(1) Existing law prohibits health care service plans and their contracting entities from including provisions in their contracts that interfere with the ability of a physician and surgeon or other licensed health care provider to communicate with a patient regarding their health care. This bill would prohibit a health facility from requiring a physician or surgeon, as a condition of obtaining or maintaining clinical privileges, to agree to comply with criteria, rules, regulations, or other policies or procedures that are not knowingly and explicitly ratified, issued, or promulgated by the medical staff, that directly or indirectly prohibit, limit, or restrict the ability of the physician or surgeon to provide a particular medical treatment or service that falls within the scope of their privileges, or from requiring a physician or surgeon to obtain permission from a nonphysician or nonsurgeon to perform a particular medical treatment or service for which consent has been obtained from the patient or the patient's representative, except as provided. The bill would prohibit a health facility from limiting or otherwise exercising control over the independent professional judgment of a physician or surgeon concerning the practice of medicine or the diagnosis or treatment of disease, if the physician or surgeon, exercising their independent professional judgment, determines that a particular medical service or treatment is medically appropriate, unless specified circumstances apply. This bill would authorize a superior court, upon application by a health facility's medical staff or an individual member of a facility's medical staff, to issue an injunction or other appropriate order restraining any acts or practices that could constitute a violation of these provisions. The bill would specify that its provisions cannot be construed to prohibit a health facility from establishing criteria, rules, regulations, policies, or procedures that are required by federal or state law or regulation as a condition of licensure, receipt of federal or state funds, or participation in Medicare, Medi-Cal, or other federal or state health care programs, or limit a medical staff's authority to take corrective action against medical staff members in accordance with the medical staff bylaws, except in specified circumstances. The bill would also prohibit health facility corporate bylaws, policies, rules, contracts, or other institutional requirements that conflict with these provisions from being applied to directly or indirectly affect a physician's clinical privileges or rights, or privileges of membership on the medical staff, except as required by federal or state law. (2) Existing law requires each shareholder, director, and officer of a medical or podiatry corporation, except as provided, to be a licensed person, as defined. This bill would require the shareholders, directors, and officers of a medical corporation to manage and have ultimate control, as defined, over the assets and business operations of the medical corporation and not be replaced, removed, or otherwise controlled by any lay entity or individual, as specified. (3) Existing law requires any nonprofit corporation that operates or controls a health facility or operates or controls a facility that provides similar health care, as specified, to provide written notice to, and to obtain the written consent of, the Attorney General prior to entering into any agreement or transaction to sell, transfer, lease, or exchange its assets to a for-profit corporation or entity or to a mutual benefit corporation or entity when a material amount of the assets of the nonprofit corporation are involved in the agreement or transaction, or to transfer control, responsibility, or governance of a material amount of the assets or operations of the nonprofit corporation to any for-profit corporation or entity or to any mutual benefit corporation or entity, as specified. Existing law requires any nonprofit corporation that operates or controls a health care facility, or that or operates or controls a facility that provides similar health care to provide written notice to, and to obtain the written consent of, the Attorney General prior to entering into any agreement or transaction to sell, transfer, lease, or exchange its assets to another nonprofit corporation or entity when a material amount of the assets of the nonprofit corporation are involved in the agreement or transaction, or to transfer control, responsibility, or governance of a material amount of the assets or operations of the nonprofit corporation to another nonprofit corporation or entity. Existing law gives the Attorney General discretion to consent to, give conditional consent to, or not to consent to these agreements or transactions considering any factor they determine to be relevant. This bill would include among those factors that, if applicable, may be relevant to the Attorney General in determining whether to consent whether the agreement or transaction may create a reduction of or limitation on the availability of the full range of health care services to any group of individuals based on their membership in a protected class. The bill would, in the case of an agreement or transaction to sell, transfer, lease, or exchange its assets to another nonprofit corporation or entity, also include among those factors whether the agreement or transaction may result in undue interference in patients' access to medical care due to improper or unlawful motives. (4) This bill would state that its provisions are severable.
Sponsored bills
Existing law provides for the foster care system, which is overseen by the State Department of Social Services and administered by county welfare departments. Existing law generally provides for children placed in foster care to be assigned a social worker who meets regularly with the foster child and performs specified services on behalf of the child. This bill would require the department to convene a workgroup to examine the negative effects of high turnover of foster family agency social workers on foster youth and children and to identify measures to reduce foster family agency social worker turnover in order to improve permanency outcomes for foster youth and children. The bill would require that the working group include representatives from specified state agencies and stakeholders. The bill would require the department to submit specific recommendations to the Legislature on or before December 31, 2022.
