we need to fight here in the legislature. They need to fight in the federal administration, but I don't think this the hotels are the platform to do it to protect our communities and to protect the people that just wanna have a safe night's rest at a hotel.
So I won't be able to support today, and I do ask that you engage with the hotels to try to figure out something that you would be comfortable with as would they. So thank you.
Redner 24
Okay. I'm stepping in while the chair is to to to go to another committee for a moment. And, typically, the chair would speak last, but I was about to speak in my capacity as a member of this committee. So I'd like to speak very briefly if that's okay. I just wanna say, to the Latino caucus, to you, mister Carrillo, to the members of Unite Here that you should feel heard.
Redner 31
This is a moment in history that is deserved. California and its citizens overwhelmingly has felt under siege. The the the good men and women that are working in these hotels, environments, and throughout the state that are powering the economy here in the state of California have felt under siege. Their families have felt under siege. We have, as a state, had to litigate against the federal government because of the actions that have been taken by ICE, and there is a complete and total lack of trust that exists between the state and the federal government on those things within communities, certainly in the community that I live in.
Redner 24
And I come from the hospitality industry, by the way. I, am a restaurateur, as most of you know, and, you know, absolutely, I'm supportive of this. And I think that, all of us should be listening to our colleagues in the Latino caucus that have made this a priority because this is, causing an immense amount of consternation for the community, and we should all be concerned about those things. I'm very proud to be supporting the bill, and I'd like to be at it as a coauthor.
Redner 42
Thank you, assembly member. Thank you for those kind words. And and, again, it's just, that I feel my obligation given my personal history, where I come from, and what we are seeing across the state and across the nation, really, where this federal administration just does not even care if you're a US citizen. It's just based on the color, that I have, my accent, and I feel like it is my obligation again to protect our immigrant communities. And for that reason, I respectfully ask for an I vote.
Redner 24
Thank you. I think there are still a few more comments. I'm sorry. Assemblymember Ward?
Redner 51
I'm gonna say that, horrible classic line. I wasn't intending to speak, but, I was certainly moved, by, you know, kind of this, you know, very disconnected, debate that was happening over here to my, my my immediate left. You're right. And I think what's lost is that what we know is happening today out in community is a lawlessness and a unaccountability, and a beyond imposition, but a real infringement on individual civil liberties that is pretty consistent in the, reporting and and display that we're seeing, not just here in California but across our country. And if the issue is, well, I'm sympathetic, but, you know, I think that I wanna see is, like, somebody be able to come here and, you know, just have a decent night stay and feel secure, I can imagine when individuals who are lawful citizens are getting tackled in airports, are getting harassed outside of a hotel, outside of their school, and we're seeing this consistency of behavior that is leading any individual who doesn't look like me to fear that they are gonna be inappropriately targeted.
Redner 45
Your bill is one that is providing for safety for community. Because if you are aware that there are individuals who are acting lawlessly, are not accountable, also staying in that presence, who is I think is of reasonable concern that you're staying the night there with your kids and you wanna go downstairs for the free breakfast and you're gonna get tackled. Right? So you need to know that somebody is there in a place that you need a safe and secure night's rest, that there is the potential of a threat here for you to be able to make that choice. And because that could be lost on others, that's for them to reconcile, but it's not lost on me.
And for that reason, I strongly support your bill here today.
Redner 32
Thank you, mister chair. And I apologize that I I missed part of the bill presentation. I was presenting a bill at another committee. But I believe the opposition or the opposition has raised concerns about the fact that providing this kind of notification could actually have the unintended consequence of sabotaging human trafficking investigations and other covert operations. Have you thought about that?
And how how do
Redner 42
Goes way beyond just what we're seeing here in the state. I mean, we have a president that is telling nations that are qualified for the World Cup not to come and celebrate. I mean, that is coming from our federal government. We have the president targeting some nations that rightfully qualify to participate in this worldwide celebration, is the World Cup, and he's telling, don't come because we're going to arrest you. I think that that's what we're facing, which is much more concerning in my view.
Redner 7
The consequences that are brought up by the opposition, I I I fully understand. I mean, there's losses happen all the time. But what we are seeing happening is just who is really going to protect us? Well, that's what I'm trying to do, protect our communities, our workforce for being able to do their job in a safe manner and for guests to be able to know that there is going if there is gonna be agents there, there will be some activities that are not gonna be safe. The hospitals, the the hotels, they understand the concern about the liability, but what about these things that are happening on the streets?
Redner 42
Who is responsible for that? Our federal government is not doing anything. What I'm trying to do simply is protect the workers and our communities from being at a place where they can enjoy a stay.
Redner 20
Hi. You know, to answer that question a little bit more in terms of the the human trafficking piece, none of nothing in this bill prevents the hotel industry from continuing to do their work. All this bill does is ask for notification so that employees who go to work and guests know what they're they're up against and know what to do. That's all it is, is notification. It's the least that we can do, and I'm actually quite surprised that we don't have more businesses supporting this because the economic havoc that's happening in our communities is not just to the people but to these businesses, when, you know, our community is afraid to go to leave their homes, let alone go to work if ICE agents are being held in that hotel.
Redner 21
So it's simply a notification. We're asking that these corporations, hotels just notify those who are staying and those who are working so that they can make a plan for themselves. It shouldn't be that difficult.
Redner 24
It isn't. I or any other comments from the dais? I wanna make sure that we're exhaustive. Okay. Now, assembly member, you may close, please.
Redner 42
Well, thank you again. I I I did my closing just before all the comments, and I appreciate the the support. And, again, all all what we're trying to do to let you know caucus is to protect our communities, protect our businesses, and I just respect last year. You,
Redner 24
mister member Carrillo. Is there a motion on on? It's been moved by assembly member Wickes, seconded by assembly member Pelerin. Madam secretary, please call the roll.
Redner 23
Item number 12AB2721 by assembly member Carrillo. The motion is due pass as amended to appropriations. Barakahan, Mosito, No. Brian DeMio. Hoover.
Redner 2
Hoover, no. Erwin? Aye. Erwin, aye. Lowenthal?
Aye. Lowenthal, aye. McKinnon, Ortega?
Redner 2
Petrie Norris not voting. Board? Aye. Ward, aye. Wicks?
Aye. Wicks, aye. Wilson?
Redner 45
Thank you for that quick motion and second. We'll be as brief as you like. Thank you, mister chair and members. I'm proud to present the, AB twenty twenty seven for, and I really appreciate staff's thoughtful engagement with the bill. This bill addresses a growing gap in our labor laws as artificial intelligence becomes more prevalent in the workplace.
Today, worker data is powering the AI economy, and employers are increasingly collecting detailed information about how workers perform their jobs through surveillance tools, software systems, and day to day workflows. That data is then being used to train AI systems, which could replicate, automate, or replace those same workers. In other words, workers are being asked often unknowingly to train their own replacements. And while California has been a national leader in protecting consumer data, we have not yet extended similar protections to workers in the workplace. This bill, a b twenty twenty seven, establishes clear and reasonable guardrails.
First, it limits the collection and use of worker data to what is strictly necessary to administer the employment relationship. Second, it prohibits employers from using worker data to train or deploy AI systems intended to replace workers. And third, it prevents the sale or sharing of worker data to third parties for the purposes of job automation. The bill also ensures that vendors are held to the same standard, companies providing workplace technologies cannot use worker data to train their own AI products or share that data with others to automate jobs. These protections are necessary because the impacts are already being felt across industries.
Workers in call centers, logistics, and tech are increasingly being asked to document their work in ways that are later used to automate their roles. And as history has shown, the impacts of technological displacement fall hardest on low income and marginalized workers. This bill is about fairness, dignity, and economic security. It does not ban artificial intelligence in the workplace. It simply ensures that innovation does not come at the expense of workers being used as a free resource to train the systems which replace them.
We also recognize concerns by stakeholders in the committee regarding implementation definition and scope, and we're pleased to adopt, author amendments to be able to address those issues. So we recommend, remain committed to being able to work with these stakeholders who have legitimate concerns to ensure that the proposal is both effective and workable. We've always here in California led the way on setting responsible standards for emergency technologies. AB twenty twenty seven continues that leadership by ensuring that AI that as AI advances, our workers are protected. With me today in support are Yvonne Fernandez with the California Labor Federation and Shane Gusson on behalf of the California Teamsters Public Affairs Council.
Redner 38
Hello, mister chair and members of the committee. Yvonne Fernandez with the California Federation of Labor Unions, a proud cosponsor of AB twenty twenty seven, an integral part of the Labor Fed's package to create human centered guardrails around the use of AI. Every day, there's an article published about the looming threat of AI induced job loss. These articles often include anecdotes from big tech executives acknowledging this very fact. The CEO of Anthropic has previously predicted that unemployment can spike up to 20% in the next five years, and just recently, the head of Microsoft's AI division said in an interview that white collar work, for the most part, could be automated in the next two years.
Whether these anecdotes are mentioned for the sake of creating a sense of inevitability, the goal of widespread automation is clear. But what's conveniently left out of these talking points is the fact that these tools still rely on workers and relies on their information. As the assembly member mentioned, data is gold in the AI economy because of how necessary it is to train and develop these AI systems. And as we all know, these systems are only as useful as the data that they're trained on. So if the goal is to quickly automate for a corporate profit, data from the very workers they are trying to replace is extremely valuable.
Redner 22
And we believe that workers should not be forced to train their AI replacements. For example, call center workers have dealt with forced AI integration for years. By listening in on countless worker conversations, AI agents are now able to draft scripts and even answer calls. I'm sure many of the members of this committee have already interacted with an AI agent over the phone. Beyond call centers, reports have recently surfaced where academic editors were forced to train and edit the work of assistant editors only to find out they were actually training an AI system capable of fulfilling the role of the academic editor themselves, leading to a reduction in pay.
Redner 38
As these systems continue to learn from workers, everyday Californians grow increasingly vulnerable to deskilling and replacement. With nearly every job in the knowledge industry being impacted by AI, workers have no escape or protection. And with emerging robotics, thousands of jobs could be at risk. AB twenty twenty seven establishes nation leading protections, and for these reasons, I respectfully air dry vote. Thank you.
Redner 39
of the committee, Shane Gusman, on behalf of Teamsters California, proud cosponsor of this bill. Also, on behalf of the Amalgamated Transit Union, the Machinist Union, the Utility Workers Union of America, the engineers and scientists of California, and Unite Here, all in strong support of this measure. Workers need the pro the provisions in this bill. In our view, a worker doesn't leave their right to privacy at the door when they come to work. We believe that the provisions of this bill reasonably protect those rights.
Redner 47
Also, it's incredibly exploitive to use worker data to train their AI replace replacements. At at the very least, when they're training real life replacements, they get paid to do it. And so so this is exploitive on so many levels. And it also sort of compounds the negative impacts that we already find in the workplace as AI is continuing to grow as a workplace tool. We have impacts on safety, productivity, and employee morale.
So we really need guardrails like this, and and we strongly urge your I vote on this bill.
Redner 24
Okay. Thank you, mister Gusman. Are there any other folks here to speak in favor of this bill? Name, organization, and position.
Redner 48
Navneet Puryear on behalf of the California School Employees Association in support.
Redner 16
Sherida Moore with Hernan Strategy Group on behalf of Communication Workers of America, District nine in support.
Redner 24
It's now time for opposition witnesses. Please come forward. I think we may need to slide the microphones down or one of those microphones down, mister Gusman. Thank you for being here. You each have two minutes.
Redner 49
Thank you. Good afternoon. I am Andrea Lynch on behalf of the California Chamber of Commerce in respectful opposition to a b twenty twenty seven. We appreciate the author's willingness to work with us on amendments. We also appreciate how the analysis acknowledges that the line between AI that replaces worker and AI that assists worker is not always clear.
We think that's exactly the right framing, and Bill's prohibition is too broad to make this distinction. First, the bill defines personal information by incorporating the CCPA's definition, a framework designed for consumers, not the employment relationship. This definition is extraordinarily broad, capturing everything from productivity metrics to shift schedules. In practice, virtually all data generated through the course of employment co employment qualifies. Our members have shared shared concrete examples of what this would mean.
Employers could not use injury and ergonomic data to build safety tools, could not use workflow, workflow data to improve scheduling or benefits delivery, and could not develop internal AI tools that help employees work more effectively and safely. Second, this bill's prohibition on using worker data to train AI to replicate or automate a worker's job provides no framework for distinguishing between AI designated to eliminate positions and AI that simply improves how work gets done. The analysis acknowledges this tension, noting that automation and replication can genuinely benefit workers by allowing them to focus on more meaningful aspects of their job. A scheduling tool that learns from workforce data or a safety system trained on injury reports could both be characterized as replicating a job function as written. Third, the bill does not clearly exempt AI models already trained on worker data.
Redner 33
This creates a retroactivity problem that may be impossible to audit or remediate. Many vendors do not disclose the full composition of their training datasets, making compliance verification impractical. Without a clear safe harbor for tools already in use, employers face substantial and unpredictable litigation exposure if passed. For these and other reasons, we respectfully oppose a b twenty twenty seven. Thank you.
Redner 30
afternoon, chair and members. I'm Eric Lohrey speaking on behalf of the California State Association of Counties in respectful opposition. First, we understand the concerns that motivated the author and sponsor. However, remain concerned this bill could limit or outright prohibit the use of tools already used by public agencies to improve delivery of services, mitigate disaster risk, strengthen the social safety net, and empower the public workforce to grow, develop, and replace rote tasks with more meaningful work. While we appreciate the efforts by the author and sponsor to narrow the bill, we do not believe the amendments address our core concerns.
As amended, the bill could continue its severe restrictions for the use of for the use and training of AI systems and raise even more complicated interpretation questions, including how should public agencies navigate a law that was drafted that was drafted for private sector commercial interactions? How should any employer interpret a privacy law through the lens of the workplace, effectively defining employees as consumers? How do the definitions of personal information specifically apply to this bill? For example, the definition of PI includes characteristics of protected classifications. How could a public agency train an AI system to root out implicit bias if it can't use characteristics of protected classifications?
Redner 49
Public agencies have adopted AI to supplement the public workforce, not replace it. Some use AI systems to generate automatic outreach to employees for overtime if there's a shift vacancy. This tool, would be prohibited by the bill as it's trained with worker PI and replicates existing work. Public agencies also use AI to accelerate permitting, streamline public benefit enrollment, and improve accuracy of water use detection, to name just a few. We believe in the in the responsible, transparent, and ethical use of artificial intelligence.
Redner 30
We believe in protecting workers from mass displacement. We believe it's critical to protect the privacy of the public we serve and public employees. We have zero interest in replacing public sector employees with machines. We do believe in using new technology to better serve residents of California and improve conditions for the public workforce. AB twenty twenty seven would go too far in limiting these technologies, and for that reason, I respectfully ask for Inova.
Thank you.
Redner 24
Thank you so much. Are there members of the public that are here to testify in opposition or voice their opposition to the bill? Name, organization, and position, please.
Redner 12
Good afternoon. Yareli Mangayon with Political Solutions on behalf of the Business Software Alliance in opposition.
Redner 35
Annalie Augustine with the Civil Justice Association of California, respectfully opposed. Thank you.
Redner 1
Gene Hurst here today on behalf of the urban counties of California, the rural county representatives of California, and the California Special Districts Association, all in opposition.
Redner 37
Good afternoon. Jacob Brent with the California Retailers Association in respectful opposition.
Redner 29
Good afternoon. Dorothy Johnson with the Association of California School Administrators, respectfully opposed.
Redner 36
Good afternoon, chair members. Jose Torres with TECNA in respect of opposition. Good
Redner 13
afternoon. Melissa Kosicek with Western Growers. We align our comments with those provided by the lead testimony in opposition in opposition. Thank you.
Redner 29
Hi. Margaret Gladstein here on behalf of the California Hospital Association. Respectful opposition.
Redner 24
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Let's bring back to the dais.
Comments, concerns, assembly member Erwin?
Redner 19
You know, I I I, of course, understand the goal. Nobody wants to be using their data to train their replacement. But I one of the things that was brought up by the opposition, and you and I have spoken about before, but I'd like you to address is how do you differentiate between a basically, that is being used to train your replacement and data that's being used for a tool that is going to make you more effective at your job. And I'm, like, specifically thinking about maybe a surgeon and diagnostic tools that or, you know, using I think it's the da Vinci, using that data to refine how you do surgery. So how how do you see how do you see that line?
Redner 45
So the short answer is no. And I think, you know, a more broad generalization of I think what we do wanna be able to see forward, and I think we all should agree, is that AI can be a useful tool to be able to supplement the engagement of especially high level professionals like that, but really any professional, any worker that is out there as well. If you have, say, a job that requires, you know, writing a lot of reports, that could help facilitate, you know, a lot of your job activity, a lot of those hours spent writing those reports so that you can maybe go on there and do other areas of your job duties as well that might be a little more interesting to you or be able to make some difference in the in in your work experience, but not necessarily replace your job to to to to to a degree. And I don't think anybody would wanna be able to see, especially as we know it today, an AI system fully replace that surgeon from performing a work. We would need to have that.
I I I think that we see improvements there when you have, you know, both the professional as well as, you know, that AI or other computer assistance there sort of working in tandem. I think I think, you know, working in tandem, you can have reductions in errors. So I think that is the goal there. I think to your question, how do we make sure that, you know and what defines a use of that information and how do you necessarily tie that to whether or not that was the connection or the the consequence, I guess, the the the impetus for somebody's job loss. I think that's gonna have to be something that's gonna be have to be vetted on a case by case basis to see whether or not the intention for the introduction of AI in a workplace then resulted in that individual's loss of employment.
Redner 19
So it is it's it's tricky. Think that's the way you're you're explaining. Like, how would you how would you enforce this? At what point do you really at what point do you enforce, okay, at this now we are using your data to train to automate your position.
Redner 45
Still and and let let me underscore as well too. And the reason why we decided to shift towards the definition of personal information within the CCPA is because it already excludes aggregate data information that is out there, information that is publicly available. Right? And so workers already, I think, to the opposition's point I'm sorry. Employers already know CCPA, as you know well, has been law for several years, Know how the interpretation of what that personal information is and whether or not that had occurred, and then does that link actually is that is that justify is it is are you able to justify that linkage between a subsequent employment action on your employment?
Okay.
Redner 24
comments, concerns from the dais? Okay. Seeing none, assembly member, would you wish to close?
Redner 45
Thank you. I wanna again thank, committee staff and members as well for a lot of dialogue that we have over the weekend. You know, we know this isn't just hypothetical. This is something that is increasingly happening on a regular basis. And in fact, just today, I would highlight that Reuters had an article that was documenting how a major company within our state, who I will not call out by name, but they are now tracking employee keystrokes and screen activity to train AI models, and it's underscoring that employers are already moving to be able to turn in everyday worker behavior into data that they can be able to use for automation.
This is a major company that's within the technology sector. Horribly and ironically, the development and the support and the innovation that we have right now are some of those employer the employees that are most at risk, and we actually see that with the job losses happening across the state. So as a model for where we hope California can be able to, set the conversation going across the country, we wanna make sure that this basic worker protection, is in place that is gonna make sure that people aren't unnecessarily training the replacements, that they're not seeing a massive shift in the labor market right now, and that we are focused on making sure that AI can collaboratively and and and positively be introduced into the workplace that's gonna respect both the workers' rights and also the innovation and the efficiencies and productivity that comes from AI integration. With that, I respectfully request your I vote.
Redner 24
Okay. There has been thank you so much, assembly member Ward. There's a motion by assembly member Wick, seconded by assembly member Pelerin. Madam secretary, please call the roll.
Redner 2
Item number 15, a b twenty twenty seven by assembly member Ward. The motion is due passed appropriations by Rocahan, Mussito, Brian, DeMio? No. DeMio, no. Hoover?
Nope. Hoover, no. Erwin? Aye. Erwin, aye.
Lowenthal?
Redner 2
Lowenthal, aye. McKinnar? Aye. McKinnar, aye. Ortega?
Aye. Ortega, aye. Patterson? Not voting. Patterson, not voting.
Pelerin, aye. Petrie Norris?
Redner 24
That is at seven two. We'll keep the roll open for absent members. We're gonna go to a b eighteen thirty seven by assembly member Mark Gonzales. Welcome, mister Gonzales. Welcome.
Welcome.
Redner 2
Thank you, mister chair and members. First, I would like to thank you and the chair and the committee and the staff for their collaboration on this bill as it's been ongoing. I will also be accepting the committee's amendments today to add a seven year sunset back into the bill with a two year prohibition on the last two years for any new program to start. Add additional privacy protections into the bill and additional parameters on how the reports on privacy impacts must be evaluated. With these amendments, AB eighteen thirty seven will extend the sunset on the authority for public transit agencies to use forward facing cameras to enforce parking violations in public transit only lanes.
Redner 51
The authority first came into place in 2021 for San Francisco and has been expanded into the rest of the state. We know this technology works and has helped address key issues of public transit efficiency and public safety by disincentivizing parking and stopping in transit lanes. In San Francisco, these cameras have cut transit delays by 20%. Agencies like LA Metro in my district have just started using these cameras and have been experiencing the same benefits. AB eighteen thirty seven also ensures that the extensive privacy protections laid out in the authority can't continue.
Video evidence of violations must be destroyed sixty days after a citation has been paid. Any video images don't contain evidence must be destroyed after fifteen days, and any video image can only be used by enforcing for enforcing these parking violations. If we let this authority expire, our transit lanes will be clogged back up, reducing transit efficiency and public safety. It is essential that our buses continue to move efficiently and safely throughout our cities, and AB eighteen thirty seven ensures that we can keep doing just that. This afternoon, primary witnesses in support of this bill is Matt Robinson, legislative advocate with California Transit Association, and Mark Vukovich, director of state policy with Streets For All.
