Following the October 7 terrorist attacks on Israel, antisemitism has increased tremendously across California. In response, JCRC Bay Area is joining with its allies across the state through the Jewish Public Affairs Committee (JPAC) to ensure the safety of Jewish students, workers, and members of society through a comprehensive legislative agenda. Below are the bills of the JCRC 2024 agenda. You can see a full list of JPAC-Sponsored Legislation.
JCRC Bay Area 2024 Legislative Agenda
Counter Antisemitism & Hate
California State Nonprofit Security Grant Program – $80 million: Provides funding for synagogues and other nonprofits at risk of hate-motivated violence to secure their institutions from hate crimes.
CA Teachers Collaborative on Holocaust and Genocide Education – $5 million: Expands the work of the Teachers Collaborative to ensure schools meet their requirement to teach about the Holocaust. The Teachers Collaborative is composed of 14 leading California Holocaust and genocide educational institutions working together to create lesson plans, vehicles for the distribution of new curriculum, and teacher training programs.
SB 1287 (Glazer): Requires higher education institutions to implement code of conduct policies around appropriate punishments for students who call for genocide of another people.
AB 2925 (Friedman): Requires antisemitism to be included in higher education anti-discrimination and DEI trainings.
SB 1421 (Stern): Empowers the California Department of Education to investigate districts for bad conduct.
SB 1277 (Stern): Codifies the CA Teachers Collaborative on Holocaust and Genocide Education as an official state program.
AB 2867 (Gabriel): Ensures that California law is applied to protect residents seeking to reclaim art stolen in times of political persecution. This is a critical protection for many in our own community who were victims of the Nazi looting in World War II.
AB 2918 (Zbur and Addis): This bill requires the governing board of a local educational agency (LEA) and governing body of a charter to allow teachers, parents, guardians, and community members to review locally adopted ethnic studies courses, as specified, and creates conditions and parameters for ethnic studies courses.
Support Vulnerable Communities
SB 85 (Wiener): CA Extended Case Management Act – Extends critical case management services for new refugees beyond the federal government’s 90 days. Offers an additional 90-270 days, depending on need.
San Diego Rapid Response Network Funding Restoration – $150 million budget restoration: Restores funding for programs that support asylum seekers in the California border region, including Jewish Family Service’s Asylum Seeker Shelter and Services.
Anti-Discrimination
SB 1137 (Smallwood-Cuevas): An act to amend Section 51 of the Civil Code, and to amend Sections 12920 and 12926 of the Government Code, relating to discrimination – Amends these codes to recognize the concept of intersectionality in order to assure any combination of characteristics – e.g. race, religious creed, color, national origin, etc. – also have full and equal protections.
Hate Crimes
AB 2917 (Zbur): When determining if grounds for a gun violence restraining violence exists this bill would require the court to additionally consider a recent threat of violence or act of violence directed toward another group or location, or a past history of those threats or acts. The bill would also authorize the court to consider, among other things, the reckless use, display, or brandishing of a firearm by the subject of the petition, evidence of stalking, evidence of cruelty to animals, or evidence of the respondent’s threats of violence to advance a political objective.
AB 2621 (Gabriel):- This bill adds new requirements in the hate crimes guidelines and course of instruction that the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) provides to peace officers, and revises the policies and standards that law enforcement agencies (LEAs) must adopt pertaining to gun violence restraining orders (GVROs).
AB 1979 – Doxing Victims Recourse Act (Ward and Aguiar-Curry): This bill would create a private cause of action against a person who doxes another person. The bill would entitle a prevailing plaintiff who suffers harm as a result of being doxed to specified damages, and would authorize the court to order equitable relief, and injunctive relief maintaining the confidentiality of a plaintiff using a pseudonym instead of their true name.
Economic Justice
AB 2446 (Ortega): This bill would add to the schedule of Medi-Cal benefits diapers for infants or toddlers with certain conditions, such as a urinary tract infection and colic, among others. The bill would establish diapers as a covered benefit for a child greater than 3 years of age who has been diagnosed with a condition that contributes to incontinence and would establish diapers as a covered benefit for individuals under 21 years of age, if necessary to correct or ameliorate a condition pursuant to specified standards.
AB 2507 (Friedman): This bill, until January 1, 2029, would establish the Students at Risk of Homelessness Emergency Pilot Program under the administration of the commission to award interest-free loans for housing and college attendance costs to eligible undergraduate students attending the University of California, Los Angeles, the California State University, Northridge, and Glendale Community College who demonstrate financial need.
SB 1089 (Smallwood-Cuevas): This bill would require a grocery establishment or a pharmacy establishment, to satisfy specified requirements no later than 90 days before its closure takes effect, including providing written notice of the closure to specified entities, including the employees. This bill would require the establishment to notify employees of CalWorks benefits and workforce development programs.