Existing law provides for the regulation and development of aquaculture and requires the owner of each aquaculture facility to register with the Department of Fish and Wildlife. Existing law authorizes the department, among other powers, to assess annual registration fees on owners of aquaculture facilities and to prohibit an aquaculture operation or the culturing of any species at any location where it would be detrimental to adjacent native wildlife. Existing law authorizes the Fish and Game Commission to lease state water bottoms or the water column to any person for aquaculture, as prescribed, and requires the department to notify the State Lands Commission of all applications for water bottom leases and of all leases for aquaculture executed, renewed, or assigned. Under existing law, the California Coastal Act of 1976, the California Coastal Commission is responsible for the implementation of the act and for state coastal zone planning and management. This bill would require the department, in collaboration with the California Coastal Commission, to, by January 1, 2024, create a pilot program in state waters to further develop shellfish and seaweed mariculture production and restoration capacity in California. The bill would require the department to establish a process to designate tracts for shellfish and seaweed mariculture production and restoration as part of the pilot program, as specified. The bill would authorize an applicant with a proposed shellfish, seaweed, or shellfish and seaweed mariculture production and restoration project to apply for a lease of any pilot program tract, or a portion thereof. The bill would require the State Lands Commission or the Fish and Game Commission, or both, if applicable to approve, deny, or return for revision a lease application within 4 months. The bill would authorize a local government to apply for a shellfish and seaweed mariculture production and restoration lease and designate individual mariculturalists as sublessees without authorization from the department, the State Lands Commission, or the Fish and Game Commission. A local government would be required to notify the department, the State Lands Commission, or the Fish and Game Commission of a sublease within 2 months of the beginning of the sublease. The bill would provide the department, by January 1, 2024, within the pilot program tracts, with sole authority or jurisdiction to approve, deny, or otherwise affect the ability of shellfish and seaweed mariculture production and restoration projects to operate, as well as to enforce compliance with relevant regulations, excluding the roles and responsibilities of the State Water Resources Control Board and the relevant leasing authorities. The bill would authorize a mariculturalist holding a lease to a pilot program tract to be able to begin cultivation without a permit under the regulations established by the department, except any permit required by the State Water Resources Control Board. The bill would require the department to conduct ongoing monitoring and enforce compliance with the rules and regulations of the pilot program and to work with noncompliant aquaculturalists to resolve any noncompliance issues if possible. The bill would authorize the department to close any operation in the pilot program due to noncompliance if no other reasonable resolution is possible. The bill would require, when sufficient data has been collected, the department to make recommendations to the Legislature on any relevant changes to the mariculture and restoration permitting and regulatory processes, as specified. The bill would repeal the provisions establishing the pilot program on January 1, 2036, and upon termination, would require the department to offer participants in the pilot program, one year from the date of termination, to come into compliance with any rules and regulations not applicable in the pilot program tracts in order to keep operating. The bill would require the department to consider and, if appropriate, investigate whether and how to seek state verification authority from the United States Army Corps of Engineers and any other federal agencies offering state verification authority in order to streamline the review and approval of federal permits issued by the United States Army Corps of Engineers or another federal agency that may be required by a mariculture project intending to operate in this state. The bill would require the department to ensure the inclusion of socially disadvantaged aquaculturalists in the development, adoption, implementation, and enforcement of laws, regulations, and policies and programs relating to aquaculture production and restoration. The bill would also make legislative findings and declarations and adopt definitions to implement its provisions.
Existing law provides for officers and employees of the state to receive travel expenses when away from their headquarters for state business. This bill would state the intent of the Legislature to enact legislation that would prohibit state-sponsored travel to any state that enacts any law that limits or reduces access to voting.
Existing law regulates various businesses to, among other things, preserve and regulate competition, prohibit unfair trade practices, and regulate advertising. This bill would require social media platforms, as defined, or users or advertisers posting on a social media platform, to place text or marking within or adjacent to retouched images that have been posted on the platform for promotional or commercial purposes, and specify how that retouched image was altered. The bill would define retouched image to mean a depiction of a real person, living or deceased, that has had their bodily appearance altered to narrow or thicken their figure or remove marks or blemishes on their skin.