Take it away.
Redner 37
Good after good afternoon, chair and committee. Mark Fruchsiewicz on behalf of Streets For All. Yeah. This bill is simple, especially after the amendments. This bill just extends the pilot program that's already been working since, 2010, and that was then expanded in 2021 to keep bus lanes and bus stops clear so that transit can actually function as intended.
Redner 6
Really, the only difference between a bus and just normal congestion is the lane that it's in in a lot of cities that have decided that can have a dedicated lane, And we need to ensure that bus sign is clear so that people can move efficiently in the dense urban places that utilize bus lanes and and buses to to operate. So this AV eighteen thirty seven addresses this with a proven targeted solution. This camera based enforcement program is consistent, scalable, and doesn't require pulling limited law enforcement resources away from higher priority needs, ensures that bus lanes are used for their intended purposes, which is just moving people efficiently. I also wanna mention as well that this is really critical for bus operators. The actual drivers is the other word for that.
Redner 37
Those people who are often very stressed out by people who intruding into their lanes or intruding in front of the buses where they feel like they have a a moral obligation to keep themselves and the people inside the bus safe. So we think this is a really high ROI policy that maintains public transit as an an important tool, that benefits millions of Californians each year, especially those that rely on transit the most. So respectfully urge your I vote.
Redner 34
mister chair. Matt Robinson with the California Transit Association. Again, proud to cosponsor this bill with LA Metro, AC Transit, and Streets for All. Really appreciate, the committee staff's work with us. Took the time to really learn about the program, offered some, amendments that I think make the privacy protections in the law even stronger than they already are.
Redner 52
As Mark noted, we have used these cameras successfully for more than twenty years now to help improve the services for both our bus operators driving the buses but also those riders that have difficult times often navigating from where the bus may have to stop if the vehicle's parked there over to the curb or to the transit stop. I would note that in state law, we are required to report to the legislature, on any privacy issues that have come up for any of the programs underway or that have been in place, going back to 2005. While the committee analysis notes that our reporting has been a little bit light and hopefully the future reports will be more detailed in this regard, We have had no issues that have been raised through any of those reports by any of the agencies. And as noted in the analysis, our data retention, our protection policies are extremely strong, and we look forward to making them stronger if this bill moves out of your committee. With that, respectfully ask your aye vote and happy to answer any questions.
Redner 24
Thank you so much, mister Robinson. Okay. Are there any members of the public that are here to voice support for this bill? Name organization position.
Redner 30
Good afternoon. Steve Volk on behalf of the Alameda Contra Costa Transit District, the Napa Valley Transportation Authority, and the California Association for Coordinated Transportation and Cal Act
Redner 9
Mister chair, Brendan Nerpichy, on behalf of the San Mateo County Transit District, the city of Santa Monica, Monterey Salinas Transit District, and San Francisco MTA in support. Thank you.
Redner 24
Okay. Now it's time for opposition witnesses. Are there anyone here to testify in opposition to this bill? No. Seeing none, is are there any members of the public here to voice opposition to this bill?
Seeing none, we'll bring it back to the dais. Assembly member McKinnon.
Redner 12
Yes. To the author, I thank you so much, assembly member, for bringing this bill. One of the things that's very important to me this year is to slow people down and stop with, we have a lot of, car accidents, death by car accidents, and we wanna make sure that we're slowing that down. And so I thank you, and I would like to be a coauthor of your bill. Yeah.
Redner 44
I just wanna thank the author for bringing this bill forward. Happy to be a coauthor. I think it's really gonna assist our transit agencies in enforcement and also, you know, keep people safe. So thanks thanks so much. Mister Patterson,
Redner 5
I'm gonna support the bill today. I do you know, typically, when these bills come through committee on enforcement by camera, I don't you know, the high the speeding ones and things like that and lights, don't really I don't love those. You know, these are parking issues, but I really wanna, you know, if you guys can work a little bit on the data retention. I know that you took some steps already, but, you know, if there's really no need for the retention beyond the enforcement of that infraction, it'd be great if the data was basically eliminated. But but I'm happy to support it today.
Thank you.
Redner 24
Thank you, mister Patterson. Okay. I think that does it for up here. Oh, excuse me, mister Mayo.
Redner 42
It's it's it's slightly off topic, but the the transit and bike lobby have hijacked our transportation system. And I know that there's some good intentions, but the execution has been a disaster. In in San Diego, they implemented something called BRT, bus rapid transit, and they've been issuing a bunch of citations and fines. It has not improved the flow of traffic, and we have a bunch of empty buses with very little impact on the on very little beneficial impact on the transportation system. So I'm not in favor of enforcement in a broken system.
Redner 26
I think we need to tell our transit and bike advocates to get back with the transportation decision makers
Redner 26
with more thoughtful policy. Your bill obviously wants to use technology, to implement, and that there's nothing wrong with that. But I I can't support enforcement for a policy that I think there's a lot of people on the ground that are very upset with right now, particularly in my community in San Diego, who have lost parking for small businesses in areas that are already struggling with parking. So I'll be laying off the bill today.
Redner 45
So what I know from the bus rapid transit lane, runs through my district, is that it is increasing ridership significantly since the pandemic. The buses are full, especially during our rush hour when we want to have reduced congestion on on our roadways. It has reduced the time that it takes to get from San Diego State all the way to downtown by seven minutes because we've had that dedicated bus rapid transit line that has increased access to other opportunities in the North Inland area as well as in the South County. And, for respect to our bicycle lanes, while individuals continue to be slow to adopt because we don't have a full fully integrated and connected bicycle route on the routes that we do have. We've seen a near tripling since bicycle lanes have been installed, which has also enhanced a number of safety, features, which is important because people aren't getting killed.
And that is also something that, you know, can't, is is hard to be able to measure, when you're thinking about some of this other traffic information. So I wanted to make sure the record was clear, and I'm happy to support your bill.
Redner 24
Okay. I think that does it for up here. I'll debate having ceased. Would you like to close, mister Gonzalez?
Redner 51
Thank you, mister chair. Thank you to the colleagues, and thank you folks for for jumping on today. Just to clarify, this is already existing infrastructure that we have here. It's not taking away any parking spots. It's existing infrastructure as it relates to existing bus lanes.
And this bill obviously sunsets, and we wanna make sure that we have the ability to continue this kind of enforcement that's moving our city forward. It's a simple bill. When buses move, our communities move. AB eighteen thirty seven keeps it that way. Let's not hit the brakes on progress.
Thank you, and respectfully ask for your I vote.
Redner 24
Excuse the pun. Love to entertain a motion on this bill, anyone? Moved by mister Ward, seconded by assembly member Pelerin. Madam secretary, please call the roll.
Redner 2
Item number three, a b eighteen thirty seven by assembly member Mark Gonzalez. The motion is due pass as amended. Bauer Cahan, Massito, Brian DeMio? No. DeMio, no.
Hoover?
Redner 2
Hoover, aye. Erwin? Aye. Erwin, aye. Lowenthal?
Aye. Lowenthal, aye. McKinnar? Aye. McKinnar?
Aye. Ortega? Aye. Aye. Pellerin, aye.
Petrie Norris? Ward? Aye. Ward, aye. Wicks?
Aye. Wicks, aye. Wilson? Easy
Redner 24
breeze. That's at nine one. We'll keep the roll open for absent members. Next in file order is mister Gibson. AB1990.
You may begin when ready, sir.
Redner 54
Thank you very much, mister chairman and members. Thank you very much for allowing me to present assembly bill nineteen ninety. Wanna start off by thanking the committee and the chair for working with me, and I will be accepting the committee amendments. Assembly bill nineteen ninety protects patients by ensuring compound weight loss shots are safe, highly qualified, and honestly marketed. They've become very popular because they are effective even beyond the original use.
Epic by overwhelming number of ads, and media and social media, people are buying compounded versions of these drugs at unprecedented rates. These compounded versions are FDA approved and do not have the same requirements to ensure that the ingredients are final and the final versions are tested and safe and and pure and and purities. However, consumers see these compounded versions as interchangeably. In fact, seventy one percent of women surveyed in 2025 by the National Consumer League believes compounded weight loss shots are tested, proved to be safe if they are marketed, and and over half of The United States women's believe compounded weight loss drugs are, in fact, FDA approved even if they're not. Over the last several years, bad actors, underscore bad actors, have exploited patients' desires to lose weight and have flooded the marketplace with compounded weight loss shots that are even unsafe.
AB nineteen ninety requires that any advertising for compounded, drugs is truthful and clearly stated that are that these products is a compounded drug that is not FDA approved. This bill also protects patients by increasing regulatory standards for compounded, pharmacy who produce weight loss drugs at a commercial scale. Patients' desires to know that the drugs they're buying is safe and well regulated and, and to be, misled by deceptive advertising advertisement. And I just for for the committee's, edification, this advertisement is being advertised to our girls. And the reason why I brought this is because on social media members, this is what our children has been marketed to, especially to young girls.
Redner 61
Oh. And this is what our young girls are seeing on a daily basis. Today, I have brought with me an example of a harmful, misleading advertisement that is targeting women and young girls without, disclosing the risk. And this is what we want to also try to prevent from these deceptive advertisement, but also most involved, the drugs that are unregulated by the FDA and also are unsafe and harmful. With me to provide supporting testimonies will be representatives who will self introduce, the executive director of the partnership for, safe medicine, and also the director of food and, nutrient policy of National Consumer League.
Redner 55
Thank you. Chairman, members of the committee, thank you for welcoming me. My name is Shabir Imbursafdar. I'm the executive director of the Partnership for Safe Medicines. Where a public health health coalition committed to the safety of the prescription drug supply.
We discussed the issues of access and safety in the last committee, which passed the bill 17 to one. So I'm gonna stick to my deep concerns about truth and advertising in my testimony today. Americans have a very safe drug supply of FDA approved medicines, so safe that they don't even realize, as the assembly member Gypsum pointed out, that drugs that aren't FDA approved even exist or that they're not as safe. We've seen telehealth companies and pharmacy compounders prey on that vulnerability, and that has resulted in an explosion of medical adverse events that epidemiologists have documented in peer reviewed papers. One example is Jimmy Wilson of Kentucky who experienced liver failure after taking a compounded version of the Lilly weight loss medication.
After taking four doses, going into liver failure, and getting an emergency transplant, she then she then said, and I quote, what I didn't know and even many doctors do not know is that compounded drugs and name brand drugs are not the same. I was unaware of the trade offs. The exact cause of her liver failure is still being determined. But apropos to this committee, she was a victim at the moment that she was deceptively marketed to. This deception includes ads from Hims and Hers who began marketing a compounded weight loss pill earlier this year.
The FDA promptly referred them to the Department of Justice and declared the ad misleading because it claimed to use the same active ingredient as the FDA approved version. You cannot deceptively market medicine to patients. And since it is happening, we need to put guardrails in place to protect Californians. The opposition may suggest that stronger safety standards in this space will reduce access and harm marginalized communities, but that claim falls apart upon closer look. Reputable compounded versions are not cheaper than FDA approved products, and final product testing does not limit access.
It limits corner cutting. To close, Californians think existing safeguards are protecting them, but they are not. No one should unknowingly inject formaldehyde or arsenic, real contaminants that have been found, in these ingredients. All Californians deserve a basic floor of safety, transparency, and truth in advertising as a b nineteen ninety does. Thank you.
Redner 56
Make sure I get this right. Sorry. Mister chairman and members, I'm Nancy Glick with the National Consumers League. A week ago, I testified in support of a b nineteen ninety. After my testimony, opponents of this bill parse my words.
So today, I am restating my position, but I am also quoting some trusted authorities. First, I use the term Wild West to deter to describe the GLP one marketplace, and I think just about anybody who has a phone and types in GLP ones knows it is a Wild West. I was not referring to the practice of compounding, however. What I was talking about is the lax regulation that makes it possible for marketers to claim that GLP one compounded GLP one drugs are the same and as safe and as effective as the branded versions. They are not.
And in my testimony, I gave the reasons why. Specifically, compounded GLP ones are not tested, they are not FDA approved, and they are not required to disclose the risks. The the source of that is the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA also has said, and I state excuse me so I can read this. That the ingredients in compounded drugs may contain the wrong compounded drugs may contain the wrong ingredient or no active ingredient at all, or they may contain too much or too little of the active ingredient.
Redner 40
Why this matters is because there has been a 1200% increase in violative ads since 2022. These ads mislead consumers, and they hinder their ability to understand the risks of compounded drugs, which is exactly what Shabir mentioned. Unfortunately, though, the advertisers are very successful. These ads work. In fact, a survey that we conducted a year ago found that eighty one percent of all US women believe the claims made in deceptive advertising.
Redner 56
But even worse, a study finds that teens 14 years of age and younger are highly motivated to take GLP one drugs due to explosive advertising. You saw one of the ads that, we're talking about here. The same mention think about that wonderful birthday cake. Here's another ad that's circulating online. It says, hey, girl.
It's time to
Redner 56
Before the summer. Clearly, the the number of violative ads cannot be understated, and the harm is real. This is why NCL supports the introduction of a b nineteen ninety with language that would make it unlawful to advertise or promote compounded medications with claims that are false or misleading.
Redner 1
Appreciate it. Thank you. Anyone else here in support of this bill? We're still in support. Right?
Redner 16
Alright. Good afternoon, madam chair and members. Boyer Top here on behalf of Biocom in support.
Redner 1
Thank you. Anyone here in opposition to this bill? Oh. We may need one of these chairs, it looks like, if you wouldn't mind. Thank you so much.
When you're ready.
Redner 25
Is this on? It's on. It's on. Okay. Chairwoman and members of the committee, my name is Valerie Downs, and I have been a patient of Innovative Compounding Pharmacy up the road in Folsom for many years.
They've been compounding my hormone therapy hormone replacement therapy medications and then my microdosing of GLP one during the drug shortage of 2025. My microdosing started when I had a severe eczema rash all over my torso for over a year and also suffered from irritable bowel syndrome. I initially saw my dermatologist who prescribed a strong cortisone cream. Never worked. I then went to my primary care physician, Mimi Sato Ray.
Redner 50
She prescribed the GLP one microdose to heal my gut and ultimately heal the rash in IBS. With a few within a few weeks, everything was healed. I needed to stay on this dosage, but I am unable to due to the controls placed on the compounding pharmacies. Please consider the unintended consequences of a bill like this on patients like me who rely on GLP one drugs for serious conditions beyond weight loss. Whether the patient's circumstance is similar to mine or women addressing inflammation in the body post breast cancer or another condition, we as patients have the right to access our medications as prescribed by our doctor.
Redner 57
Chairwoman and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Tennille Davis, and I serve as the chief advocacy officer for the Alliance for Pharmacy Compounding, and I'm also a pharmacist. While we have a lot of problems with this bill, I wanna focus my comments on the advertising provisions of a b nineteen ninety. There's an underlying assumption in this bill that advertising of compounded medications is largely unregulated today, and that is simply not the case. Compounding pharmacies are already subject to layered framework of federal and state requirements governing advertising and communications.
At the federal level, the US Food and Drug Administration prohibits false and misleading statements about any drug, including compounded medications. Pharmacies cannot claim that a compounded drug is FDA approved, cannot make unsupported claims, and cannot misrepresent what the product is or does. At the same time, the Federal Trade Commission regulates advertising more broadly. That means all marketing, like websites, social media, and patient materials must be truthful, not misleading, and supported by appropriate evidence. FDA has issued, dozens or more of warning letters over the last twelve months against companies that have violated these marketing provisions, including to some brand name drug manufacturers of GLP one products.
On top of that, state boards of pharmacy, including the California State Board of Pharmacy, have clear authority to take action against pharmacies that engage in inappropriate or misleading marketing. Pharmacies must also disclose on the label that drugs dispensed are compounded. We did offer amendments to Assemblyman Gibson here supporting and being in favor of requirements that say compounded drugs are not FDA approved. We don't have any problem with that. What raises concerns in AB nineteen ninety is how it it approaches comparative communication.
Redner 3
appears to require pharmacies to disclose risk information about FDA approved drugs when dispensing compounded drugs while at the same time restricting the ability to provide context or comparisons about the effectiveness or why a compounded option might be appropriate for a specific patient. That puts pharmacies in a position where they're required to highlight risks of one option but are constrained in explaining the clinical rationale for another. In practice, that can lead to incomplete or potentially misleading communication, not because of what is said but but because what they cannot say. More broadly, many of these advertising provisions in this bill restate conduct that is already prohibited. False or misleading advertising, misbranding, or failure to disclose key information, these are not gaps in the law today.
Redner 57
My concern is that layering additional requirements, particularly ones that may not align cleanly with existing federal frameworks, could create confusion, uneven enforcement, and inadvertently chill appropriate patient directed communication. I'd encourage the committee to carefully consider whether these provisions are necessary and whether they are narrowly tailored to address a real gap rather than duplicating existing law and creating unintended consequences. There are already laws against this kind of advertising that's happening, and the FDA and the FTC have ability to take action under the current law. Thank you for your time.
Redner 1
Thank you. And thank you for sticking to the jurisdiction of this committee. Rarely happens, so I appreciate that. With that, anyone else here in opposition to this bill? Hi.
Madam chair and members, Monica Miller on behalf of the California Naturopathic Doctors Association in respectful opposition to the bill. Thank you. Thank you.
Redner 20
Jim Wood here representing the California Pharmacists Association in respectful opposition.
Redner 58
Farley here on behalf of the Chamber of Progress in respectful opposition to the bill.
Redner 1
And the first time a member speaks on the floor, we're allowed to haze them. The first time they show up as a lobbyist, are we allowed to haze them? With that, bringing it back. Yeah. So member DeBio.
Redner 26
So we're your your bill is focused on a specific type of drug that's very popular, and the compounding has happened. And, originally, the compounding started happening because of a limit on the supply. There's so much demand, so people were trying to get it. Maybe Biocom or life sciences can answer this, or maybe the author. There's no limitation on supply now.
Hasn't the supply chain basically caught up? So the need for compounding to deal with supply shortages has been averted. And I think that the FDA has also made rulings to that effect.
Redner 55
Madam chair? Yes. Please. The the shortages have been declared resolved by the Food and Drug Administration months and months and months ago.
Redner 26
And to the author or anyone else that might know, if there is a shortage, does your bill still allow flexibility for compounding to satisfy the shortage?
Redner 26
The other argument in in opposition to your bill is that by allowing compounding, it will drive the price of these drugs down and make it more accessible. And I know that there was reference to that in the testimony. But hasn't the Trump administration through Trump Rx already negotiated substantial discounts in these drugs so that those cost savings are available through that mechanism?
Redner 56
I'll answer that. This came up, last week as well. So once upon a time, these these, branded drugs were a lot more expensive. With the Trump administration, they have been greatly reduced in cost, and there's parity now with, you know, most of the, costs that you would see on telehealth. It's also a very low price for Medicaid, $245 a month.
Redner 26
Right. And and for the opponents, I know that you were wanting to say something. So what would be your response to that clarification?
Redner 25
Well, with the compounding pharmacies, you can have it compound into your needs specifically. That's the difference. You can't really do that when you have a when you're ordering through Lilly or one one of the big companies. Can I
Redner 26
get better clarification on how do you customize It's dosage? Through compounding?
Redner 26
that through the the various exchanges? The dosages, I I understand, are different.
Redner 43
So there is a important role in our drug supply for compounding. Let's say that you need a certain dose that's not offered by the manufacturer. But now that they sell the drugs in vials, can pretty much draw up the dose that you want. There's also a need sometimes if you are allergic to wheat and somehow someone has put gluten into a medicine, you know, a compounding pharmacist will start from a bulk ingredient and make that. That's not really a situation that see here in weight loss shot compounding.
Redner 55
What we see is what I would call a thin veneer of personalization, where a doctor will prescribe, let's say, b twelve and that the patient needs b twelve from, let's say, nausea or something along with, you know, the Ozempic shot. And instead, what they're doing is they're just giving them an excuse to get it from a different source from back when it was cheaper. It's not necessary anymore. In fact, I've even seen prescriber pads where some folks have just written, check the box of the personalization you want. Right?
That's not really personalization, and it it's not really necessary anymore in many cases. You could get a b twelve shot and then get your Ozempic shot. You don't necessarily need to have it compounded.
Redner 26
Okay. And I came into this hearing completely undecided. I see both sides of the of the issue, but I am going to support the bill going forward today and would like to see a I'm I'm gonna look into the the impacts cost wise and access wise. So if you'd like to provide my office with more information, absolutely, there's a whole legislative process. That's what this is for.
But there is a Wild West out there, and the ad that the author shared is just one example of how this has gone off the rails and that we do need to have a little bit better handle on what's going on out there. So I I appreciate you bringing the bill forward. Thank you.
Redner 5
I too came in this hearing undecided, I'm still undecided right now. So first of I wanna mention on the ads, and I I understand that the opposition mentioned that, you know, there are already laws, you know, against certain things, and I I have seen the actions by the federal government. I'm thankful for those, but a lot of the ads aren't placed by the compounders. You know, they're they're placed by these pop up pop up clinics that place the ads that then, you know, obviously send the prescriptions to compounders. And that's a important distinction to say, hey.
You know, the compounders, you know, aren't breaking the law in this case. And when they are, there are enforcement actions taken against them. But, also, we have a problem, a big problem that needs to be addressed. And if I can make a little pitch for mister Lilenthal's a b 17 o nine, you know, about these ads coming on social media and where these little girls are seeing these ads about their body image and getting it's disgusting and should be taken care of immediately. But I think, you know, I've always said the argument in terms of the dangers of compounded drugs and and things like that.