(1) The California Integrated Waste Management Act of 1989, administered by the Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery, generally regulates the disposal, management, and recycling of solid waste, including, among other solid waste, single-use plastic straws. The Sustainable Packaging for the State of California Act of 2018 prohibits a food service facility located in a state-owned facility, operating on or acting as a concessionaire on state property, or under contract to provide food service to a state agency from dispensing prepared food using a type of food service packaging unless the type of food service packaging is on a list that the department publishes and maintains on its internet website that contains types of approved food service packaging that are reusable, recyclable, or compostable. Existing law makes a legislative declaration that it is the policy goal of the state that not less than 75% of solid waste generated be source reduced, recycled, or composted by 2020. This bill would enact the California Circular Economy and Plastic Pollution Reduction Act, which would establish a comprehensive regulatory scheme for producers, retailers, and wholesalers of single-use packaging, as defined, and single-use products, as defined, made partially or entirely of plastic, to be administered by the department. The bill would require producers, within 6 months of the department's adoption of regulations to implement the act, to individually, or to collectively form or join a stewardship organization that will, develop, finance, and implement a convenient and cost-effective program to source reduce, recover, and recycle single-use packaging and single-use products discarded in the state, and develop and submit to the department a stewardship plan, annual report, and budget, as prescribed. The bill would require the stewardship plan to include funding to support, among other things, mechanisms necessary to achieve a 75% recycling rate of single-use packaging and single-use products by 2032 and annually thereafter. The bill would require, starting in 2025, a stewardship organization to collect from its member producers funding for the purposes of paying the administrative and operational costs of the stewardship program. The bill would require, on or before the end of the 2022–23 fiscal year, and once every 3 months thereafter, a stewardship organization to pay to the department an administrative fee to cover the department's full costs of administering and enforcing the act, not to exceed the department's actual and reasonable regulatory costs. This bill would authorize the department to impose an administrative civil penalty, except as specified, not to exceed $50,000 per day per violation on an entity that is not in compliance with the act's requirements. The bill would require the department to deposit those administrative civil penalties into the Circular Economy Penalty Account, which the bill would create. The bill would provide that the moneys in the account shall be available to the department, upon appropriation by the Legislature, for purposes that further the act. This bill would require the department, no later than July 1, 2022, to post a list of packaging categories, as defined, and product categories, as defined, for single-use packaging and single-use products that are easily recyclable or easily compostable, hard to recycle or hard to compost, or nonrecyclable or noncompostable, and specifies the types of plastics to be included on the initial list posted by the department. The bill would require the department to develop criteria to determine if single-use packaging and single-use products are easily recyclable or easily compostable, hard to recycle or hard to compost, or nonrecyclable or noncompostable, as provided. The bill would, beginning January 1, 2023, require all single-use packaging and single-use products sold, offered for sale, distributed, or imported in or into the state to be easily recyclable or easily compostable in the state. The bill would, beginning January 1, 2035, require all single-use packaging and single-use products sold, offered for sale, distributed, or imported in or into the state to include 75% postconsumer recycled content. The bill would require the department, beginning in 2023, to impose an administrative civil penalty on producers per unit sold, offered for sale, imported, or distributed in or into the state of $0.01 for hard to recycle or hard to compost single-use packaging and single-use products, $0.02 for nonrecyclable or noncompostable single-use packaging and single-use products, and, additionally, beginning in 2035, of $0.01 for single-use packaging and single-use products that do not include 75% postconsumer recycled content. The bill would require the department to deposit those administrative civil penalties into the Single-Use Plastic Packaging and Products Penalty Account, which the bill would create. The bill would provide that the moneys in the account shall be available to the department, upon appropriation by the Legislature, for projects with demonstrated environmental or environmental health benefits, and that prioritize projects within the state. The bill would impose on producers, among other requirements, registration, reporting, and recordkeeping requirements. The bill would require reports and data provided by producers to the department to be accurate and attested to under penalty of perjury, thereby imposing a state-mandated local program by expanding the crime of perjury. (2) The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement. This bill would provide that no reimbursement is required by this act for a specified reason. (3) Existing constitutional provisions require that a statute that limits the right of access to the meetings of public bodies or the writings of public officials and agencies be adopted with findings demonstrating the interest protected by the limitation and the need for protecting that interest. This bill would make legislative findings to that effect.
Existing law, the California Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) , protects and safeguards the right and opportunity of all persons to seek, obtain, and hold employment without discrimination or abridgment on account of race, religious creed, color, national origin, ancestry, physical disability, mental disability, mental condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, sexual orientation, or military and veteran status. This bill would provide that, under FEHA, it is not a violation of the rights of any individual who is not chosen for an employer to hire or promote a member of a protected group, if the employer determines that the individual hired or promoted is qualified for the job and the individual hired or promoted is a member of a protected group that is underrepresented in the type of job in question in the relevant general workforce. Under the bill, the violation exemption would not apply if the individual hired or promoted is a member of a protected group that, prior to the selection of the individual, was overrepresented in the type of job in the employer's workforce or an individual challenging the hire or promotion decision is a member of a protected group that is underrepresented in the type of job in the relevant general workforce and there is substantial evidence that the individual's protected status was a substantial factor in the hire or promotion decision. The bill would define terms for its purpose.