I I think it's just better to say, and I've told, many of people this, It's better just to say, hey. Look. We feel that our patents are being ripped off. And that actually, I think, is a fair argument. Probably a quarter of this room has used compounded drugs.
Redner 25
And I think it's, yeah, I don't think people really believe that argument, to be honest. I'm not saying there aren't harms, but I do think there are more you know, there's harms from people taking all sorts of pharmaceuticals. But my main question on this is, as I went through the language of the bill, and I'm not really, you know, an expert on how, you know, how an API might get to a compounder or something like that. But under the language of the bill, would it be possible for a compounder to to access the API for this and and basically make a compounded GLP one for a client right now?
Redner 55
It it would. It would. It there are requirements that it be tested for impurities, which is not something that the ingredients are tested for now, which is important because people have found arsenic and formaldehyde in these ingredients. And so it's important to get them to get them more thoroughly tested. Additionally, you know, compounders sometimes will buy product from a wholesaler, a FDA registered wholesaler, and they have bought it from a string of other shell companies before it came from the original FDA registered manufacturer.
There's not any accountability in that supply chain. Right? There's a bunch of unregulated people in between the manufacturer and the wholesaler. They could still, of course, buy it directly from the manufacturer, but sometimes they have to buy in quantities that are so large that they can't. But that has nothing to do with this bill.
Redner 5
Well and that's that's a I mean, if you're a compound and you're buying it from an FDA, you know, source and, you know, their string of webs is, you know, who knows where, I mean, I I sort of understand the concern there, but it seems to me that they did their job and went to an FDA regulated source.
Redner 55
That would be true, except that there has been a lot of fraud in this space. You know, we have been tracking enormous amounts of illegally made, weight loss drug API coming into the country, and one of the largest FDA registered wholesalers was caught distributing, product not from FDA registered manufacturers. And so while this is just because they're so lucrative and there's so much money and so many fly by night people have entered the space as telehealth companies, it's it's brought an explosion. And we've seen, sadly, some licensed compounders who have taken shortcuts.
Redner 5
Okay. I I I got I do have to know. Is it possible for a a compounder a compounding pharmacy under the provisions of this bill to be able to provide medications to people with a prescription for this?
Redner 57
Yes. There are impurity testings and things like that that are not currently required. That being said, California does have the strictest compounding laws of any other state
Redner 57
They were recently updated and just went into effect in October, this past year. So we haven't even seen the effect of those. But one of the requirements is that compounders must perform stability studies on sterile products, which does test for things like impurities when they're doing formulation development. Manufacturers are typically responsible for testing impurities when they're manufacturing medications, And the FDA recently came out with a a green list, essentially a a list of manufacturers of GLP one drugs GLP one API that it considers to be appropriate for use in compounding.
Redner 5
Yeah. So you would be able to get this product to a customer at the end of the day with under the provisions of this bill?
Redner 57
One of the provisions of this bill would require that the manufacturer have been inspected within the last two years by the FDA, but compounding pharmacies don't have any control over the cadence of manufacturer inspections. So, theoretically, yes. But there's a lot of restrictions that would put that are this bill would put into place that would make the make it very difficult for compounders to comply with the bill and be able to provide custom GLP one medications for patients that need them. FDA approved drugs are always the first choice, but for patients who need something customized, that's where compounding comes in.
Redner 55
Yeah. Assembly member, I I I it's important to point out that that if if if we're gonna be injecting products into our body, it's probably good that manufacturer of that ingredient gets inspected at least every two or three years. I mean, I think that's the I like that part of the bill for that reason.
Redner 5
Yeah. I can't make a statement on whether I think that that's fair or not, honestly. I don't know what is normal out there in in terms of that, but, you know, it sounds reasonable. And I also know that, you know, just recently, the FDA came out, you know, with a just on April 1 of a whole host of things that, you know, compounders. I I think I just you know, in terms of the concerns on the advertising, I think, you know, which is the jurisdiction of this committee Yes.
Redner 5
I think well, this all has to do with, I think, consumer protection, the FDA inspections. Know? I know.
Redner 5
you know, I think it I legit as a purse I am a huge proponent of people taking control of their own, you know, medical destiny. And like I said, people won't admit it here, but, you know, a quarter of this room probably has benefited from that. And I think it is a fair debate, and one that the federal government has is that maybe it's a rip off of a patent. Honestly, I think that's a fair debate to have. But the advertising thing really shouldn't impact you guys because you're not hopefully doing it.
And I just wanna hone in on that a bit more. Sure. Can you let me know how that would
Redner 57
One of the requirements of this bill would be to use the risk information in the, like, the package insert of the commercially available products when you're describing a compounded drug. So if it causes nausea and vomiting and all that kind of stuff, we understand that, but there's a a lot that doesn't necessarily translate. Like, if you've removed the preservative, it changes the formulation. If you change the route of administration, it changes the formulation. So requiring compounders to use the risks of the commercially available FDA approved versions, but not be able to use the benefits because we can't make claims about compounded medications because they have not gone through the FDA approval process doesn't seem fair and and actually seems like it would mislead patients more.
And
Redner 5
But you're saying if there's a known risk of a, let's say, one of the GLP ones that's not compounded, you you don't think compounders should have to tell tell that? I sort of I I get I get what you're saying, but I mean it is a known and studied and proven risk.
Redner 57
It's a known and studied and proven risk of the FDA approved product. Compounded drugs do not go through the FDA approval process, so they do not have approved labeling.
Redner 5
But I don't think adding b twelve to it is gonna take away that risk. You know what I mean? So that's why I I you know? Look. I'm I'm open to and I would I would love to work with the op or the supporters of this bill to because I don't want this to go away necessarily.
I and I want the federal government to deal with the debate on whether this should be a that's not a state level issue, although a lot of states are introducing legislation to do that. But I do I do wanna see this bill move forward in the sense of I do think it's, important, the advertising, which I know a lot of compounding farms, you know, they're not doing, although there are some. But we wanna make it clear in California that's not allowed. And then secondly, if there's if there's still access, but there's concerns about the access and some of the things that you've identified, I would like to know more about this so I can work with the supporters on it and see if we can get there before it gets to the floor. But for now, I'm inclined to support the bill.
But I hope that you would come to me, and we can talk more about these things. So thank you.
Redner 18
Thank you, madam chair. Can you hold that poster up? I am disturbed by the fact that it says, hey, girly. Not hey, ladies. Hey, girly.
Talking to young girls, telling them they need weight loss medication. The other thing that strikes me too is that this is about the GLP one tablets. Now I've been following this for a while, and from my understanding, correct me if I'm wrong, they just got approval. The manufacturers just got approval. How are they already marketing this?
Redner 56
Okay. I'll I'll start. So first of all, you one of the reasons that we, NCL petitioned the food the Federal Trade Commission to investigate this advertising. We have a large body of data which shows all the different ways in which people are manipulated. So the words girly I mean, they've been tested to see, you know, what works on a 14 year old girl.
So it it's really important to understand how sophisticated these folks are. And the the the the main concern that we have is FDA has had the authority. They don't really have a very large staff. And so with the volume of advertising that's out there, we need help from California and others because it's impossible to get ahead of how big this problem is. It's whack a mole.
You you cite one and somebody else comes up and starts doing this. It's very, very challenging. So we really applaud you for, you know, considering this because we think it's so important.
Redner 18
But so my question and maybe you can help. The tablets is something that I'm particularly interested in. One, how this all was rolled out so quickly when manufacturers were just given that authority. And then two, do we even know if there's effectiveness of these tablets that are being marketed?
Redner 55
No. Assembly member, there isn't. Hey. This this was around the January. The original Wegavi tablet came out, and then about a month, maybe five weeks later, there was an advertisement for compounded tablets.
Now they have different ingredients. In fact, I think the coating of the Novo Nordisk product is patented, so they weren't using the same thing, which meant that they basically created an unapproved new drug without clinical trials and then started to sell it. That is part of why the FDA referred them, made a criminal referral to the justice department, and then I think cooler heads caused them to pull that product from the market. The Super Bowl ad was the the the catalyst that made that happen.
Redner 18
Yeah. Okay. Well, I'm excited to support That's the bill disturbing that we're telling little girls they need weight loss medication. Thank you.
Redner 1
Thank you. Seeing no further questions or comments, I want to thank the author for this. I actually have spent more time looking at the, I like to call these pill mills frankly, the pill mills related to menopause care. And it seems like every time we have a sector that is underserved by the medical community, these start these tech companies, frankly, pop up that purport to provide medical care. But, you know, I have had friends that have gone to some of these menopause pill mills, and they see someone for minutes and then are sent these off you know, these compounded medications in order for them because they're profiting off of the margins.
So they want their the money is really coming from selling their product, which is the compounded drugs. And and what I hate about that is we all have compounded pharmacies in our community that have served our community in ways that is necessary and often lifesaving, frankly. To your point, there are people who need compounded medications, that cannot take FDA approved medications for various reasons who are absolutely served so much by our compounded pharmacies. But we have this new enterprise that I think is really preying on these sectors where the medical community needs to catch up, which I think was the point one of the points my colleague from San Diego made, was a lot of this started from the shortage, and now we're stuck in this cycle. And the same is true.
Currently, actually, this has been fixed for those that are interested. The menopause patch is still in short supply, and we are in a situation where women can't get their hands on them. And so, you know, often and that is not the fault of anyone. It's just women are getting more care, and so they're trying to catch up. And they will.
But in the short term, we have to make sure people are getting accurate information. You know? And, again, in the area that I've spent more time in, not that this bill relates relates to it. Right? If you were to have a woman who went on a menopause patch who had certain risk factors, it could be life threatening.
Right? And so to get the information about the risks so that, patients are informed, I think, is really important. So I'm sad this bill doesn't go further, frankly, because I think there are other medical spaces where this could be really useful, because this at least as it relates to the jurisdiction of this committee, this is really important information for patients to have in their hands. And I don't I don't think there's much basis on which to oppose again what is in the jurisprudence committee, which is not the f I don't know if the FDA comes every two years. That is not our business.
But, you know, as for the consumer protections of knowing what the risks are, whether you're buying the FDA approved drug or getting a compounded drug feels frankly common sense. So with that, would you like to close?
Redner 54
Yes. Madam chair and to the committee, thank you very much for the robust conversation. I wanna thank my witnesses and also those who are opposing this bill. We hope that, you will be able to that we can get to at least, a neutral position, if not a support position. We'll keep working towards that end, in that space.
Patients deserve to know, that they're, one, buying a safe drug that is is that is regulated and that is not misleading and also that is not deceptive. Patients deserve whatever drug they're consuming that is safe for their bodies to consume and is not harmful to themselves. We certainly believe that whatever you inject into your body, again, is safe and it should be FDA regulated. This bill, I certainly believe, is well thought out. It's simple.
And we believe that people who want to lose weight should, in fact, lose weight but do it in a safe way, should not have to worry about ten years, fifteen years down the line, and now you're realizing there's health risk as it relates to those drugs. We believe that people should do it in a safe fashion. We honor those individuals who wanna lose weight for health reasons and those who wanna look good. We honor that. But we also wanna make sure they do it in a very safe and reasonable manner.
We respectfully ask for an I vote. Thank you.
Redner 2
Item number six, a b nineteen ninety by assembly member Gibson. The motion is due pass as amended to appropriations. Barcahan. Aye. Barcahan, aye.
Masito. Aye. Masito. Aye. Brian.
De Mayo.
Redner 2
you. Mayo. Aye. Hoover? Irwin?
Lilienthal? Aye. Lilienthal? Aye. McKinnon?
Ortega? Patterson? Pelerin?
Redner 1
Six votes, so that will stay on call. Thank you, mister Gibson. We have Soria here. Perfect. AB2276.
Redner 1
Things are going south here, so we better keep moving. So sorry. Yeah. When you're ready.
Redner 11
Good afternoon, chair and members. AB twenty two seventy six, will establish a targeted five year pilot program in seven counties for the installation of active intelligence speed assistance or ISA devices in the vehicles of those convicted of severe speeding and reckless driving offenses. California continues to experience a traffic safety crisis and an average of twelve people killed on our roads every single day, and one third of those fatalities are speed related. Speeding doesn't just increase the likelihood of a crash, it dramatically increases the severity of injuries and the likelihood of death when collisions occur. These are not just statistics.
Behind every one of these preventable deaths are devastated families and communities. While existing traffic fines influence the behavior of many drivers, they have proven insufficient to deter super speeders. License suspension is likewise flouted by approximately seventy five percent of drivers with suspended licenses. To to address this problem, the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators released model legislation earlier this year supporting the use of active ISA for drivers convicted of serious speeding offenses, an approach also supported by the National Transport Transportation Safety Board. Active ISA is an aftermarket device which can be installed on vehicles to directly prevent the driver from accelerating beyond the local speed limits.
Redner 26
States across the country are advancing policies requiring the installation of active ISA devices for those convicted of serious driving offenses. It's time California adopts the use of this life saving technology. AB twenty two seventy six creates a framework for courts to order the installation of active ISA devices for offenders convicted of speeding over 100 miles per hour, reckless driving, or engaging in exhibition of speed. This is a targeted evidence based intervention focused on drivers convicted of serious speeding offenses, not a broad mandate for ordinary Californians. Judges would have the discretion to order ISA device installations for up to six months for a first offense with longer mandated installation terms for repeat offenders based on the number and severity of prior convictions.
Redner 11
Cost for the ISA device are structured on an income based cost schedule to ensure fairness and accessibility. The bill contains strong privacy protections, including a requirement for device providers to keep all information confidential and securely maintained. Data would only be allowed to be shared under very limited circumstances, including with the DMV or the order or the ordering court in response to a violation of the program or a court order. AB twenty two seventy six will save lives and hold those wreck who recklessly speed accountable in a way that directly addresses their dangerous driving habits while upholding California's robust privacy protections. Here with me today to testify in support is Larissa Caspides on behalf of SteerSafe partnership.
Redner 41
Thank you, chair and members. Larissa Cespedes here on behalf of the SteerSafe partnership, which is a coalition of road safety advocates, including, manufacturer device of these devices. And I've heard the committee loud and clear, and I'll stick to the privacy related issues of this bill. And I wanna thank the committee staff, for their analysis of the privacy protections in this bill. An active ISA device is essentially an aftermarket device that is, installed in the vehicle.
Redner 66
It only collects information related to how fast the vehicle is going, where you are on the road. It uses GPS technology, does not collect any personal information, has no name, just a serial number identified with that device. It allows for people that have been convicted of recklessly driving, super speeders driving over a 100 miles per hour to only go the speed limit that's posted on the on the road. And it also allows for a little button that you push so that you can pass safely in the event that you have to speed past a a slow vehicle. So it has been adopted, I think, as as the assembly member said, across, many New York, Washington DC, across Europe.
Redner 41
We see a 99% efficacy in New York City, and we think it's time for California to, pilot a program that allows for this technology to be used, here. It prevents a crash from happening versus, punishing an individual after it has happened. With that, I respectfully ask for your aye vote.
Redner 11
Thank you. Kelly Larue for Families, Families for Safe Streets in support.
Redner 18
Thank you. Do we have anybody in the room in opposition? Seeing none, bring you back to the dais.
Redner 18
We have a motion by mister DeMaio and a second and a third by miss Pellerin and Alontho. Two for
Redner 26
Wow. Legislation today. Is this is this the first time that this bill or something like it has been brought forward in in the legislature?
Redner 11
No. In the past, there was a previous author that brought this forward, but it was not a pilot program. It would have been a statewide.
Redner 41
think what you're thinking of are might be the requirement that these devices be installed on all vehicles at like, when they're sold. This is something aftermarket. There was a similar bill like that that I think senator Weiner, sent to the governor.
Redner 26
project. It's this is so smart. You've got some of these people who are repeat offenders, and this is something that will save lives. This is something that's long overdue. So I appreciate the fact that you're championing this and happy to offer support.
Redner 18
Thank you. Mister Jamaya, anybody else on the committee? I too wanna tell you that I think this is a great piece of legislation. I ran a speeding bill last year and did lots of research into speeding in California. It is insane, and it is scary when you look at the statistics and the amount of lives lost that, is totally preventable, and people just need to slow the heck down.
So, with that, I'm excited to support today. And would you like to close?
Redner 2
to call the roll? Item number seven, AB2276, assembly member Saria. Motion is due passed. To appropriations, Barcahan. Masito?
Redner 2
Masito aye. Brian? DiMio? Aye. DiMio aye.
Hoover? Irwin? Lowenthal? DeKinner? Ortega?
Patterson? Pelerin? Aye. Pelerin, aye. Petrie Norris?
Ward? Wicks? Wilson.
Redner 10
Thank you, madam chair. Members. AB twenty two eighty five would give state chartered banks and credit unions the tools to offer digital asset services and establish a consumer protection framework for modern banking. California is home to some of the world's most innovative digital asset companies, and that industry's presence is an asset we should hold onto and build on. As digital assets move into traditional finance, our state banks and credit unions need updated tools and cybersecurity capabilities to meet that moment.
Redner 61
Most Californians today continue to rely on their local banks and credit unions for everyday financial needs. AB twenty two eighty five ensures those trusted institutions are equipped to serve them as our financial landscape continues to evolve. A clear consumer protection framework does not slow innovation. It strengthens it by giving Californians the confidence to participate. Happy to answer any questions.
Redner 18
Thank you. Is there anybody else in the room in support? Nope. Seeing none, is there any opposition? Seeing none, miss Pellerin, it's me and you.
Redner 18
me the bill. And I will second it. Mister Valencia, would you like to close?
Redner 18
Can you we have a motion in a second by the only two members in the committee currently. We're very efficient.
Redner 2
Thank you. Sorry. Item number nine, a b twenty two eighty five by assembly member Valencia. The motion is due passed. To appropriations.
By Arcahan. Mosito. Aye. Mosito. Aye.
Brian. DeMio. Hoover. Irwin, Lowenthal, McKinnar, Ortega, Patterson, Pelerin. Aye.
Pelerin, aye. Petrie Norris, Ward, Wicks, Wilson. We will
Redner 61
Thank you, madam chair once again and members. I wanna start by accepting the committee amendments. AB twenty five sixty one would ensure consumers maintain control over their preferred privacy settings by prohibiting any changes to a user setting without their consent. Companies are increasingly building businesses and AI models that depend on the collection and use of personal data. At the same time, Californians have consistently signaled their desire to protect their privacy and maintain control over their
Redner 61
settings. Unfortunately, it is a common practice for privacy settings to be readjusted without explicit consent from the users, especially after an update or an added app. With that, I respectfully ask for a yes vote and happy to answer any questions.
Redner 18
We have a motion by mister Lowenthal. Thank you for joining us. Anybody in the room in opposition?
Redner 36
Chair members, Jose Torres with TechNet. Just wanna clarify. I appreciate the author, and their work on this. Appreciate the amendments that they're planning on taking. And when the amendments cross, TechNet will be removing our opposition and going into a support position.
Redner 34
Thank you. Ronak De Alami, behalf of Cal Chamber, also wanna greatly thank the author as well as his staff for working with us. We're also gonna be removing our opposition. Thank the committee as well for their work, madam chair. Thank you.
Redner 27
Hayden Downey with the Computer and Communications Industry Association. I wanna echo what everyone said. Thank the author, and we will also be removing our opposition. Thank you.
Redner 61
Thank you, madam chair. This bill would simply reduce the burden on the consumer and would enhance privacy protections. That, respectfully, ask for a yes vote.
Redner 1
Okay. Twenty five sixty one. Perfect. We have a motion and a second. Let's call the roll.
Redner 2
Item number 10 a AB twenty five sixty one by Assembly Member Valencia. The motion is due pass as amended. Lara Cahan. Aye. Lara Cahan.
Aye. Macedo. Aye. Macedo. Aye.
Brian. DeMio. Hoover. Erwin? Lowenthal?
Aye. Lowenthal, aye. McKinnar? Ortega? Patterson?
Helleran? Aye. Helleran, aye. Petrie Norris? Ward?
Wicks? Wilson? Thank you, Sommer. Good work.
Redner 1
Okay. We have now mister And I have with WEX. Yep. Have a Do you wanna go? Yeah.
Go for it, mister Lowenthal.
Redner 1
this will be mister Lowenthal's AB 2169 when he's ready. Well, you know what? Never mind. We're gonna allow miss Bancho to go if you don't mind, mister
Redner 1
Don't worry. He doesn't get to go anywhere anyways. Close. But I know she's sharing health. So Yes.
Redner 39
I'm going to start with AB nineteen seventy nine. Good afternoon, chair and members. I wanna start by accepting the committee's amendments on a b nineteen seventy nine and thanking the chair and committee staff for their work on this bill. With the amendments, this bill addresses the proliferation of AI into health care in three important ways. It requires health facilities to ensure that no clinical decisions are being made solely by an output from a clinical decision support system and that a licensed health care professional is exercising a professional judgment in reviewing and approving that output.
It prohibits the use of AI in health care settings to guide or instruct an unlicensed individual to do work that would require a license. And it clarifies provisions of the Confidentiality of Medical Information Act to ensure that direct to consumer health AI products that seek to access individuals' medical records protect those records as otherwise required in law. We've all seen AI rapidly deploy into many aspects of our daily lives. It's in our phones, our emails, everything we search on Google, the advertisements we see, and so much more. But it is also being deployed in health care.
This year, we've seen major developers in the consumer facing AI space offer access to new tools to allow individuals to securely connect their medical records and ask questions to help them prepare for doctor's visits. The bill this bill seeks to clarify, in those instances, those businesses offering that app or tool must maintain the confidentiality of your medical records just as we expect from our health care providers. AI is also deploying into health care facilities. Reuters reported earlier this year at least 1,357 medical devices using AI are now authorized by the FDA, double the number it had allowed through 2022. Last year, I co chaired with this committee and health committee an informational hearing on the use of AI in health care.
We explored what the challenges and opportunities are and the ways that AI is already being used to assist in testing, diagnosis, and administration. Some of the key takeaways from that conversation and that hearing were that there's opportunity for AI to enhance and improve health care, but only if it is done carefully and accounts for not just the potential for bias in developing the systems, but the complex nature of the human technology interaction when a provider is using AI. This rapid deployment is happening in the background of huge appeal in our health care system. Through just the work requirement provisions of HR1, DHCS estimates that 1,400,000 Medi Cal enrollees will lose coverage. The loss of the enhanced premium tax credits from the Affordable Care Act could lead to as many as 1,700,000 covered California enrollees to see an additional average net premium increase of 66%.
Covered California estimates that a federal change in premium assistance eligibility will cause 112,000 enrollees to lose financial assistance they rely on to afford coverage. What this means is that we will have fewer people being able to access health care and more people looking to AI and platforms to be able to get basic responses to their health care questions. And it's increasingly clear that the use of AI is evolving faster than laws and regulations can keep up. As this chair of this privacy committee can attest to, we know that there are instances, like Hippocratic AI, which has marketed AI health agents as replacements for nurses. A study for University of California San Francisco last year experimented with using ChatGPT to triage patients in the emergency department instead of RNs.
Protecting patient safety, keeping our professional workforce engaged in their work, and ensuring the integrity of health care will require us not to rely on AI to do things quicker and cheaper, not while we are still working to understand the potential risks along with the benefits. This bill does that by protecting medical records when using when used to be direct to consumer, chat apps and ensures the output of clinical decision support systems always be reviewed by a licensed health care professional. Here to testify, are, my apologies because there was a shift because of the timing, Kathy, Kennedy, who is a registered nurse and resident of the California Nurses Association, the sponsor of this bill. And, we have a testimony that will be read in, by Deb Raji from the California Labor Board.
Redner 23
Oh, I I just have a a quick correction. There's a change of plan. Thank you, assembly member Bonta. My apologies.
Redner 23
Alright. Ready? Okay. Good afternoon, chair and members. My name is Michelle Vo, president of the California Nurses Association, sponsor of AB 1979, and I have been a registered nurse for almost twenty nine years.
As nurses, our profession is both an art and science. We care for people at some of the most vulnerable moments of their lives. For nurses at the bedside, we don't just execute tasks. We utilize the nursing process of assessing a patient using our expertise, our eyes, our ears, and our touch to detect the subtle nuances and changes of the human condition. This is why a b nineteen seventy nine matters.
Professional health care judgment cannot be automated by an algorithm. This bill is based on a simple principle. If California law says a licensed health care professional must perform a health care activity, AI should not be allowed to do that care in our place. Today, these tools are being used in areas of patient care that require clinical judgment, including patient assessment, diagnosis, clinical decision making, patient education, and handoff communication. For example, when I hand off a patient at the end of my shift, I'm not just passing along a summary of a patient's chart.
Redner 44
I am using my clinical judgment to decide what matters most for the next nurse to know about my patient, like what has changed, what worries me, what could go wrong next, and what the nurse needs to be watching out for. If a hospital uses AI to generate that handoff communication, it's an algorithm making these judgment calls on care instead of the nurse. To be clear, this bill does not ban supportive technology. Nurses use technology every day. It simply reaffirms patient privacy laws and preserves the clear boundary around the care that California law reserves to licensed human health care professionals.
Redner 23
For nurses, this bill is about patient safety, professional integrity, and preserving trust in the human beings who provide patient care. Thank you, and I respectfully ask for your I vote.
Redner 48
Madam chair, members, Sarah Fox, California Federation of Labor Unions. We support this bill, but I am here to read testimony on behalf of Deb Raji, a computer scientist at UC Berkeley that works on AI accountability in public interest deployment settings. Quote, under the Hippocratic oath, physicians and other health care workers are charged with a heavy mandate. First, do no harm. However, the evidence is clear that many AI systems can fail, sometimes catastrophically, often perniciously, in unexpected ways that risk causing real and lasting harm, especially to marginalized population if deployed prematurely and inappropriately.
Research has already revealed that much of the benchmark performance being reported by corporate vendors of AI health technology that it's inadequately tested. Vendors' reports do not capture actual performance outcomes within a complex deployment setting like a health facility. In addition to this, regulatory arbitrage, internal tool development, and a still immature emergent regulatory ecosystem means that currently deployed tools do not always go through a rigorous approval process. As a result, the health systems deploying this technology tend to overestimate what this technology is capable of, especially in the absence of human oversight. Human participation is a spectrum.
Adequate public communication and transparency of AI use is necessary to keep a human in the loop through sufficient documentation and notification as well as to provide meaningful and accessible mechanisms for contestation, appeals, incident reporting, or other forms of engagement. As outlined in this bill, health systems deploying AI technology will need to take seriously their responsibility to adopt, integrate, and monitor the AI systems they introduce into their clinical settings with care. Through participation from the AI users and the impacted patient populations, we will protect the most vulnerable patients amongst us from further harm, and we urge your I vote on this, bill.
Redner 1
Thank you. Turned the mic off. Anyone else here in support of this bill? Name, organization, and position.
Redner 15
Thank you, chair and members. JP Hanna on behalf of the California Nurses Association in strong support and sponsor of this measure.
Redner 46
Thank you. Sandy Redding, operating room nurse and president of the California Nurses Association, strong support.
Redner 58
Susan Varela, I'm with CNA. I've been an RN for twenty two years, and I strongly support.
Redner 26
January Brown, labor and delivery, thirty nine years of nursing, strong support.
Redner 48
Meredith Salazar Baker, registered nurse for nine years and on the board of directors for California Nurses Association, in support.
Redner 35
Joy Gonsolin, neonatal intensive care nurse, seventeen years, strong support.
Redner 23
Sandra Delgadillo, RN for thirty five years, lifelong resident in California, and I strongly support this.
Redner 18
Tova Lichman, I've been a critical care nurse for six years, in strong support. Selena Howe, a nurse practitioner, RN for thirteen years, strong support. Thanks.
Redner 39
I'm Victoria McCaskill, been a nurse twenty six years and in strong support.
Redner 62
Austin Stoker, strong support. CNA nursing representative and RN. Thank you.
Redner 4
Michelle Gaffney, CNA RN. I worked in the ICU for eleven years, strong support.
Redner 1
Thank you all for being here. With that, opposition, come on up. Sarah, if want to stay, you can just take the other chair. Okay. When you're ready, gentlemen.
Redner 20
Good afternoon. Good afternoon, chair and members. George Sorries with the California Medical Association. We have a respectful opposed position on the, the previous version of the bill before the, substantial amendments that came from this committee. I want to highlight our appreciation for the conversation we've had with the author, her staff, and this committee over the past few weeks, and we look forward to continuing that work.
Redner 63
We share the author's commitment to protecting patient safety and preserving the integrity of clinical decision making. We do not have concerns of the section of the bill requiring entities to adhere to strict confidentiality standards regarding the use of medical information. However, we are still reviewing the recent amendments from this committee and believe that they move in the right direction to preserve responsible AI tool uses for physicians. In current practice, many AI enabled tools are embedded in electronic health records and clinical workflows to improve accuracy, reduce administrative burden, and enhance patient outcomes. These include clinical decision support systems, predictive analytics for early detection of deterioration, and tools that assist in summarizing complex medical information.
Redner 20
We look forward to continuing to refine the language in this bill to ensure that the positive impacts impacts are felt by clinicians and the patients they help to provide care to. AI in health care today functions as a tool, not as a substitute for physician expertise. Physicians remain responsible for interpreting AI generated recommendations, validating their accuracy, and making final clinical decisions. We appreciate the considerations of of our remaining concerns, and, I'm happy to answer any questions at the appropriate time.
Redner 40
Good afternoon, chair and members. Mark Farruca on behalf of the California Hospital Association representing nearly 400 hospitals and health systems in California, respectfully oppose unless amended to AB nineteen seventy nine. Do want to acknowledge the substantive committee amendments to this bill that we are still in the process of reviewing. And also, I want to thank the author and her staff for the ongoing discussions and engagement and and also echo the comments about continuing those discussions. But just wanted to point out that the use of AI in California's hospitals and health systems assists licensed professionals.
It does not replace them. These are patient centered tools delivering real improvements and outcomes. For example, the use of AI in imaging and radiology is reducing error rates and increasing early detection. AI reduces administrative burden, streamlines clinical documentation, and helps providers spend less time on paperwork and more time with patients. AI tools are embedded in the electronic health record platforms that providers not only use every day but are required to use to comply with the state's data exchange framework.
Redner 56
AI technology represents a meaningful opportunity to reduce diagnostic disparities and extend specialist level care to rural and underserved communities. Hospitals already developing these tools with governance structures, performance reviews, and post implementation monitoring in place. We would urge that in considering these proposals that frameworks should build on the existing infrastructure, not substitute for it with restrictions that delay adoption or limit the clinical judgment of licensed providers in determining how these tools are used in their practice. For those reasons, we remain opposed unless amended, but, again, appreciate the amendments thus far and the ongoing discussions.
Redner 1
Thank you so much. Anyone else here in opposition? Name, organization, and position.
Redner 21
Madam chair and members, MJDS on behalf of Kaiser Permanente in opposition. Thank you.
Redner 24
Thank you, chair and members. Ryan Perini on behalf of ATA Action in opposition. Thank you.
Redner 15
Brent Spencer with the California Radiological Society in respect for opposition.
Redner 35
Annaly Augustine with the Civil Justice Association of California, respectfully opposed. Thank you.
Redner 36
Good afternoon, chairmembers. Jose Torres with TechNet in respect for opposition.
Redner 29
Good afternoon, chair and members. Moira Top here on behalf of BioCom. We're a bit of a tweener. We have an opposing, less amended position. We very much appreciate the amendments already and look forward to
Redner 45
Madam Chair members, John Winger, on behalf of the Advanced Medical Technology Association, AVIMED, also have an oppose unless amended, position and look forward to continuing the conversations.
Redner 1
Thank you. Seeing no further opposition, we'll bring it back to the dais. Madam vice chair? No? No?
Redner 4
I don't even know what to do with myself if nobody has any comments. So, madam chair, I wanna thank you for this, piece of legislation. I think it is, when you read it, and I think this is kind of what I heard from the opposition, which I would deem friendly opposition, hopefully, is you clearly have spent a lot of time thinking about researching, understanding the way AI is being deployed in health care settings, talking to the workers who are on the front lines of interacting with this artificial intelligence, and ensuring that it can it can continue to be used because I imagine, you know, and we heard this from, there are times when it's helpful and the workers are the ones who know that best. At the same time, there's a reason in the health care setting we license our professionals because we expect a certain level of care. And so this bill really focuses on retaining, I think it's important to note, retaining the judgment of licensed professionals.
Redner 1
That's sort of the standard you're setting forward, and it's one that California has accepted for as long as I've been alive, but I imagine a lot longer than that. And so, honestly, I think this updates the law to meet where we are today. And so and I also really appreciate the privacy protections. I I share your concern about people putting their medical records into these systems and not even understanding what happens next. I will tell you, I have family members for whom that is true.
And no matter how many times I yell at them, they don't listen to me. So maybe we better update the law. So I really do appreciate this, Bill. I appreciate your work. I appreciate your collaboration with us on, working on the technical aspects.
And with that, would you like to close?
Redner 39
Thank you. I, wanna appreciate, Michelle Vo and Sarah Folkes and Debraji for testifying today in support of this bill. At the end of the day, we are in a greenfield space where we really need to make sure that we are fully understanding the consequences of integrating AI, incredibly powerful tool, into our health care system, especially this bill has two major components to it. Cherry, you've alluded to one. And we just wanna make sure that, that facilities don't use the sole output of of clinical decision support systems as the guide for establishing basic form of care and, that we are able to preserve and include the professional judgment of health care professionals, nurses in in this, in our health care space as well.
With that, I respectfully request your I vote.
Redner 2
Item number four, a b nineteen seventy nine by assembly member Bonta. The motion is due pass as amended to appropriations. Barakahan. Aye. Barakahan.
Aye. Macedo. No. Macedo. No.
Brian DeMio? Hoover? No. Hoover, no. Irwin?
Lowenthal? McKinnon? Ortega?
Redner 2
Helleran, aye. Petrie Norris? Aye. Petrie Norris, aye. Ward, Wicks, Wilson.
Redner 1
That has four votes. We'll leave it on hold for the absent members. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Thank you so much. We'll move to miss Ponta's second bill. Thank you. Thank you. AB twenty ninety two.
Redner 39
Thank you so much. And in in light of the, early motions, I will, keep my opening remarks very brief. This is a highly technical bill, but, I wanted to thank the committee, for their work on this, bill, and, we will be accepting the, committee amendments, first and foremost. AB twenty ninety two, just to be able to help us understand, establishes the California Department of Social Services or CDSS as the lead agency with the statutory authority to manage the early childhood integrated data systems or ECIDS. This bill also creates an interagency task force to ensure that California can integrate siloed information from various state agencies serving children from birth to age five.
Redner 32
California has built the foundation to begin implementing a state ESIDS, and it's very important with the master plan for early learning and care, which highlights the ESIDS as a critical tool for state for the state to create a robust early learning system that supports all children learning and developing in in their growth. The state has been able to produce a knowledge brief, conduct a pilot program led by the Santa Clara County Office of Education to share learnings and the best practices at the local level and establish an IT infrastructure for ESIDS. Now, we are left with the ability to make sure that we are implementing an ESIDS infrastructure and an IT infrastructure that really enables us to be able to integrate, and consume this data in a way that is protective of, the children, families, and, and providers who will be captured in the integration of this data to ensure that we don't have a child deserts childcare deserts, and we understand outcomes for children aged zero to five in a very robust way, particularly when disaggregated by race and income. I want to clarify that this bill includes that e ECIDS only analyzes de identified cohort level and summary or aggregate data and only shares this data with the agencies on the task force.
Redner 39
ECIDS does not analyze or create profiles on individual children's data, and ECIDS complies with all applicable state and federal privacy laws, which include but are not limited to HIPAA, FERPA, CMIA, and HIPAA. In addition, ECIDS only integrates existing data. It does not collect any new data. Here to testify in support are two education data experts, Melissa Valenzuela Stucchi, who is the director of preschool through sixteen researcher at Ed Trust West, and doctor Matthew Tinsley, is the director of education initiatives and policies at the Santa Clara County Office of Education.
Redner 41
Good afternoon, chair and members. My name is Melissa Valenzuela Stucchi, and I am the director of p sixteen research at Ed Trust West, proud sponsors of AB twenty ninety two. Every year, California invests billions of dollars in critical early childhood programs, like head start, special education services, transitional kindergarten, and home visiting. Yet because our agencies sometimes operate in silos, we cannot currently answer the most basic questions about who's being served by our systems, how well, and what improvements are needed. When data is disconnected, children fall through the cracks.
Redner 63
AB twenty ninety two is, at its core, an equity bill designed to change that by enabling the completion of the state's work to create an early childhood integrated data system or ECIDS. Critically, this bill is not asking the state to collect new data, but rather authorizes DSS to ingest data that state agencies already collect. It creates a structured and meaningful stakeholder process to determine exactly what data linkages are necessary, determine which specific questions need answering for program audits and evaluations, and ensures that governance processes include robust data security safeguards. In alignment with the state's master plan for early learning and care, previous state investments have supported the development of the IT infrastructure for this data system. ESIDS would sit within California's Health and Human Services Agency's data hub, a lockbox for confidential record level legally protected data.
This hub was purposefully built to support cross departmental program analysis in a secure manner that does not allow for extraction of personally identifiable information. California leads the nation in so many ways. When it comes to completing our early childhood integrated data system, however, we're a bit behind. States leading the way in this work as well as local bright spots like the Santa Clara county Santa Clara County Office of Education are proof that responsible governance that securely connects the dots between fragmented systems improve outcomes for children and families and make sure public dollars are well spent. As a data driven equity organization, safeguarding data security, proactively protecting privacy, and incentivizing data minimization are always among our top priorities.
They go hand in hand with creating a functional modern data ecosystem. The amendments before you reflect constructive language from the committee as well as language, from national data privacy experts to strengthen the bill's privacy provisions and explicitly align it to current state and federal laws. As a state, we can't close gaps in services and nurture the whole child while flying blind. AB twenty ninety two provides the framework to finally connect the dots for California's children and families. We respectfully ask for
Redner 24
Good afternoon, chair Bao Cahan and committee members. My name is doctor Matthew Tinsley. I'm the director of Education Initiatives and Policies at the Santa Clara County Office of Education. SCCOE believes that a comprehensive state level ECIDS is necessary to assess the impact of California's investments in child development and early education. Through more than a decade of work, we have demonstrated that SSIDs assigned to children in our state preschool program follow them when they later enroll in our county's schools.
Redner 64
We've also found that data from the California Immunization Registry could allow children to be assigned CALPADS SSIDs before they enroll in school. In 2019, we sponsored legislation that would have authorized local education agencies to assign SSIDs to children enrolled in subsidized early learning programs. We are the resource and referral agency for Santa Clara County, but there is no systemic way for us to know how many children are receiving subsidized care
Redner 64
A four year old child can be enrolled in transitional kindergarten in the morning, voucher funded childcare in the afternoon, and ELOP funded after school programs with a different provider for each. Without an ESIDS, it's impossible to know how many unique children these programs serve, let alone their longitudinal impact on child outcomes. A statewide ESID should have the following features. It should build on existing data systems. It should include participation by every provider delivering the included programs, and all data in the ESIDs should be available to support analysis subject to the appropriate privacy protection.
Only a statewide ECIDS can leverage the data already being collected to support a whole child cradle to career approach. I'm happy to answer any questions that the committee may
Redner 1
Thank you. So much. Anyone else here in support of this bill? Name, organization, and position.
Redner 55
Good afternoon. Tony Anderson, the Association of Regional Center Agencies in support.
Redner 18
Raquel Morales on behalf of Ed Trust West in support, also doing a me too for Californians together.
Redner 1
Thank you. And Saravages with Children now in support. Thank you. Thank you. Seeing no additional support, opposition, Tracy, you coming?
Redner 14
should be pretty quick. So hi, everyone. Tracy Rosenberg with Oakland Privacy. We are a statewide coalition that focuses on safeguards and guardrails in the interest of privacy, protection, civil rights, and community consent. Firstly, we wanna thank the author for the constructive conversations we've had in the office.
They have been substantial and substantive, and the bill is, we think, in much better shape as a result. What I will say is, you know, certainly, big data projects always give privacy advocates a bit of a case of the heebie jeebies. So we are, you know, concerned that there aren't loopholes in the language. So we are going to continue to kind of think that through, and there may be some other things that will come up as the bill kinda moves through the process. The one thing that I wanna say today is there was one suggestion that we had made, which I don't think was was picked up.
Redner 36
I just wanted to kinda get it on the record, which we were hoping that the data sharing agreements between the multiple agencies that are on the commission could be affirmatively stated to be available as public records. And I just wanna say the bill doesn't say that they're not available as public records, but I do a lot of public records work, and sometimes it can be awfully hard to get things. So I think that would be helpful because certainly if there are issues down the line and concerns, it would be helpful for privacy groups to be able to sort of access what's going on here, what are the elements that are being shared, what are the mitigations that may have to happen. So I just wanted to put that on the record, and, otherwise, thank the committee for their time on the bill. Thank you.
Redner 1
Thank you so much. Any other opposition here in the room? Seeing none, we'll bring it back to the committee. Yeah. Miss Pelerin.
Redner 60
Thank you to the author. This is a great bill. I do think that data drives decisions, so having this data is really gonna be imperative. I just saw in the amendments that it talked about, that it restricts CDSS to only using data available in nine education databases. How many education databases are there, and what are those nine that are gonna
Redner 39
Yes. And there are more than that, quite honestly. I think we work with the committee to try to address the committee's concerns of the broadness of the of the database that the databases that we were pulling from, and, we have limited it to a a more reasonable set for now with the understanding that should the task force determine that they need additional datasets that they will come back to the legislature for that. I'm going to read the comprehensive list and and hope that that includes the nine, but it's the California well, I'll read the broader list. The California Early Care and Education Workforce Registries, the Credentials Automated System for Education, the California Statewide Assignment Accountability system, the accreditation data system, the California longitudinal, pupil achievement data system, the migrant student information network articulation, system stimulating inter institutional student transfer, California preschool data collection system, the child development managed information system, and
Redner 39
preschool language and information census system. And I will follow-up with you on the specific nine, but, basically, we went with the data sets that we knew would be of primary use and need for to be able to fully understand the early childhood programming involved. And and I'm sorry that I don't have that in my many, many notes here. Apologies to
Redner 1
I just texted them to you, Ms. Ella. It's really just blown away, but there were nine education databases.
Redner 60
Yes. Yeah. And so important to have that data to make really good decisions about early childhood.
Redner 39
Early childhood education system. And in order for us to be able to make good policy decisions and implementation decisions, we need to do a better job of streamlining that,
Redner 1
Seeing no further discussion, I will tell, the opposition that this, during the course of this conversation, we get these bills quite frequently because, honestly, government is so fragmented not just in this space, but across we've seen these bills in the homelessness space, in other spaces where we're trying to coordinate the services we provide, and people have privacy concerns. And so I said to my team, you know, this actually seems like the perfect place to have a conversation about is there a way to do a privacy forward anonymous sharing of data, an identifier the state has that allows us to share across agencies that has no identifying information. And seeing as this is zero to five, well, they're born and they go into the system. This is where we catch them. Maybe we could do that.