Existing law defines rape as an act of sexual intercourse accomplished with a person not the spouse of the perpetrator under certain circumstances, including where the victim is incapable of giving legal consent because of a mental disorder or developmental or physical disability, where the victim is not aware of the essential characteristics of the act due to the perpetrator's fraudulent representation that the act serves a professional purpose, and where the victim submits to the act under the belief that the perpetrator is someone known to the victim other than the perpetrator, and the perpetrator intentionally and fraudulently induces that belief. Existing law separately defines rape of a spouse as an act of sexual intercourse accomplished with the spouse of the perpetrator under similar circumstances as nonspousal rape, except that spousal rape does not include acts of sexual intercourse accomplished under the specific circumstances described above. This bill would repeal the provisions relating to spousal rape and make conforming changes, thereby making an act of sexual intercourse accomplished with a spouse punishable as rape if the act otherwise meets the definition of rape. By changing the definition of a crime, this bill would impose a state-mandated local program. Existing law authorizes an employer to request from the Department of Justice records of all convictions or any arrest pending adjudication for specified offenses for a person who applies for a license, employment, or volunteer position, in which the person would have supervisory or disciplinary power over a minor and requires the employer to notify the parent or guardian of a child if a person with specified convictions will have supervisory or disciplinary power over that child. Existing law exempts certain convictions, including spousal rape, from that notification requirement. This bill would remove the exemption for spousal rape or any other felony conviction and would instead exempt only misdemeanor convictions from that notification. The bill would make numerous conforming changes. The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement. This bill would provide that no reimbursement is required by this act for a specified reason.
Existing law requires the California Postsecondary Education Commission to conduct a comprehensive study of the part-time faculty, employment, salary, and compensation patterns, as specified, of the California Community Colleges. Existing law requires, as part of the study, an examination of whether part-time faculty salaries vary among community colleges and factors associated with any salary differential. Existing law requires the commission, in conducting the study, to consult various representatives from the education community, including the Board of Governors of the California Community Colleges, community college faculty groups, and other interested parties. This bill would instead require the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office to conduct a comprehensive study of part-time faculty as specified, to be completed by July 1, 2023. The bill would also require, as part of the study, the chancellor's office to collect and report part-time faculty parity data from each community college district, and would require that data to be reported on the public internet website for each community college district and the public internet website for the chancellor's office by July 1, 2022. The bill would require the study to identify specific policy and fiscal recommendations that would enable the California Community Colleges to achieve a compensation schedule that achieves pay equity for part-time faculty by January 1, 2027. The bill would also require the chancellor's office, in conducting the study, to convene a working group including representatives of community college faculty unions, and consult various representatives of the education community as specified, for the purpose of identifying a statewide definition of part-time faculty parity that could be applied locally. The bill would also delete an obsolete reporting requirement. By imposing new duties on community college districts, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program. The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement. This bill would provide that, if the Commission on State Mandates determines that the bill contains costs mandated by the state, reimbursement for those costs shall be made pursuant to the statutory provisions noted above.
Existing law establishes that any costs or damage incurred by the Department of Toxic Substances Control and regional water quality control boards in carrying out or overseeing a response or corrective action for a release of hazardous materials on a real property constitute a claim and lien upon the real property owned by a responsible party that is subject to, or affected by, that action. Existing law specifies that the lien is subject to the notice and hearing procedures required by due process of the law. Existing law establishes that the lien has the force and effect of, and a priority of, a judgment lien. This bill would specify the notice and hearing procedures to be provided to the affected property owner. This bill would require the department, upon a determination of the scope of a necessary response or corrective action, to provide to the responsible parties an estimate of the costs to complete the response or corrective action. The bill would, except as provided, establish that the estimated costs constitute a claim and a lien upon the real property owned by a responsible party that is subject to, or affected by, the response or corrective action. The bill would require the department to provide the affected property owner with a notice and an opportunity for a hearing before the recordation of the lien upon the affected property. The bill would establish that the lien takes priority over all other liens and encumbrances that are recorded on the real property on or after January 1, 2023, upon its recordation. The bill would establish that the lien provision does not apply if the responsible parties establish and demonstrate to the department sufficient financial assurance to cover the estimated costs. The bill would authorize the department to impose an additional lien on the real property if the actual costs incurred by the department exceed the amount of the lien recorded based on the estimated costs to complete the response or corrective action.