So maybe you will sponsor that bill next year. Because I actually think that data sharing is really valuable, but I also understand that as I was reading this as a parent, I was like, oh, you're gonna have a profile on my child, and you're the government. And my husband couldn't decide if he felt that way because I'm the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, and we hate lists. We don't wanna be on lists. But history teaches us lessons, so maybe that's something other people should adopt.
But, or it's just, you know, people are uncomfortable with government sort of having this much data about themselves. And so I do really wanna so I think we should be thinking about how we can do better data sharing in a privacy protective way and really being forthright in moving that. Maybe you'll sponsor that next year. But I wanna thank the author, for her work on this, for working very closely with the committee to minimize data, to be more privacy protective, to make sure that as we do this really critical work, we're doing it in a way that is meeting the needs of the kids, but also not creating, massive amounts of data that may not be needed. And I think the amendments reflect that.
So with that, would you like to post?
Redner 39
Yes. And I will say, to the opposition that, I'm very open to making sure that our public agencies are being fully transparent in their in their MOUs to the extent that they don't reveal any personalized data or, know, abuse any of the privacy of the data included in that. We are happy to consider that along the way. And I wanna appreciate Oakland privacy, my Oakland privacy, for always being so incredibly thoughtful in this area. With that, I respectfully request your aye vote and know that this establishment of ESIDS will and this task force will go a long way towards ensuring that our earliest learners have all of us working on their behalf in a very thoughtful way.
So thank you.
Redner 2
Item number five, a b twenty ninety two by assembly member Bonta. The motion is due pass as amended to appropriations. Baruchan. Aye. Baruchan.
Aye. Mosito. Aye. Mosito. Aye.
Brian, De Mayo, Hoover, Irwin. Lowenthal. McKinnon. Ortega. Aye.
Ortega. Aye. Patterson. Aye. Aye.
Kelleran. Petrie Norris. Aye. Petrie Norris. Ward.
Aye. Ward. Aye. Wicks. Wilson.
Redner 1
Thank you. Thank you, madam chair. And, miss Ortega, if you wanna go next, I know the nurses probably need some sleep, we can get them out of here. When you are ready, miss Ortega.
Redner 21
Thank you, chair and members, for the opportunity to present a b twenty five seventy five today. First, I'd like to thank the chair and the committee staff for their work on this bill, and I will be accepting the committee amendments. AB twenty five seventy five is built around a simple principle. In health care, artificial intelligence should only support clinical judgment, not replace it.
Redner 21
AI may offer the promise AI may offer promise, but it can still get it wrong. AI can also reflect the same biases that already exist in the data they were trained on. For example, we've seen algorithms determine that black patients had a lower likelihood of adverse health outcomes than white patients simply because their data was based on a system that has historically spent less money on them. These flaws in AI put health care workers in an impossible double bind. Their employers are using these tools and making workers follow the output.
But if the AI is wrong and the patient is harmed, it is the worker and not the AI who faces liability. Follow the machine and get blamed. Override the machine. Risk retaliation. To share, testifying in support with me today is president of the California Nurses Association, Sandy Redding, and also with me is Sarah Fox from the California Labor Federation.
Redner 46
Cucumber. Thank you. Good afternoon, chair and members. My name is Sandy Redding. I'm a registered nurse and president of the California Nurses Association, which is proud to cosponsor a b twenty five seventy five.
Redner 1
When employers expect nurses to rely on technology that we cannot meaningfully evaluate, object to, or override, our patient's safety is at risk. After more than thirty years as an operating room nurse, I know that safe patient care is never just about what is on a screen or in a chart. Patient care is about understanding the human being in front of us through assessment, listening, observation, and evaluation. Patient care is more than just executing the prediction that technology has generated. For example, in the emergency department, an AI triage tool might estimate a patient's severity of illness as low and not have a triage nurse check on them for several hours.
Redner 46
A triage nurse may look, touch, or smell a patient and immediately know something's off. It's just in our gut. Maybe the patient is pale or their skin is cold to the touch, they barely hold themselves upright or are obviously minimizing symptoms. The nurse knows through her professional judgment that the patient needs care sooner than the AI tool predicted. For instance, a patient could come in with epigastric pain right here, and AI tool could think it's a stomach issue, but it's actually a deadly heart attack.
Using our judgment as nurses, we must be able to care for our patients without being pressured by our employer to defer to a machine. Another example is that an automated discharge AI tool may say that a patient can be sent home because their vital signs are stable. Their heart rate's okay. Their respiration's okay. But, actually, they're unconscious, and this this happens.
Right? They generate these automated discharges. The nurse should be able to override that AI tool. And hospitals and tech developers should not be able to escape responsibility for unsafe AI systems just because a clinician is somewhere in the loop. That clinician could be me.
Nurses are not anti tech. I'm an OR nurse. We deal with tech all the time, and we save lives, and we use everything at our disposal to help you with your when you're on the table. To ensure that we can still but nurses simply want to ensure that we can still question, intervene, and protect our patients when there's something wrong with the tools our employers are asking us to use in patient care. I respectfully ask for you to trust your nurses and for an I vote.
Thank you, miss Fox. Madam chair, members Sarah Fox, California Federation of Labor Unions, we're proud to cosponsor this bill. It's part of
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a package of bills that we're working on to establish worker technology rights as labor standards for the 20 century. And the opposition that are are gonna come up, they wrote in their coalition letter that, quote, we have a shared obligation and commitment to ensure that these AI tools are developed and deployed responsibly, equitably, and transparently. And we agree with that sentiment, but it's not enough to just have obligations and commitments by the deployers. It's not sufficient to just have a human in the loop when one human is dealing with powerful black box technology like generative AI. What workers, patients, and the public need are guardrails in law to ensure that a human is in command.
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What a b twenty five seventy five does is codify guardrails necessary to ensure that licensed health human health care professionals are in command and can use AI tools to benefit patients safely, equitably, and transparently. The requirements do three things to create these conditions. They ensure health care workers have enough data to make informed decisions through pre use notification. They give them a real right to override or comply with AI by preventing discipline or retaliation for doing so, and they ensure fair accountability through liability standards. This also creates real incentives for developers to build safe, thoroughly tested AI tools that that benefit patients.
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This is especially important as the federal government is loosening regulations around FDA approval of clinical decision support systems. Innovation and regulation can and have coexisted for years. We see that in pharmaceuticals, medical devices, precision medicine, and many, many other areas. This bill simply puts in place the accountability and guardrails to support the safe development and deployment of AI in health care, and we urge your eye vote.
Redner 1
Thank you so much. Anyone else here in support of this bill? Name, organization, and position.
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Kermann Comste with the California Nurses Association, sponsor of the bill and also registering support for the California Faculty Association. Thanks.
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Hi. My name is Susan Varella. I'm a registered nurse. I am with CNA, and I'm for the bill. Thank you.
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My name is Sarah Fried. I am an oncology nurse for thirty years, and I encourage you to say yes to this bill.
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Janui Brown, registered nurse, thirty nine years with CNA, and I strongly support.
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Sherita Moore with Hernan Strategy Group on behalf of Communication Workers of America District nine in support.
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I'm Victoria McCaskill, nurse for twenty six years, a member of CNA, and I strongly support.
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Good afternoon. Jennifer Robles with Health Access California, also registering support for the California Panethnic Health Network and Western Center of Law and Poverty. Thank you.
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Selena Howe, nurse practitioner, a nurse for thirteen years, strongly support. Thank you.
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Navne Purrier on behalf of the California School Employees Association, in support.
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Ramon Castoblan, California Alliance for Retired Americans, also a public health professor in support.
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Thank you. And the opposition when you're ready. Think, folks who spend all their time in health committee are now here today, so welcome.
Redner 62
All right. Good afternoon, madam chairwoman and assembly members. I'm Scott MacDonald. I'm a physician, and I trust nurses. I'm also a, licensed or a board certified clinical informatician.
And that's basically using health IT and data to improve health and health care. I work at UC Davis as the chief medical information officer. And in that role, I regularly evaluate, deploy, and monitor impacts from the tools that this bill addresses. Every day, my colleagues, including RNs and pharmacists across the state, use AI and decision support tools to enhance the quality of care that we provide Californians. I oppose the current a b twenty five seventy five as without further, amendments as its overly broad characterization of these tools would create operational burdens and liability concerns.
I question the assumption in this bill. In the current state, these tools never really force an action. In fact, we expect all of our clinicians to use their professional judgment when interacting with these systems. An alert on a screen cannot force an action, and the accountability really follows institutional policies, not what's on the screen. We, like many systems, have robust systems in place to assess accuracy and bias concerns from the AI, which is certainly true.
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I'm an AI realist, and I know all the potential harm in AI, but I also can see a lot of the potential benefit. And we always involve effective professions in our governance processes. These tools provide value by synthesizing or presenting information that would be otherwise be time consuming or effortful to determine manually. And this bill would greatly hamper not just new tools, but optimization of existing tools such that there's a risk to never even use or even deactivate important functionalities that currently protect patient safety. The definition of clinical decision support does not clearly exclude well understood and very low risk rule based tools that prevent medication interactions, help track preventative care, or surface gaps where patients are not receiving the best evidence based therapies.
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The specific disclosure requirements also do not align with the different types of AI. Many of these requirements in the bill are impossible to describe with the tools based in generative AI, although they're good for machine learning type AI, or they're just simply not relevant with simpler forms of decision support. The time frames for the notification would also interfere with operations and delay appropriate care when supply chains are affected by shortages and natural disasters, and we use the CDS tools to prompt alternate therapies. Lastly, there's no real feasible technical solution to add patient facing disclosures in for these cases, especially when individuals are merely part of a population level analysis. So I would urge significant changes to this bill if it is to progress and to avoid negative unintended consequences on our patients' safety and quality.
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Good evening, chair and members. George Sorries with the California Medical Association. We're here in opposition to a b twenty five seventy five by assembly member Ortega. We appreciate the chair and the committee staff's recent work on the amendments. We're still reviewing those, and we believe they do move in the right direction, but we do have con significant concerns with the bill.
This bill would still put numerous new documentation and notification requirements on physician practices that are using AI tools to help deliver safe and effective patient care. This bill continues to risk creating unintended consequences that could ultimately harm the very patients it seeks to protect. Physicians across California, are already facing unsustainable level of administrative workload. Again, studies consistently show that doctors spend nearly as much time on documentation and compliance as they do on patient care, which routinely leads to professional burnout. The requirements put forward in this bill will still ultimately lead to physicians not using helpful tools to assist in patient care.
Solo and smaller physician practices are just beginning to utilize AI tools. This bill can reasonably lead to these physicians and their practices missing out on the benefits of such tools. These tools help identify early warning signs of serious conditions, reduce medication errors, improve diagnostic accuracy, and assist in clinical note taking. Additionally, this bill introduces legal and operational uncertainty for physicians. This ambiguity may lead to an increased administrative burden and defensive practices that detract from patient care.
At a time when California is grappling with physician shortages, burnout, federal funding cuts to health care, and access, to care challenges, we should not we should be reducing administrative burdens, not expanding them. This bill would only add to those issues. Every additional minute spent on administrative tasks is a minute taken away from direct patient care. We fully support and always have supported appropriate oversight of emerging technologies, including AI. However, the oversight must be clear, targeted, and carefully designed to avoid unintended consequences.
AB twenty five seventy five does not meet that standard. For these reasons, we respectfully request that you vote no on this bill today. Thank you, and I'm happy to answer any questions.
Redner 1
Thank you. Anybody else here in opposition to the bill? Name, organization, and position.
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Mark Faruca on behalf of the California Hospital Association in opposition.
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Madam chair and members, MJDS on behalf of Kaiser Permanente in opposition.
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Madam chair and members, Annalie Augustine with the Civil Justice Association of California, respectively opposed.
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John Winger on behalf of the Advanced Medical Technology Association, Avamed in opposition.
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Laura Ben on behalf of California, team member of commerce in opposition.
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Thank you, chair and members. Ryan Perini on behalf of ATA Action and America's physician groups in opposition. Thank you.
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Ryan Spencer with the California Society of Pathologists, the California Radiological Society, and the California Podiatric Medical Association in opposition.
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Stephanie Roberson on on behalf of the Association for Dental Support Organizations, in respectable opposition, and align our comments with the California Medical Association. Appreciate the work that the author has done so far. Thank you, ma'am.
Redner 1
Thank you all. Seeing no further opposition, we'll bring it back up to the dais. Questions, concerns, comments? Miss Future Norris.
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Well, thank you, madam chair. So as I listened to the author's presentation, the feedback Strange interaction. Okay. Anyway, we're back. So as I listened, to the authors, the presentation, Still fuzzy.
And the proponents' comments and the opposition's comments, it feels like everybody is on the same page when it comes to, if I understand it, with this sort of central I need to move my phone. This is insane. Okay. Hello?
Redner 32
Okay. Yeah. That one is broken. Okay. It seems like everyone kind of is on the same page when it comes to the foundational premise of the bill.
So So if I understand the foundational premise, and I think miss Vlach, you said it as well, is that the clinician should have the final say and that the clinician should be making decisions utilizing the best available tools and the best available technology. So I guess before I I move on, is that indeed does everyone agree with that statement? Yes. Yeah. So I feel like there's I feel like there is a landing spot, but I am concerned, and I I shared my concerns with the author, that the way that the bill is drafted now will actually make it impossible for clinicians to have access to the best available tools and technology.
I think the opposition raised two issues. Number one, that the way that AI is defined in the bill would actually sweep in many clinical decision, you know, making tools that have been used for, like, decades. And I would imagine have made your job easier and have made all of our health care professionals more effective. And I think the other concern I have is related to this kind of ninety day notification on a regular basis. It just seems like that's completely impractical when you're, again, trying to utilize best available tools and best available technologies to empower clinicians to make that final decision.
So I guess if you could speak to to those concerns, that would be helpful.
Redner 21
Yes. Happy to speak to those concerns. First of all, we are working on trying to narrow the scope of the different tools that are out there. So we and we recognize that AI is being used. I mean, we are far gone from the time where we used to look up or Google a symptom online and figure out if we had some deadly disease and it was just cold.
Now it's it's far more than that. It's more than just taking your doctor taking your notes. Now it's your doctor taking your notes and using that information to develop a plan for you in the future. These AI systems are far far ahead of anyone's thought of mind. We've seen similar concerns when we were talking about regulating, social media for children.
And the the it was too much, too burdensome. I mean, I would argue that, yes, we are working to try to narrow down the scope. But when it comes to the disclosures and it being too burdensome, I mean, this is our health we're talking about. These are decisions that are being made that are impact whether I live or die or whether my loved one does. I do not want a machine to have the final say.
I want my nurse or I want my doctor to be able to either agree with what's happening or disagree with it without having the burden of of having to do what it says. So, ultimately, that's what we're trying to get to. And so, you know, I I hear you on the ninety day notice. We'll continue to work on this, and I said I would. But, again, it shouldn't be the reason why we don't move forward.
Redner 32
And then if I can just ask a a follow-up question then to the opposition and sort of two clarifying questions. So number one, just to clarify that you, in fact, do agree with the you know, I guess there's sort of two premises of the the bill that seem important. Number one, that, the clinician should make should have the final say, and number two, that a clinician should never suffer retaliation if they're not obeying the machine.
Redner 1
And if if I may, the final say language was taken out of this bill and is now just in the Bonneville, so if that's helpful. Oh, which is you just put it on that.
Redner 58
Alright. Okay. And then, you know, I think I think, obviously, the other fund foundational concern is that somehow in the way that these tools are being deployed, that's taking power or decision making authority away from clinicians and imperiling patient safety. I guess, can you just talk to perhaps a few more examples of where some of these tools have actually led to advances in health care and enabled, more progress to be made on patient safety. And if you can speak to it sounds like you're concerned that taking away these tools would actually potentially jeopardize patient safety.
Redner 32
Can you explain a little bit more why that is and what changes could be made to the bill that would rectify or would would address those concerns?
Redner 62
Yes, yes. I think the clinician should be making ultimately be making decisions. I think the premise that we're not right now is facetious. I'm not aware of any systems where, you know, actions are being taken and patients are being administered drugs or given procedures without a human in the loop at this point. And I would advise against that knowing about the inaccuracies of AI at this current level of technology.
You talked about, you know, the best available this and best available that. I think a lot of it comes down to the best available governance at the local level, not at the state level. And that's something, our my institution has been very good about and a leader in developing. You know, how do we evaluate these new technologies to make sure that they're safe and unbiased, and having language in the bill more around making sure that organizations that are able to do that kind of governance should do that. Organizations that are under resourced probably need some sort of resource in order to do that as part of any deployment.
So I'd say that for the first couple of questions that you asked there. Around examples, I think probably the biggest win that we've had from AI is AI scribes. And I'm a primary care doctor in one day a week. And this is technology that records a visit, transcribes it, and then transform that raw transcription of the visit into a readable progress note. And it saves me half an hour to an hour a day that I'm no longer spending writing notes.
I'm a lot less cognitively exhausted at the end of the day. And when I'm with my patient, we've got data to back all this up from multiple sites around the country. The interaction between the physician and the patient is much better, because I'm focusing a 100% on the patient, not remembering details I need to put in my note later. And it doesn't replace my judgment, because it only transcribes and transforms what I talk about with the patient in the clinic to say, I think I'm considering these diagnoses and these treatments, and let's talk about those. And that's what ends up in the note.
Nothing that's been generated by the AI as a potential treatment plan. Does that answer? Okay.
Redner 1
Okay. And I apologize. These bills have been the author took significant amendments on these bills to line it up with the bond of bills, so I just wanna make sure we all were tracking what the bill before us does. Miss Wilson?
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Thank you. I'll be brief. I appreciate the author working, on this subject. It is it is it is important. Our health is extremely important.
Here's what I know is that human beings make mistakes and so does AI. Mhmm. And the combo of them too, you can leverage the best of both worlds and deliver a world class system. And so, I think we definitely need to have guardrails. We've had a conversation around that.
But I think the amends that you took, that that you took from committee, were great and made the bill better. I do still think there does need to be some narrowing around the disclosure, and you and you talk committed to working to figure that out. And because of that, I'll be sort of porting your bill today. Thank you.
Redner 1
Thank you, Ms. Wilson. Seeing no further questions or comments, I want to start by thanking the nurses. I think most of them left, so I'm sorry I get to the
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Will you share my gratitude with them? There's not a person in this room, I'm sure, who hasn't had a nurse care for him or her in a way that changed our lives and saved our lives at times. And the work is, I think, much more about your love of the people than anything else. So thank you, because truly, I know I'm with you. I know the medical profession wouldn't run without the nurses, so we need them.
So thank you for that, and thank you for advocacy today. I appreciate the author's work on this and working with Sallie Erbonta and us to to align these bills. It was really important that we got to a place where it was clear what was happening in the health code and what was happening in the labor code, and I think we got to a better place on that, which I really appreciate the author's attention to. But this bill now fundamentally does two things. One of the things it does is it ensures that the workers who are interacting with these AI systems every day know what they're dealing with.
What are the weaknesses of the systems? What should they be aware of? How do they interact with them in a way that ensures the patient is first? And I understand their concerns with the timeline. It was our opinion that that was in the jurisdiction of health committee, but I know the author is, committed to continuing to work on that, and I appreciate that.
I don't believe it is the author's intent by ensuring that ninety day notice to shut down the AI. In my conversations with them, that was not what I understood them to want to do, but I do think it's important. And and honestly, and I invite anyone to do this, and I'm sure many of the people in the room would invite it as well. I've gone to many of the hospital systems that are deploying these tools to be with the nurses, the doctors, the information experts, to see them, and to experience how they're being deployed. And, honestly, when I saw this bill, the ones I've seen are all doing this, frankly.
They are making sure the people who are deploying these systems are getting the information necessary to understand the weaknesses of the system because, otherwise, they won't make necessarily the right clinical decisions because have to understand the tools. And so that part of the bill frankly seems in line with what I've seen in the field. And so to the extent that there are amendments around what's needed there, I mean, I think that frankly is common sense and just making sure everyone rises to the level of some of the best practice in the business that I've seen. And then the part about, being rep there are two other things that are important. One is not being reprimanded for overriding the systems, which has been the theme today.
It's really important that the the clinical decision making is made by the licensed professional and that you should always be empowered to do that. And I appreciate the amendment you took that took out the part that said, you couldn't be reprimanded for just listening to the AI because I felt like that was inconsistent. And in fact, I want you to be using your license judgment, and now the bill really reflects that, which I appreciate. But the last piece that I wanna highlight that I think is, frankly, the most important part of this bill, maybe disagree with me, but from my opinion, is the piece about developers.
Redner 1
There is a real question out there right now around who holds the liability. When a clinical decision is made, and there's a nurse, and there's a doctor, and there's an AI system, and there's the hospital that chose the AI system and deployed it, and then there's a tech company somewhere who made the AI system. Honestly, the courts are trying to figure out where liability lands in that ecosystem. And I think clarity is the best thing, frankly, for everybody as a former litigator. And I don't think that anybody should be off the hook there.
And you're clarifying that if you develop these tools, you've got some skin in the game. You've gotta test them. You gotta make sure you're not harming patients the same way the practitioners in the hospitals have to make sure that they're using their judgment to make sure they're not harming patients. And so I think, you know, I've been in many conversations over the last year about this question of when will liability actually truly be reckoned with, and this might be the first bill where I see it really happening. And so I think it's a really important conversation.
I appreciate you having it, and I think it lands in the right place. So with that, would you like to close?
Redner 21
Thank you, madam chair, for all your comments today and the work of your staff. As I mentioned earlier, it's something that I'm gonna continue to work on. It is a priority of my office to continue the dialogue with the opposition. Nothing about this bill is fictitious. There's nothing to laugh about here.
I am concerned about AI moving faster than anyone ever imagined and, therefore, making sure that our nurses and our doctors have the final say in addition to figuring out who's accountable at the end of the day when you're developing these tools. There has to be some accountability and some liabilities somewhere. And right now, there there is in that space. And so I look forward to, working on this bill and appreciate, the opportunity to present it today. Thank you.
Yeah. We And I respectfully ask for an eye vote.
Redner 1
Is that right, madam secretary? No. We do not have a motion. We have a motion and a second. Let's call the roll.
Redner 2
Okay. And item number 18, a b twenty five seventy five by assembly member by assembly member Ortega, the motion is due pass as amended to appropriations. Bar Kahan?
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Bar Kahan, aye. Masito? No. Masito, no. Brian?
Aye. Brian, aye. De Mayo? Hoover?
Redner 2
Pellerin, aye. Petrie Norris? Aye. Ward, aye. Wicks?
Aye. Wicks, aye. Wilson? Aye. Wilson, aye.
Redner 1
The bill has eight votes. It's out, but we'll leave it open. Crouching members. Thank you, miss Ortega. Miss Irwin is not here.
Mister Lomondahl's not here. So, miss Wicks, you are up. Yes. We have I believe miss Wicks has two bills. Alright?
So we have four bills left. Alright. This is you can tell us, miss Erwin.
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Alright. This is I'm the bill I am presenting today is the final step in a seven year process to update and modernize seven years. A seven year process to update and modernize California's online charitable giving law. I'm accepting the committee amendments. In 2021, I passed a b four eighty eight, which was designed to bring transparency to the rapidly growing world of online charitable fundraising.
While a b four eighty eight has largely been successful, there were a few final issues that needed to be addressed. As some of you may recall from the speaker's outcomes review oversight hearing held in February, we found while the goals of transparency and fraud deterrence remain essential, their implementation has created unintended consequence for nonprofit partners and online platforms. So I am just going to skip the rest of what I had to say. And I have here Jeanette Brown, the bill's sponsor and the cal then which is the California Association of Nonprofits and Lauren Kimsey from PayPal.
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Great. Good evening, chair and members. I'm Jeanette Brown, policy director at Count Nonprofits, the advocacy voice for California's nonprofit sector. Thousands of nonprofits have faced challenges trying to comply or correct delinquencies with the DOJ's registry of charities and fundraisers. We are sponsoring this bill because process improvements are long overdue.
The status quo is inefficient and routinely creates unnecessary burdens on nonprofits. The registry's historic response times, customer service, and delayed processing have made compliance more difficult than necessary. Without reforms, minor clerical errors or delayed filings with the registry trigger a delinquent status. The consequences are significant for nonprofits. It effectively freezes grant payments, eligibility for critical funding, and access to online fundraising.
The punishment doesn't fit the crime. Attempts to correct and retain good standing can on average take forty five to ninety days and must be handled through paper US mail. We have many examples. Take the nonprofit Coco Kids. A simple clerical heir by the registry froze their state reimbursements for child care services throughout Contra Costa County.
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There was no way to call or email the registry for help. In a panic, their director drove to Sacramento to wait in the AG's office until someone agreed to assist. World Central Kitchen and Direct Relief, two of the world's most respected humanitarian groups, faced fundraising shutdowns in the middle of critical drives over minor paperwork issues and filing response delays. This bill aligns California with national standards, creating stronger due process for nonprofits while protecting donor assets. We are grateful for DOJ's collaboration on these changes that better balances their responsibilities with the needs of our sector.
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We also commend DOJ for helping nonprofits resolve a backlog of delinquencies over the last six months. And while we are optimistic a new registry website will improve processing times, these efforts are not a substitute for the fundamental reforms of a b 2221. For nonprofits to succeed, the state must make compliance achievable and not a barrier to their mission. We urge your support and thank the author for her leadership.
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afternoon, members. Lauren Kimsey on behalf of PayPal and PayPal Giving Fund, also known as PPGF. I'm here in support of a b twenty two twenty one by assemblywoman Erwin. We've been working with the assemblywoman for many years now and are very grateful and appreciative to her leadership and dedication to this issue. I'm also grateful for the opportunity to speak today.
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I'd like to especially thank the chairwoman for holding February's outcome review hearing where since those conversations led to the meaningful improvements we see today in this bill. Quickly about PPGF, we are an IRS registered five zero one c three public charity. Our mission is to empower everyday giving by helping people support the causes they care about. This model, as we've seen, has grown significantly. For example, in 2015, our platform collected about $30,000,000.
And as of 2025, we collected about a billion dollars, where 95,000,000 of that went to California charities. Overall and to date, we have gathered $4,000,000,000 and support over 200,000 charities in The United States and worldwide. Today, I will focus my comments on one issue we see every day in practice, which is good standing. Today, charities can fall out of good standing and be removed from fundraising platforms not due to misconduct, but because of administrative issues like minor filing errors, processing delays, or data mismatches. For platforms like ours, that impact is immediate because we must suspend fundraising and sometimes redirect donations away from the donors intended charity.
This undermines donor trust and can deprive nonprofits of critical funding often at no fault of their own. A b twenty two twenty one makes important progress by creating clear processes, defined timelines, and a pathway for charities to resolve issues before they face serious consequences. On that, we are supportive of a b twenty two twenty one as per your I vote.
Redner 1
Thank you. Anyone here in support of this bill? Name, organization, and position?
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Madam chair Stephanie Roberson on behalf of the League of California Community Foundation. You.
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Thank you, madam chair and members. Kesha Kumar with Life and Public Affairs on behalf of Candid in strong support and appreciation of the office for.
Redner 1
I'm excited for TechNet they got to support something. And anyone here in opposition to this bill? I'm seeing none. Oh, yeah. Miss Bellerin.
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So this is a great bill, and I have a team member over in Santa Cruz that's working on a number of cases around this issue for our nonprofits. I think there's still one outstanding, and she has asked that I coauthor. So if you'll take me, I would love to coauthor.
Redner 1
Seeing no further comments, I wanna thank the author for continued work on this and your work with the committee. I know that this took a lot of work to get to where it is. Really appreciate it. I think it's in a really good place and will help our consumers and on our own profits. It's a win win.
With that, would you like to close?
Redner 19
Yeah. And and I I would like to thank you for holding the, oversight hearing on, you know, in in response to, the speaker's desire to have more oversight on our bills. And I think this is as a legislature, we should really be doing this, tracking our our bills and continuing to meet with stakeholders and trying to fix issues that they've come up with as they've been trying to implement the bill. So this is still we're gonna continue to work with all the stakeholders and make sure that we get this right because I am leaving at the end of this year, and we don't wanna have another seven years of trying to figure out if if everybody is able to comply. So with that, I respectfully ask for your vote.
Redner 1
Thank you. And I do I agree. This is a perfect example of why the speaker's initiative on oversight is so critically important. So thank him for his focus on this. With that, let's call the roll.
Redner 2
Item number 16, a b twenty two twenty one by assembly member Erwin. The motion is due pass as amended to appropriations. Lauer Cahan. Aye. Lauer Cahan.
Aye. Macedo. Aye. Macedo. Aye.
Brian? Brian, I. De Mayo. Hoover. I.
Hoover, I. Erwin? I. Erwin, Lowenthal? McKinnar?
I. McKinnar, I. Ortega? I. Ortega, I.
Patterson?
Redner 1
That has 13. We will leave it open for absent members, but it's out. Okay. Mister Lowenthal is still not here. So, miss Wicks, you are up.
Miss Wicks, which would you like to present first?
Redner 1
Okay. Mister Patterson, this is the one you're recusing yourself of. Do want me to make that statement? Do you wanna make it?
Redner 29
I won't be personally offended. Madam chair members, I would like to begin by accepting the committee's amendment, and thank your wonderful committee staff. California children are growing up with access to an online world that was not built with them in mind. Last year, I did a bill, AB ten forty three, which essentially helped establish the Digital Age Assurance Act. This is an important piece of infrastructure of a bill so we can know the age of the people on the platform.
So the developers actually have what's called a knowledge standard so they know the age, of which then we can figure out all the other regulations we wanna do because now we know who is underage and who is not. That is the basic architecture and premise of the bill I did last year. Again, the bill went out into the wild. It's going to start be going into effect January 1. We've gotten a lot of feedback since the bill went in in was passed and signed into law.
The governor also had part of his signing, some stuff he wanted me to work on as well. So we're trying to figure that all out. So here we are in the process of figuring that all out. So what this bill will do building on October, it clarifies that age signal bracket data pertains to the primary user of the device. It specifies that the bill only applies to operating systems that have an account setup feature.
It provides guidance on what internal information can be used as clear and convincing evidence when there are conflicting age signals. It prohibits covered entities from promoting a user to provide different age information, and integrates websites that's a critical piece into the Digital Age Assurance Act. There's other issues that have been brought forth. The open source code community brought some issues forward, and my staff and I are continuing to discuss with them and see if we can figure out some solutions. And other people who've come out of the woodwork who wanna opine on this now are more than welcome to join the conversation and see if we can land this plane this year on a more comprehensive way to establish again the knowledge standard.
Nicole Rocha is here representing Children Now. And when the time is right, respectfully ask for an I vote.
Redner 3
Good evening, chair and members. This used to say good morning and now it says good evening. My name is Nicole Rocha. I'm here on behalf of Children Children Now takes a whole child approach to improving the lives of California kids and works across health, education, early childhood, and foster care to ensure all kids have the supports they need to thrive. Children Now was the sponsor of ten forty three last year, and we are in support of this measure.
First, a b fifth eighteen fifty six will extend the protections of a b ten forty three beyond apps to online products that are accessed through web browsers. And second, the bill adds additional clarity to situations where multiple members of a family share a device by providing that the provisions of the bill apply only with respect to the primary user. I'm happy to answer any more technical questions, but Children, now urges your I vote. Thank you
Redner 1
so much. Any other folks here in support of this bill? Name, organization, and position. Thank you. Seeing no further support oh, no.
Wait. One more. Oh, no. Your opposition. Okay.
Opposition. Come on up. You got up a little too fast. I wasn't sure. Thank you.
Redner 13
When you're ready. Yes. Hi, madam chair, members of the committee. Melissa Patak with the Motion Picture Association. We are in a position of oppose unless amended.
We've had very constructive conversations with the author, with staff, with you with the committee staff, which and we really appreciate all the amendments that, have been made so far. And we just have a couple of issues that we'd like to express. We put in, in our in our memo. We understand and agree with the desire and intent to protect children as they engage online with a variety of apps and websites. We also appreciate the desire to establish guardrails and safeguards around online engagement, and we do believe we have a positive contribution to add to the discussion.
Redner 9
A number of the streaming services allow for an account holder, the person who subscribes to the service and establishes the account, to create subaccounts and then to select appropriate content that can be accessed by those subaccount holders. We believe this accomplishes what the bill seeks to accomplish, to give app developers information about the age category of a user and provide access to age appropriate content. Many of the streaming services do this already and would rather rely on their own business model and own and their own information rather than the information provided by by the App Store or the web browser. We understand that the bill does contain a clear and convincing standard for companies to use their own data, but we don't think there's sufficient clarity around when an app developer can rely on the information it already has as provided by the customer. So the amendments we are requesting include clear recognition that this business practice, which for simplicity, we're calling a family account, but it could be a household account or a primary user account, that that having that if a streaming service has that model or any other app, This is not a carve out just for streaming services, but any other app developer has such a business model that it would satisfy the requirements of the bill.
Redner 13
And we continue to look forward we we look forward to continuing to work with the author as the bill moves through through the process. Thank you
Redner 58
Hi. Hi. My name is Kathleen Farley, vice president of litigation at Chamber of Progress, and I'm also the mother of two young children. Like many parents, I feel overwhelmed by the challenges of teaching my children to safely navigate the online world, which is now an unavoidable part of modern life. My five year old is already asking to use the internet to borrow our tablets and to play online games that he hears about from friends and their big brothers.
And candidly, the model that my own parents use just doesn't really translate to modern life because my mom's rule was you have to finish practicing the piano before you can play Treasure Math Storm. And that's just not the choice that I'm facing as a parent now. So I have been encouraged by the legislature's efforts to empower parents to make their own decisions about the media that their children access, much as we have done successfully in other contexts. Last year, we saw another example, the AB ten forty three, sort of tracking off of a tradition of voluntary reading systems that have long helped families navigate music, movies, television, and video games. After productive discussions, AB ten forty three did reach a place for age signaling where, as a First Amendment lawyer, I did not see code red constitutional alarm bells.
Redner 57
But I worry that the amendments before us are moving away from that careful balance and not just of constitutionality, but in terms of operability and practical implementation. The extension to websites really risks, as I read the as we read the text now, not does not leave open ample alternative channels of communication. The amendments other amendments also make the scheme less coherent and but and as the Supreme Court has said, wildly under inclusive by removing the requirement that operating system providers offer an account setup feature with age input. It's unclear why an operating system provider would continue to support multiple accounts per device if an when with an age signaling framework tied to them if it could avoid compliance by simply opting out. I urge the committee to clarify the operations of these provisions.
Redner 58
We echo the concerns about clear and convincing that were just raised, and in along with what was just raised, whether subaccount should be specifically defined or perhaps renamed. And also that we expressed some concern about deleting rather than clarifying the definition of user. Chamber of Progress and its partners are eager to engage further, and I welcome any questions.
Redner 1
Thank you. Additional witnesses in opposition. Name, position, organization.
Redner 53
Tim Lynch, representing the Entertainment Software Association. We're a tweener position. We've shared amendments with the author's office. We share many of the concerns of the MPA and have the added complexity of a single user across multiple devices and making sure we're serving agent appropriate content in that manner as well. So we look forward to continuing.
Redner 21
So I'm Chris Taylor. I'm a software engineer in the open source software community, and I respectfully oppose unless amended. And I I wanna thank assembly member Wix for giving us a shout out.
Redner 30
Good evening. My name is James Snow. I'm a retired technology professional, and I am also now a operating system provider as defined by a b, ten forty three. I strongly oppose this bill and would request that you respond to my repeated attempts at outreach to discuss the problems with the bill. Thank you.
Redner 1
Thank you. Thank you for being here. Seeing no further opposition in the room, bringing it back to the dais. Questions, concerns, questions? I said questions twice, I think.
Okay. Seeing none, I will, express my gratitude to the author. This committee last week, we heard assembly member Lowenthal's, age related legislation. And what underpins all of our efforts to protect children is this, legislation. It's our ability to know who the children are online, and you really are leading and enabling us to do so in a privacy protected way.
But this expansion to the websites is critically important to that work, and so I really appreciate what you're doing here. Also, I know the clear and convincing, evidence language that, the opposition doesn't love was in part to deal with the opposition's concerns. So I know you're trying, and I appreciate that. So, with that, would you like to close?
Redner 29
Thank you for that, and, welcome the conversation with opposition both up here and Herbert, King. I'm happy to chat after committee as well back there, okay, and have more conversations. It's a technical bill. Obviously, I think we're happy to continue to work on fixes. You know, we added the clear and convincing in an effort to try to remediate some of the issues.
So we'll keep working on that. So with that respectfully, I ask when I vote.
Redner 1
do have a motion in a second. Let's call the roll. Thank you, miss Petrie, Norris and Miss Ortega.
Redner 2
Item number 13 a b eighteen fifty six by assembly member Wicks. The motion is to pass as amended to appropriations. Vail Cahan? Aye. Vail Cahan, aye.
Mosito? Brian? Aye. Ryan, aye. De Mayo?
Hoover? Aye. Hoover, aye. Erwin, aye. Lowenthal?
Redner 2
Lowenthal, aye. McKinnar? Aye. McKinnar, I. Ortega?
Aye. Ortega, I. Patterson, abstaining. Pelerin? Aye.
Pelerin, I. Petrinoris? Aye. Petrinoris, Ward? Wicks?
Aye. Wicks, I. Wilson? Aye. Wilson, I.
Redner 29
Thank you, mister chair, and members. I wanna thank the committee staff again for their hard work, and we accept the committee amendments. Our job as legislators is to protect our communities, especially our kids, who are one of the most vulnerable. Our kids are the priority, and we need to make sure that, we protect their well-being. The digital landscape is continually changing, and new types of technology are becoming more accessible to our kids.
As a mom of two young girls, I continue to think about how all this technology will impact them as they grow up. More and more kids are using new technologies and AI chatbots. We have seen that there are so many risks to these new technologies, especially prolonged interactions with chatbots. The increase in prolonged interactions leading to harmful consequences that impact physical and mental health children are real. There have been numerous horrific stories of AI chatbots leading children to commit self harm, some of which even committing suicide.
Redner 27
Therefore, we need to ensure that there are basic guardrails for our kids to navigate online spaces safely. I'm proud to author AB twenty twenty three along with my joint author here, the chair of this committee, because we want to be sure that our kids are safe when they are using this technology. Specifically, a b twenty twenty three creates this comprehensive framework by regulating chatbots for children by requiring, one, age verification of users, as discussed in the last bill, risk assessments, safeguards, including default settings, parental control, noticing, and measures to prevent suicide ideation or self harm, prohibitions against targeted advertising to children and selling or sharing children's information, third party audits for compliance, amongst other things. This bill builds on the good work, from senator Padilla last year and miss Bauer Cahan, our chair here, who's been an a strong advocate in this space and has had the fortunate, although unfortunate, reality of getting to know a lot of the folks who've been negatively impacted by the technology. And I know she wants to talk about some of those experiences here.
Redner 29
We also have Nicole Rocha representing Children Now. And when the time is right, respectfully ask for an I vote.
Redner 1
I wanna begin by thanking assembly member Wicks for her partnership on this bill. As you may all recall, last year, I moved a bill through the legislature that dealt, frankly, in a more narrow way with chatbots. And after we saw efforts, by some to do this by ballot initiative, we decided to pair up, with senator Padilla and move this legislation in a way that would really put, children first and put the legislature at the forefront of solving this policy, here in the deliberative process. Yesterday, the three of us had the opportunity to meet Maria Rain. Maria's son, Adam, started to use ChatGPT for math help, frankly, like my own teenager does.
And Adam then started to have conversations with the chatbot about more personal things, and he went down the rabbit hole at the chatbot where eventually he was using it to give him advice about his challenges with his mental health until, it finally the last thing that chatbot said to him was, you don't wanna die because you're weak. You wanna die because you're tired of being strong in a world that hasn't met you halfway, and
Redner 1
The chatbot frankly told him how to take his life, and, she showed us this beautiful picture of Adam where he, it was taken just a few weeks before he died. He had asked the chatbot how to cover, the attempt that he had made just the night before to take his own life that the chatbot had guided him through and then told him how to hide it from his family. Adam was a basketball player. He was someone who loved his family more than anything. His best friend was his brother.
His little sister cherishes him to this day, and he is no longer with us because a chatbot told him how to take his own life. There is no other product that we would allow on the market to to harm our children in that way. And I and so to me, this is just common sense, that if you are going to create a product that we are going to put before our children, that it has to be safe by design, that you have to have tested it to make sure it will not tell my child how to die by suicide. Fundamentally, that seems common sense. And so I hope that the companies are already doing what's in this legislation because it is the bare minimum.
Gemini is now available in Google Classroom, which is available in most classrooms across the state. Our kids are in front of these chatbots every day. And we just need to make sure that when they are put in front of our children, they are not sycophantic. They are not going to cause them to be harming themselves. They are not going to be coaching them in eating disorder behavior, that they will not coach them in how to commit a mass shooting, one of the more recent cases that we've seen of the harms of these chatbots.
And so this bill does exactly that, and I'm incredibly proud of this work. It will lead the nation in protecting children from these chatbots, While I might add at the same time ensuring that we trust the chatbots that our children have, allowing them to engage with them in ways that are safe and to grow using them. And I will tell you that yesterday, the press asked Maria Rain, asked both of us, you know, what would you say to the parents? And, we gave very different answers. I talked about the benefits.
Maria's answers was, I wouldn't let your child near these things until we know they're safe. And we all understand why she said that, but it's California's job to make sure they're safe. And with that, I'll turn it over to Nicole.
Redner 30
I'm here on behalf Nicole Rocha here on behalf of Children Like I said before, Children Now takes a whole child approach to improving the lives of California kids and works across health, education, early childhood, and foster care to ensure that all kids have the supports they need to survive. Sorry. To thrive. I won't go through the the details of the bill since they've been covered already, but I will say from Children Now's perspective, the most meaningful part of this bill comes in the form of default settings for child users. Default settings place no additional onus on parents to activate safeguards for their children, but allow parents to opt out of those safeguards if necessary or if they feel that it's appropriate.
Redner 3
And so some of the defaults that have been included in this particular bill are no persistent conversational memory. Chatbots must operate in ephemeral mode, which means that it wouldn't carry from one conversation over until another. Similarly, the bill prohibits excessive sycophancy. Chatbots are also not allowed to send push notifications to children during school hours or when kids are supposed to be asleep, and there are default limits for chats. They're set to one hour per conversation, and a max daily time per platform is set to two hours.
These, will be really important protections for families trying to keep their kids safe and should also help limit the addiction that kids have to these spots. So Children Now urges an eye vote, and I'm happy to answer any questions.
Redner 59
Thank you so much. Are there any other persons in the hearing room in support of this measure?
Redner 24
Sean Bennett with the California Initiative for Technology and Democracy in support.
Redner 67
Diana Hawkins Manuelian with Mothers Against Media Addiction in support.
Redner 1
Crystal Strait, with Common Sense Media. Really appreciate a legislative solution to this. Thank you.
Redner 14
Tracy with Oakland Privacy Chair. Would it be okay to tween her very, very quickly right here?
Redner 14
Okay. Alright. You're very quick. We absolutely support online safety audits for chatbots. We would just make the point, as we did with Senator Padilla yesterday, that online harms don't turn off like a spigot at 18.
And we would like to see the online safety audits if we're going to set them up expanded to users of all ages because after all, everyone is someone's child. Thanks. That
Redner 34
Thank you. Ronak De with Cal Chamber. This is on. Right? Yep.
Yes. Okay. Thank you. Ronak De Alami with Cal Chamber in a respectful oppose unless amended position. Wanna start by really thanking the authors for inviting us to the table on this critical public policy discussion as we do share the goal of preventing harm to children.
You often hear us talk about supporting tools that can help with education, research, and innovation, and prepare our youth for a technology driven future, but this is not at all costs. We are committed to achieving these goals responsibly, balancing them with age appropriate guardrails to keep youth safe. And the legislature is the right place to for these complex conversations, not the ballot. We appreciate that AB twenty twenty three generally allows access to AI tools while ensuring different levels of protection through impact assessments, default protections, and parental controls. We do see some issues to work through, and we believe we can get there.
Redner 65
While we look forward to seeing the actual language, we appreciate that a couple of the amendments described in the analysis seem responsive to a few of our concerns by clarifying, for example, the scope, applies to child users and adding some clarity to some of the privacy and discrimination covered harm categories, tying them to applicable state and federal law. We still have some concern with the covered harm definition insofar as what's meant by psychological or emotional harm when the term, child spans a wide range of developmental stages up to the age of 18. We're also very interested to see the amendment prohibiting the sharing of audit reports with private advocacy groups as any sharing of this information with nongovernmental entities is highly concerning to us. Similarly, mandating public disclosure of detailed safety assessments for each company chatbot could discourage candid rigorous assessments over concerns that they could get used in litigation or by competitors. So we would like to see that limit as well as well as any regulatory authority to the AG, but we do think progress has been made on this.
Redner 34
Most importantly, amendments may have actually heightened one of our concerns that operators will have to foresee and foreclose against all possible risks of harm before making a chatbot available. This is an issue in terms of with less than clear standards with covered harm and liability being judged with the benefits of high sight hindsight. It's an incredibly high standard and significant liability risk should you miss something despite your best efforts, and that's something that smaller developers could really struggle with. And we also know that operators under the bill are any persons public or private who make chatbots available, so some folks may not be able to absorb those levels of risk. So that's something that we're looking forward to working through with the authors and really appreciate them for including us in the conversations.
Thank you.
Redner 50
Thank you, mister chair and members. Dylan Hoffman on behalf of TechNet and respectfully oppose unless amended to a b twenty twenty three. Also wanna share my colleagues' appreciation for the authors for involving us in these conversations as well as the work of this committee. I do appreciate some of the amendments. They do seem to be moving in the right direction.
So for the large part, my comments today will be to the bill in print, but we look forward to reviewing the language and continuing to make progress here. So I want to touch on four primary concerns with the bill. First, timing and overlap. SB two forty three was just enacted last year, went into effect this year, and companies are still in the process of building compliance systems. AB twenty twenty three creates overlapping and, in some cases, conflicting requirements on the same issues, such as disclosures and crisis response protocols Moving forward, before we understand how s p two forty three is working, risk creating confusion and undermining some of that compliance, look forward to, working out some of those kinks, and making sure that those, work effectively.
Redner 8
Second, the bill relies on on broad and highly subjective standards. My colleague mentioned, some of the definitions around psychological and emotional harm. When, those terms are difficult to define and and even harder to operationalize, consistently across, different products, And having an unclear standards can really impact our ability to comply effectively, which oftentimes reduces safety rather than enhances it. Third, we would like to address some of the overly prescriptive aspects of the bill, some of the mandates around time limits, design features, and system behaviors across a wide range of AI tools, and just highlight that because these tools vary considerably, oftentimes from a a homework companion to a more broad general purpose assistance, that a one size fits all approach to some of these risks may limit some of these beneficial uses without effectively targeting the highest risk scenarios. And finally, I wanna touch on the enforcement structure.
Redner 50
The bill creates multiple overlapping enforcement pathways, including private right of action, which increases the risk of duplicative and inconsistent litigation. With that said, we believe there is a path forward, and that's part of why our organizations and our coalition have been working and having great conversations with the author's office and stakeholders and plan to continue to do so. And with that, I appreciate your time today.
Redner 59
Thank you so much. Are there other persons in the hearing room in opposition to this measure?
Redner 35
All day. So, Emily Augustine on behalf of the Civil Justice Association of California also respectfully oppose unless amended at this time. Thank you.
Redner 27
Hayden Downey with the, Computer and Communications Industry Association. I to align our comments with the chamber, also in an opposed unless amended position. Thank you.
Redner 59
so much. We'll now turn it back to the dais. Questions, comments, concerns from colleagues? Mister Lowenthal.
Redner 24
Just very briefly, I wanna thank the authors for such meaningful legislation that affects my family. I appreciate the way you approach legislation, the way you're inclusive, the way you engage opposition. I wanna commend the two of you for creating a blueprint for the rest of us to be able to work on these types of issues, and the the work that's been done in this committee in this room, reverberates around the world, yeah, including this bill right now. I do have a question about the bill, that either you can answer. This bill, is not indicative or it does not narrow chatbots to any particular medium.
Correct? It can be chatbots, across toys, Internet platforms, not strictly social media. Correct. So if anybody was asking about a question, say, about social media restrictive of certain feature sets that may include chatbots, that would not remedy exhaustively everything that's in this bill correctly. Correct?
Redner 24
If there's other legislation that restricts the use of chatbots elsewhere strictly on social media, that doesn't remedy the tenants of this
Redner 24
Okay. Well, thank you again for for bringing this forward. I'm totally supportive of this and would like to be added as a coauthor if you have.
Redner 29
Yeah. We'll take you. We'll take anyone who has access to a green button.
Redner 19
I know we wanna be done, but I I'm I'm just curious if you have there was it's interesting to look at the opposition. Some of it is that it goes too far, and then there is from University of San Diego that it doesn't go far enough. So one of the things they mentioned was scheming where the if if you're doing a risk assessment that the chatbot would actually Mhmm. Lie. And the claim is that your bill is not explicitly calling that out.
So have have you looked at some of the issues that's that were brought up in the letter from this group?
Redner 1
I mean, it's really an interesting point because I have, you know, had the privilege to talk to some of the foremost experts in artificial intelligence in the world. And, part of what we're dealing with and the opposition is dealing with is that I think, honestly, it's virtually impossible to get something as a 100% safe, which is scary, but we all, I think, agree with that notion. And so the question is how do we get these as safe as possible? So, yes, I mean, we are already seeing examples of, AI systems that are scheming, that are trying to get around safeguards. Anthropic has disclosed instances of that nature, so people understand how it's happening.
But I think what this what this legislation does is really ensure that we are using the best in class attempts to get it as safe as possible, which is the stress testing, you know, the the assessments and making sure that, you know, there is independent eyes on that to to get it as safe as possible. And, hopefully, over time, that will become even better and better. But it's frightening to know that they won't be a 100%. Although I will say one of the things that makes AI safer is less memory. So that was mentioned by children now.
We know these systems, the longer they have the memory, the less, they are faithful to the safeguards that the companies are putting into them. And so ensuring that children's systems have less memory will inherently make them safer.
Redner 59
Seeing no other questions and comments, madam authors, would you like to close?
Redner 29
Sure. You know, we've been working really, in a very collaborative fashion with senator Padilla and senator Cabaldon on this as well. And so we've been trying to make sure we have, a good working relationship with our friends in the senate on such an important bill, which I think is is critical. I'll also say, we've had a really big tent in terms of wanting to make sure we're talking to all of the advocacy organizations that care about this, all of industry who cares about this, that it goes to the legislative process so that we can really hear from everyone on their points of view on this. But what we're really trying to do is solve a pretty simple problem as, my colleague here stated.
72 of teens access an AI chatbot. Seventy two percent of teens, many of them view it much more in a quasi human form than adults do. And they're very impressionable at that age, going through a lot of hormonal ups and downs, trying to figure out their identity, trying to figure out who they are as people. And if they start to view chatbots as quasi human and those chatbots are leading them down the wrong road, that is where we have grave issues. So that's what we're trying to solve here.
And with that, respectfully ask for an aye vote. And would you like to close
Redner 1
Sure. Yeah. Last year, Sewell Sotzer's mom was here in this committee talking about Sewell's life and how valuable it was in his life being taken by one of these chatbots. Yesterday, Maria Rain was in this building talking about Adam. One of the things that Maria told us was that prior to his death, Adam deleted everything on his phone except his, chatbot, history, and it was the only thing they found.
And she said it was a message to her from Adam that this should be her life's work, making sure she protects other children from suffering the same consequences. And so in his memory today, I respectfully ask for your high vote.
Redner 59
That is an incredibly powerful close. Now while she hasn't told me explicitly, I'm just going to assume that the chair has an eye echo on this bill. Madam secretary, can we call the
Redner 2
Yes. Item number 14, a b twenty twenty three by assembly members Wix and Bahar Cahan. The motion is due pass as amended to appropriations. Bahar Cahan. Aye.
Bahar Cahan. Aye. Mosito. Brian.
Redner 2
Brian, aye. DeMaio. Hoover? Er Hoover, aye. Erwin, aye.
Lohenthal? Aye. Lohenthal, aye. McKinnar? Aye.
McKinnar, aye. Ortega? Aye. Ortega, aye. Patterson?
Petrinoris? I. Petrinoris, I. Ward?
Redner 2
Excuse me. No. I'm sorry. I'm tired. Sorry.
Sorry. I okay. Patterson, Pellerin, I. Petrinoris was an I. Ward, ward, I.
Thank you. Wicks? Aye. Wicks, I. Wilson?
Wilson, I. Thank you. And some of the He meant Ellen Demayo.
Redner 24
Thank you, mister chair and members. Thank you for, I know it's the end of a long day. It's my fourth bill presentation today. It's we've all had those days. Tough to focus, on the big ones and this is big one.
I wanna thank you for the opportunity to present a b twenty one sixty nine, which would establish the Digital Choice Act. This bill is about one very simple concept. Californians should have intellectual property over their own digital footprint. They should have control over their own digital lives, not be locked into platforms. I want to begin by accepting the committee amendments.
I wanna thank you to to the chair and to the staff for their work on this bill. Today, users create years of photos, messages, relationships, content online, research online. However, if they wanna leave a platform, they often have to abandon that history and start over. AB twenty one sixty nine gives consumers the right to take their data with them. The bill requires social media companies and AI platforms upon request to provide a copy of the user's personal information, contextual data, and social graph within five business days in a portable and usable format.
That means consumers, not corporations, decide where the social graph they built, their memories, their contacts, their prompts, and their digital history goes. A b twenty one sixty nine also creates interoperability requirements so users can connect across services similar to how email works between providers. Consumers should not lose access to friends or communities simply because they choose to move a prod to a product that works better for them. Competition in the digital marketplace has been stifled because platforms benefit from lock in effects. If users can move their data and connections easily, new companies can compete on privacy, safety, innovation, and quality.
This is especially important for families and young people who should have the ability to move to healthier online environments without losing years of connections and content. I wanna provide a real world example of who this bill will help. Imagine, if you will, a teenage girl who's who's experiencing bullying and harmful content online. She's using one of the major social media apps. Over time, the platform's algorithm rapidly pushes content about extreme dieting, about appearance, and self harm.
She's also being bullied by classmates and comments and DMs. We've heard many of those firsthand stories here in this room. Her parents encouraged her to move to a safer platform with stronger moderation tools and a healthier algorithm, and she agrees to do that. However, today, that is very difficult. She's afraid that if she leaves, she may lose her photos and memories, her friends, her group chats, and communities years of content.
It is this lock in that keeps many people and especially young people on platforms that are harming them. With the Digital Choice Act, she could request a portable copy of her data and social graph and transfer it to another platform where technically feasible. She could move to a safer, youth focused platform without losing every everything she created online. Platforms would need to compete on safety and user well-being, not just on addiction and engagement. This bill includes clear guardrails.
Companies are not required to disclose proprietary algorithms, ranking systems, trade secrets, or internally derived analytics. California has always led the way on consumer privacy, and a b twenty one sixty nine is the next step. Moving from privacy rights alone to real consumer choice and digital freedom. This is not anti technology. This is pro consumer.
It is pro competition. It is pro innovation. AB twenty one sixty nine makes it clear that your data belongs to you, and your digital future should belong to you. Here to testify in support of the bill is Diana Hawkins, Manuelian, a parent and social scientist speaking on behalf of mothers against media addiction, and Matthew Lipka, policy adviser at Project Liberty.
Redner 65
Thank you, chairs and members. I'm Matthew Lipka with Project Liberty, a sponsor of a b two one six nine, the Digital Choice Act. Project Liberty builds open technology for a better Internet. Many of the harms we see on social media today, we believe stem from a market failure. Lack of competition and the ability to control your own data makes users the product, not the consumer because those individuals can't leave.
Nearly half of Gen z says that they wish platforms like TikTok and Snapchat were never invented, but they can't leave without their friends and content. One new Chicago study asked students how much would they need to pay pay the student to, to leave TikTok, and they said, actually, we would pay you $30 if you could also get my friends to move to a new platform. A b two one six nine would make that possible by making it easy for people to take their data to platforms that better serve their needs and delete their data from platforms that have lost their trust. This has three big benefits. First, it spurs innovation by letting individuals, not just content creators, bring their social connections and AI history to emerging platforms.
Second, it forces companies to compete on user experience, earning loyalty through better features and content quality. Third, it protects privacy by conditioning all sharing on explicit user consent and allowing individuals to leave platforms with weak security. The technology to do this exists. For example, Project Liberty developed a free open protocol for social networking. It's one of half a dozen such protocols that together are used by more than 70,000,000 people worldwide.
There are new platforms that that use this that offer algorithms that prioritize healthy content and stronger block features for online trolls. Social companies social media companies must already implement these protections to comply with Utah's similar law. AB two one six nine builds on this by extending those protections to, social to from social media to also include AI and, of course, to the people of California. I urge your support. Thank you.
Redner 67
I'm Diana Hawkins Van Willian speaking on behalf of MAMA. I'm a parent and a social scientist. My doctorate's from Harvard, and I've taught at Stanford and MIT on the social and psychological effects of technology. I'm here to urge you to pass the Digital Choice Act, a b two one six nine, for three reasons. One, it gives consumers the freedom to leave.
Redner 53
Two, it creates accountability through competition. And three, opens the market to innovation. Today's platforms function as closed systems that lock users in by controlling their data, relationships, and digital histories. A child or family who wants to leave a bad platform faces an impossible choice, embedding their photos, their followers, and years of relationships or stay. The platforms know they will stay.
Redner 67
This is not a free market. This is a trap. By mandating data portability and inoperability, families can finally leave and choose platforms that don't expose children to harmful content, gambling, and predators. Interoperability has already driven improvement in banking, telecommunications, and health care. This applies that same proven approach to social media and AI.
It also opens the market to genuine innovation. New approaches exist today but cannot reach scale because the incumbents control the data. The current social media landscape is a data monopoly. This will allow competitors to gain access to the data necessary to build new products and train new AI models. Our children deserve safer platforms, real choices, and the freedom to leave.
Please vote yes on a b two one six nine.
Redner 1
Thank you both. Anyone here in support of the bill join us? Name, position, and organization. Tracy
Redner 14
Rosenberg with Oakland Privacy in support of the bill and also conveying support on behalf of Privacy Rights Clearing House.
Redner 53
Chris Taylor, software engineer in the open source community. I've never heard of this bill until just now, I think it's awesome. I support.
Redner 24
John Bennett with the California Initiative for Technology and Democracy in support.
Redner 3
Nicole Rocha expressing support on behalf of Children Now, Tech Oversight California, Anxious Generation, the Children's Advocacy Institute out of the University of San Diego School of Law, Kapor Center Advocacy, Tech Equity Action, and the Transparency Coalition. Thank you.
Redner 1
Thank you. I think I see opposition on their way up. We love the readiness this late hour.
Redner 1
I mean, okay. But just so you know, they're all grumpy. Talking last night when you were friends.
Redner 27
last night. Seems like it was a good thing, but good evening, chair. Remember the committee? I'm Aiden Downey representing the Computer and Communications Industry Association here to express our opposition to a b twenty one sixty nine. While we support, consumer convenience, this bill creates significant risks to privacy and constitutional freedoms that far outweigh its perceived benefits.
The core of our concern is that forced interoperability fundamentally compromises user data by acquiring a continuous, easily accessible, and readable stream of sensitive personal information through open protocols. We're creating an astronomical data privacy risk. Some of these risks include loss of data control. When a user ports data to a third party, the original service loses the ability to ensure that data is ever deleted, which would effectively nullify the ease of the existing CCPA deletion rates. Third third party vulnerabilities, not all services are created equal.
A user might move data from a secure platform like Facebook to a legacy service with lesser, security. And I don't wanna pick on them, but they're an older social media such as Myspace where their sensitive information could be more easily stolen. This bill also appears to require the extraction of data irrespective of, the preferences of the connected user. If I move my data, I may be moving your interactions with me to a new service without your consent. We also think the bill creates systemic risk.
Redner 64
The AG's authority to identify specific open protocols incentivizes every platform to use the same government vetted technology, which creates a single point of failure. A single vulnerability could expose the entire digital ecosystem to hackers or even foreign adversaries. AB twenty six nine also raises serious first amendment concerns by infringing upon a platform's editorial discretion. The bill effectively requires a business to display content from other sites even if it is against its terms of service. Courts have continued to found that, digital services have editorial discretion over their own platforms, and this bill essentially gives the user veto power over multifaceted design decisions that are carefully crafted to help a platform achieve its objectives with a host of legal, privacy, safety, financial, and other considerations also in play.
Redner 27
To put this in perspective, I'll have fun with a little analogy. It'd be like if the government forced MS MSNBC to host a user's, former InfoWars content on their site because the new user moved their account data. This is a clear violation of protected editorial discretion and mirrors the concerns we have with this bill. Finally, the requirements in this bill are simply not technically feasible. Secure open protocols that operate at the scale do not yet exist, requiring businesses to build interfaces for unproven protocols jeopardizes privacy.
And we believe the existing law is sufficient. California already has the CCPA, which provides robust data portability rights. Furthermore, industry led initiatives like the data transfer initiative are already providing seamless service to service trans transfers through engineering consensus rather than rigid legislative mandates. I think we should learn from other jurisdictions like Utah where similar legislation has hit major roadblocks and has already been delayed due to these very implementation concerns. A b a b twenty one sixty nine is an unnecessary intervention in a market that is already innovating to serve consumers.
It risks creating a permissible innovation environment where the attorney general acts as the chief technology officer for the private sector, stifling the evolution of consumer minded products. For these reasons, we respectfully urge a no vote on, AB twenty one sixty nine. Thank you.
Redner 35
Annalie Augustine with the Civil Justice Association of California also opposed. Thank you.
Redner 1
Annalie, were you here on the first bill at 8AM and the last bill now? I think perhaps. It's pretty impressive.
Redner 4
Laura Bennett on behalf of California team of commerce and opposition. Thank you.
Redner 1
Seeing no further opposition in the room, we'll bring it back to the dais. And just so you know, we just did a little research, and Myspace is still around. We didn't understand the point until we looked it up.
Redner 19
I I think I've started almost, every round of questions. So I I actually do think on this, the opposition has some compelling arguments. But I what I would like to know is the the rights that you get from CCPA and and the portability offered by that, how is that different than what you are recommending?
Redner 65
So there's two there's two big differences, the scope and the continuity. So the personal information that you provide to a a service is covered by CCPA, but not all of your interactions. If you have an anonymous account, that may not include personal information, so that may not be covered. In the case of contextual data, it's about two way conversation. So the you're you have provided prompts to the AI, but you need to the response to those prompts to make sense of that conversation.
So it's expanding the scope to all the relevant data. The other big difference is continuous and real time. So the the bill doesn't require anyone to receive the data to import or display. It does require it to be continuously exported at the request of a user. What's available now through DTI or CCPA is a one time transfer.
And so if you think about someone trying to leave and move to a new platform but wants to stay in touch with their friends, that continued continuity of the transmission is critical to maintain a, you know, a real conversation across platforms.
Redner 60
So I'm trying to wrap my head around all this. So if you move from one platform to another platform and you want your friends to be on the new platform, how do they get moved?
Redner 24
That that's not a component of this, actually. It's it's about it's about, the data that you actually put up
Redner 24
matter of fact, when it comes to comments that somebody would make, let's say, on a photo that you have of your family and you together. The the bill requires that there's authorization by any end user for that to be taken over, and so that wouldn't that wouldn't work either. So it's actually about the content itself. The photo would go, but not the comments from somebody who had not authorized it to be ported over.
Redner 60
Okay. Okay. And then I'm also just thinking that, you know, I get it, that you go onto a platform and then the algorithm hits, then all of a sudden you're getting inundated with all these ads and things that you don't wanna see, and you're getting negative comments from friends or people. What prevents that from happening all over again at the next platform?
Redner 24
Well, nothing does. And as a matter of fact, I wanna remind everybody here when it comes to both social media and AI, these are not free speech environments, except for the platforms themselves. So they control all of the speech on on your feeds and what you can or cannot say. They can take down your posts and so forth. And for those of my colleagues across the aisle in this hearing room, you'll remember a few years ago when the, major platforms actually restricted, various people from being able to use.
They suspended accounts from those that we were able to, actually be on there, including president Trump at that time, and that opened the door for the president to create his own platform as a matter of fact. And not only, did many wanna go follow him, they would have loved to have taken their data and taken all the things that they had established on those platforms that they then resented. Mhmm. And and there was no mechanism for that to take place, as a matter of fact. So that here is inherently the problem, is we don't have any rights as consumers here.
And let's also remember that we are not technically the end user. The end user are the advertising networks. We are the product. We are being productized. We are putting our personal information up there, and, you know, it it is my fundamental belief that that should belong to us.
If you think if I can give other real life examples, if these are tools, when else do we use tools? If we use tools to actually physically build something, who does that belong to? Does it belong to the toolmaker, or does it belong to us? We buy paint and paint a picture. Does that belong to the paint company, or does it belong to us?
If we are using AI as a research vehicle AI platform's a research vehicle. If we're using social media as a mechanism to communicate, to put on our sports teams, to do things like that, shouldn't that fundamentally belong to us? It it is it is interesting to me, especially in social media, that the social platforms say, you can't legislate content. You can't legislate content. You cannot legislate content.
We're gonna sue over that. But then when it comes to us wanting the content, they say, no. No. That content belongs to us. You don't have the ability to take that content with you to another platform.
So there's a lot of discrepancies. A lot I I mean, committee members, I I want to point out that every time every time that we have required, regulatory portability and interoperability, the the large oligopolist, the big players in the space have said it's complete downfall for the sector, for their industry, and it has actually been the opposite for both consumers and the businesses alike. I worked in the telecommunications sector for twenty five years. A bit older than most people in this room. I remember the time when when phone number portability didn't exist.
Mhmm. And if you had a service, for example, on AT and T would not be able to port your number to another service, and that meant that so there was an entire economy that couldn't be born because of that, an economy that we all utilize today. And the big players at that time continue to be the big players today in this new economy. Just ask AT and T. Mhmm.
The portability opened up so many things for us, and that has happened in software, that has happened in hardware, that has happened in, banking, that has happened in health care. And, you know, I simply believe that that this is, you know, a great consumer protection act.
Redner 60
Right. Right. Well, I appreciate the author. I know you, work your bills, with a lot of passion and intelligence, and I know you're very careful and thoughtful about how you draft laws. And so I will go ahead and support it today and look forward to continuing to work with
Redner 32
the hour is late, I'll try to be brief. I really just don't understand how this would work at all. I think you used the analog of a phone number portability. Like, transferring a phone number is really different than this idea of, like, your entire and I I appreciate the foundation that our footprint belongs to us, what does that actually mean in practice? Transferring every post that you've ever posted and then somehow having to send that to another company and they upload it, I don't oh, god.
Don't even know my phone. So anyone's watching at home. They have no idea what I'm doing.
Redner 32
So I don't understand how this would work. Did I understand correctly when your witness said that the CPA already requires, like, a one time thing, but that this bill would require some kind of continuous communication?
Redner 24
I I'd like to answer quickly before handing it off and and simply and simply remind everybody that what this requires is that the platform that you're currently on downloads and provides you with your data. That's very straightforward. I think your larger question is how then does another platform accept it? That is not a requirement in the bill. They're not obligated to do so.
There are massive business cases for them to be able to figure that out because they're gonna want that business and monetize your time online. But it is not a requirement in bill.
Redner 32
What do they give you? So, like, if I'm a consumer and I say Instagram, I'm leaving Instagram, I would need my digital footprint. Like, what are what do they give you?
Redner 35
So you would, if you're doing a download, to you would get something like an Excel sheet, that has a list of all of your posts and content. You might get a folder, zip file that has your your pictures in it. So that's value this is valuable. The the portability element, and this is valuable because the you would have your own copy of it. So if you get hacked or banned or something, then then you would still have a copy of that.
Redner 65
The interoperability pieces, you know, if you get this Excel file, it's huge, a terabyte or something. It's very hard for a consumer to actually do anything with it. I've downloaded it. I don't know how to what to do with it. Okay?
And and so you go to so what the bill would would require is you can have the the company send it to another site directly, that you designate or a portion of it, and that site would have the responsibility not it's not required under the bill, but they would have the the ability to decide, yes. I wanna display this. They might not display everything. Right? If you send your your videos from TikTok to LinkedIn, that might not work, or you might they but they you might wanna just send your friends list.
Right? So they would decide how they would use that data and and if you if you send that to them. So that's the and if they but if they do decide to display it, what it would do for the user is they would basically be able to post in one place, and it would show up in others. And if their friends decide to go to those other platforms because they like the algorithm better, that friend would be able to stay in touch.
Redner 32
What what do you mean when you say you'd be able to post in one place and it shows up in others?
Redner 65
So it means that you would like, let's say you posted a video on Reels and you share it to tick you're sharing your data to TikTok. Reels would send it in real real time to TikTok. If TikTok is choosing to display videos they receive from Reels, then it would then show up on your Reels account simultaneously.
Redner 1
Yeah. I think we've gone a little bit off the rails of what the bill actually does based on your testimony, not the question. So let's come back to the bill. Okay.
Redner 1
The bill I mean, currently, we all probably know this. There are services that allow for what you're describing, where you go to sort of an intermediary and it displays in several social media locations. That's something I think many of us have experienced. But I think that's not my reading of the bill that it would require reels to give it to TikTok.
Redner 32
I think he's saying it requires not just a one time data transfer. It's requiring an ongoing data transfer between one platform to another.
Redner 32
In any in any event, you know, think that I'm just just sorry to We're of you, miss Virginia. Buzzing microphone is driving me insane.
Redner 32
So I guess I would just say, you know, I think that we work on some very weighty and incredibly important issues in this in this committee, protecting privacy, protecting children. We just heard about it all. I think that there needs to be a balance between kind of what we're asking business to do and the protection that it's providing. And to me, the the balance is is not reasonable here. I think we're actually asking business to do a whole lot for kind of that that may actually not even be possible, for kind of a nominal benefit.
So I think I had shared with you, like, my concerns. So, you know, I can't support that today, but, you know, appreciate the work that you're doing in this space.
Redner 24
I I I I appreciate your comments, and I I simply disagree that it's not a nominal benefit. I think if you have the ability to leave a platform for whatever your reasons are and not have to start from scratch, that's not a nominal benefit for others. I think that the the question is is, technically, is this feasible or not? And I think those are very valid questions, but I certainly think there's a massive consumer benefit to controlling all the data that you've put up online.
Redner 4
So going back to your example as it relates to the phone, and we used to not you used to if you left it, you left your beautiful number that you might have liked or picked, and then you go to another place and you couldn't pick up that number. You can do that. You can transfer your number now, but you can't transfer every single call you made. Right? You can't transfer all of your history.
It it doesn't that doesn't work like that. Now with text messaging, which is a little different,
Redner 4
can get it to the cloud and then redownload again, but your call history typically is lost. And so there are limitations even in the simple example you gave. And what I'm part of the thing I was concerned about with this bill is the social graph and downloading all these things that involve other people and then saying that should be sent to another place. Maybe one day they can have the technology to receive it. But what if, Lori Wilson on Facebook is different than the Lori Wilson on TikTok?
Meaning, same person, me, but I have a different persona, and I don't want you attached to me. I'm attached to you on Facebook, but I clearly don't want you attached to me on TikTok. Right? And so I think when you say you're downloading all this and including other people in it, there might
Redner 4
Well, what's this? I okay. Well, maybe I misunderstood what social graph meant. That was a new terminology for me, and I read it from the analysis. And it sounded like the people that you're connected to then are in the that you have access to them in the new place.
And if they're in the new place, that connection is built. That's what I thought it was.
Redner 4
If they're in the new place. What I'm saying is Lori Wilson in Facebook or IG might be different than the Lori Wilson in TikTok, and I might not want to be associated with whoever was I was friends with on Facebook. People do have professional accounts and personal accounts. Right? And so I'm just saying, like, there's I think I think there's some privacy concerns that I have.
I think that, some of this is if the technology exists. And so I don't know if it if it's the chicken and the egg where you have to do it so the technology can exist or you let it happen naturally, and then you start allowing, rules, but it it seems weird to get in the legislative place, so won't be able to support it today. But you can give that comment if I'm saying something wrong.
Redner 24
Yeah. I I don't think you're saying anything wrong. I actually appreciate your comments. I wanna point out that in the bill, it does say that that the social media company model operator or other controllers should not share or receive a user's personal information, contextual data, social graph through the interoperability interface without the user's content consent. So the user would have to consent precisely for that.
Redner 4
what who's the user in that sense? Because you let's say I'm connected with you on Facebook. You do this, and you're trying to connect with me. You wanna move everything. You don't like Facebook anymore.
You wanna you don't like the reels. You wanna go to TikTok. So you go to TikTok. I'm on TikTok. So you're trying to connect with me on TikTok.
You didn't even know I existed on TikTok. You'd right now, would have to manually find me. So the user is who in this in your example.
Redner 24
You wouldn't have to map to an existing count on TikTok unless you directed the company to do that. So you could direct it to open a new to a new account that you opened on TikTok.
Redner 4
You, Lori, or you, Josh? So you're the one who's moving from You, Josh. Okay. That's what I'm saying. But Lori might not wanna talk to you on TikTok.
That's that's that's that's the concern.
Redner 4
But Okay. But that's what I was trying to understand. Like, the privacy issue I have is about this side of the equation, not your side.
Redner 24
That's that's that's that is heard. I I I I appreciate the concern. I I also wanna point out briefly that that in telecommunications, portability is a carrier portability. Phone calls, texts, and so forth are on your device, and so that's device portability, which is also something that we can do today, but those are actually separate things.
Redner 4
Oh, I know. That's I was saying the fly you used it as an example. I was just noting the fly. I was talking
Redner 24
number portability, not device portability. I was giving the example of number portability.
Redner 4
But I'm saying you can port your number without all of that data, and you're asking for someone to port an account with all of it. But my colleagues is getting mad at me. I'm getting side eyes. Let me I got 10 demerits now. I'm sorry.
Redner 1
Oh, mister Patterson just asked for four mics, so I'm pretty sure you're good.
Redner 59
Mister Lowenthal, I think this is a really good bill. I think I know what you're trying to do. I think we all do. We just don't realize it. I remember when What you're doing?
No. Because I remember when the Assembly Democrats left x and then quickly realized we got rid of all of our microphones, except I did not leave x because I have 65,000 followers on x. Yeah. And that took some time and work. And so I said, no.
I'm a stay put. And many of our colleagues went to new platforms and started from scratch with no constituents following them, no people following them, and we're just kinda just trying to figure out what to do. It would have been nice if I would have gone to Blue Sky immediately and left x of 65,000 followers. I had I knew who they were on the other platform or if they transferred easily. Facebook, Meta figured this out when they launched threads.
Because if you launched a threads account, your followers from Instagram immediately populated in your threads account. They didn't ask you if they would. It was just conditional signing up for threads, and it was brilliant because why would you wanna start over again on threads? And then, also, they made it contingent that you can never delete your threads without deleting both of them, which is another which is another thing we should we should work on. But now I have a a really good Instagram following of a 180,000, and people ask me, are you also on TikTok?
Redner 28
Yes. But, like, to an audience that's, I don't know, an eighth of the size because these things aren't transferring. I think there's a lot of creatives that have that same challenge, and I think and correct me if I'm wrong, but that's kind of what you're trying to get at, that the these that this social graph from the people who follow us to the content we put out, should belong to us and not just the platform exclusively and entrapping us into these silos or forcing us to work five x to produce the same the same output because these programs are not talking to each other or not giving us enough information to be more efficient. Is that kind of what you're trying to get at?
Redner 24
That's precisely what we're trying to get at. And I I will also note that forcing folks into silos or remaining into silos is harmful for the industry as a whole. It may be that that business does not want to lose that specific customer, but overall, there's creates a general level of frustration that you're speaking to exactly. And folks shouldn't have to be forced with that, I mean, under any circumstances. It's their information.
Redner 59
Yeah. I I support this bill. If there's not a motion, I would move this bill. And if my handle on x was patter dude, I sure would wanna take all my followers to other places as well.
Redner 5
you. Well, I remember talking with my colleague about not leaving x and thought that was that was great, that he didn't. It's a great platform for news. Been known to tweet from time to time. So on this piece of legislation, I I I believe you should be able to get your data and have access to your data.
I I do have concerns about some kind of, like, system where another company, you know, picks up the data, uses it somehow, who knows how. I think you do have a right to your data. I mean, period. And I think a lot of the companies already provide that, actually. Maybe not complete.
I've never actually downloaded all my data from something because it'd probably be pretty big. But I do agree with that in the bill. I I'm not quite there on the interoperability because I just I can't see how that why we should kinda require a company to do that, and then it's floating in, you know, in the cloud somewhere, and then maybe they use the data and just the amount of traffic that that puts on our network. And is it constant like your witness was saying? You know, there just seems to be some issues to work out there.
Maybe you'll get there. I have a lot of trust, you know, that you'll get there eventually. But I think for today, I'm gonna lay off just because the interoperability part, I I have some concern about. But you're right in the premise that you should have a right to the data that you've been providing to these companies forever. You know?
And so so hopefully, we kinda go that direction, but thanks for the discussion today.
Redner 26
So the hour is late. I'm gonna keep this as short as possible. Mister Lowenthal, I mean, this is a passion of yours. You know a whole lot about it more than, I would venture to guess, any of our legislative delegation. I think on this bill, you're probably farther down the road than the rest of us and maybe even than the industry.
This bill would put California as the first state to require Utah. Utah. Okay. How has it worked out in Utah? I think that that's a question that I we don't have time at this late hour to to get into, but this is a big shift.
This but this would be a big shift. And my concern for all of us is I think the the hour's late. We're kinda fried. This is a bill that should be first up when people are fresh and can be very considerate about going through the details and understanding the implications of it. I think that if this bill were to pass, somehow find its way into law, and then we had problems, they would actually play this committee video and say, this is why.
They were literally fried at the end of an evening, and they might have benefited by pumping the brakes a bit and doing this with a fresh perspective. It it does not do justice to the work you've done on your bill at all, and I know that there's probably a deadline that we're we're up against, but I can't support it today. And I think that some of you who, and I might eventually support it. There's ideas mister Lowenthal has introduced, or I'm like, not so much. And then suddenly, I learn more from what he provides me in the dialogue, and I move in that direction, and it's good.
I don't think this is a good idea, with all respect, to move forward on tonight, and I think we should look at it with a fresh set of eyes.
Redner 1
Okay. I think that was the last comment, unless there's someone I missed. Mr. Lonenthal, we've you know, our teams have discussed that I think what you're trying to do here is important. I think the bill in its current form is not where it needs to be, frankly.
And so I you know, we did make the request that you would continue to work with this committee to make sure that this is a workable implementable solution moving forward, and I appreciate my understanding is your team agreed to do that moving forward. Because, fundamentally, what you're trying to do, and I think this is what our colleague, mister Patterson, was saying, which is to give people control of their own data is makes sense. I mean, I think that is hard to frankly disagree with. I do think it goes significantly further than that. So at the beginning, I was like, oh, they're talking about a very narrow portion of this bill.
We then got into the rest of the bill with the social graph conversation and the like. But I think that, we do need to be careful to make sure it's implementable, frankly. And so, you know, making sure we start and and sometimes by the end of legislative cycle or year, we realize, okay. We need to take one bite out of this apple and start to give people power. Maybe we can't do it all at once.
And I frankly am in a place where I'm not a 100% confident that we can achieve everything in this bill. I'm gonna be honest with you. Despite the fact that I think your intentions are good, we still need to make sure that this is possible and that it is realistic. So I appreciate your commitment to keep working on this. I know you will.
You are a hardworking author and one who believes, you know, you come out of business. You wanna make sure business can apply as much as the next person. But I agree that the market functions better when consumers have choice, and I think that, at the end of the day, is what you're trying to empower. So with that, would you like to close?
Redner 24
No. Simply, I only have this is only gonna take about forty minutes. You guys are alright with that. Right? No.
They're gonna start throwing Madam chair, you you madam chair, you hit the nail on you hit the nail on the head. That is precisely what we're trying to achieve. This is a this is a big lift. I would appreciate the opportunity to be able to continue to work on this with with all the key stakeholders in this area. I I do wanna make note that the opposition's comments centered around invasions of privacy and deep concerns about privacy, but the privacy advocates that were here were all speaking in favor of this bill.
And so, you know, we'd love to have the opportunity to continue to move this forward. This is, again, what I believe to be a fundamental human right, which is having intellectual property over your own digital footprint. And, in in in in every scenario where this has happened, it has been a success for consumers and business alike. I think it would be the same here despite the challenges.
Redner 1
Yes. Thank you, mister Lenthal. Mister Bryan has made the motion. Do we have a second?
Redner 2
Item number 17, a b twenty one sixty nine by assembly member Lonethal. The motion is due pass as amended to appropriations. Bar Kahan.
Redner 2
Bar Kahan. Aye. Masito. No. Masito, no.
Brian? Aye. Brian, aye. De Mayo? De Mayo, no.
Hoover?
Redner 2
Lowenthal, aye. McKinnar? Aye. McKinnar aye. Ortega?
Aye. Ortega aye. Patterson? Not booting. Patterson not booting.
Pelerin?
Redner 1
The bill has eight. It is out. Eight with two no votes. Is everyone here? Yes.
Everyone's here. So we will close the roll on that one. And that was our last bill. Thank you all for your patience. We will, call the roll for absent members on the rest.
Yeah.
Redner 2
Brian, just a consent calendar. Brian, I. DeMio? I. DeMio, I.
Ortega? I. Ortega, I. Petrinoris? Aye.
Petrie Norris, aye. Ward?
Redner 1
Do you need help? I just I know, but she now messed up the other ones, so someone could come over. Sorry.
Redner 2
to start. We'll do the consent Consent calendar. Consent calendar again. I'm sorry. Mosito.
Aye. Mosito. Aye. Brian.
Redner 2
Item number one, a b twenty one ninety. Vote is 9 zero. Brian. Aye. Brian, aye.
DeMio?
Redner 2
voting. Voting. Damayo not voting. Ortega? Aye.
Ortega, aye. Petrinoras? Aye. Petrinoras, aye. Ward?
Aye. Ward, aye. Wilson? Aye. Wilson, aye.
So has everybody voting but Yes. So that's 140.
Redner 1
That's out 140. Just checking everybody was up on the Wallace bill except for Damayo. If that's incorrect, speak now or forever hold your peace. Okay.
Redner 2
Thank you. Okay. Item number two, a B seventeen ninety eight. The vote is seven one. Masito?
No. Masito, no. Brian? Brian, I. DeMio?
Yeah. Item number two
Redner 2
No. DeMio, no. Hoover? No. Hoover, no.
Kelleran? Aye. Kelleran, aye. Petrie Norris? Aye.
Petrie Norris, aye. Ward? Aye. Ward, aye. 10114.
Redner 2
The vote is nine one. Mauer Cahan? Aye. Mauer Cahan, aye. Mosito?
No. Mussito, no. Brian?
Redner 1
That bill is out thirteen two. Moving to a b nineteen seventy nine, Vonta.
Redner 1
That is at $11.04. Moving to the next bond to bill, AB twenty ninety two.
Redner 2
Brian, I. DeMio? Aye. DeMio, I. Hoover?
Aye. Hoover, I. Erwin? Aye. Erwin, I.
Lowenthal? Aye. Lowenthal, I. McKinnar? Aye.
McKinnar, I. Wicks?
Redner 2
McKinnar, I. Ortega? Aye. Ortega, I. Patterson?
Aye. Patterson, I. Petrinors? Aye. Petrinors, Ward?
Redner 2
The vote is three zero. Bauer Cahan. Aye. Bauer Cahan. Aye.
Brian? Aye. Brian, I. So we Hoover.
Redner 2
Hoover. Erwin, aye. McKinnon, aye. Lowenthal, aye. McKinnon, aye.
McKinnon, aye. Ortega? Aye. Ortega, aye. Patterson?
Aye. Patronors, aye.
Redner 1
That bill is out fifteen zero. Moving to file item nine, AB twenty two eighty five, Valencia. Yep. That is 20.
Redner 2
Barakahan? Aye. Barakahan, aye. Brian? Aye.
Brian, aye. DeMaio? Aye. DeMaio, aye. Hoover?
Redner 2
Patterson, aye. Petrinors? Aye. Petrinors, aye. Ward?
Aye. Ward, aye. Wicks? Aye. Wicks, aye.
Wilson? Aye. Wilson, I.
Redner 2
Ortega, aye. Patterson, Paterson, aye. Aye. Aye. Ward, aye.
Wicks? Aye. Wicks, aye. Wilson? Aye.
Wilson, aye. That bill
Redner 2
Are we talking which one are we talking about? The Lee bill. The Lee bill.
Redner 1
Which one? Which The three o one you said was 10 it was nine, but that was incorrect. Ali. You go for the Wait.
Redner 2
a b eighteen fifty six WICs. Yep. Mosito? I'm sorry. 1856.
6. Macedo, aye. De Mayo? No. De Mayo, no.
Ward? Aye. Ward, aye. At age 13. That was age 13.
Yeah. Thirteen one.
Redner 1
bill is at 132. Moving to file item 15, a b twenty twenty seven Ward. And that is seven two. Barcahan? Aye.
Redner 1
Oh, we did that one. I closed that one. So last one is file item 18AB2575. Ortega.
Redner 2
Lunto, aye. Petrinoris? Petrinoris? Not loading. Sorry.
Petrinoris not loading. Have four today. Nine.
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