Sen. Steve Choi

This measure would designate the portion of Interstate 505 between the Interstate 80 interchange and the Vaca Valley Parkway in the County of Solano as the CHP Officer Kirk Griess Memorial Highway. The measure would request the Department of Transportation to determine the cost of appropriate signs showing this special designation and, upon receiving donations from nonstate sources covering that cost, to erect those signs.

Under the California Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) , it is an unlawful employment practice for an employer, unless based upon a bona fide occupational qualification or applicable security regulations established by the United States or the State of California, to refuse to hire or employ a person or to refuse to select a person for a training program leading to employment, or to bar or discharge a person from employment or a training program leading to employment, or to discriminate against a person in compensation or in terms, conditions, or privileges of employment because of the race, religious creed, color, national origin, ancestry, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, sexual orientation, or military and veteran status of that person. FEHA provides that nothing in that act relating to discrimination on account of sex affects the right of an employer to use veteran status as a factor in employee selection or to give special consideration to Vietnam-era veterans. This bill would enact the Voluntary Veterans' Preference Employment Policy Act to authorize a private employer to establish and maintain a written veterans' preference employment policy, to be applied uniformly to hiring decisions, to give a voluntary preference for hiring or retaining a veteran over another qualified applicant or employee. The bill would provide that the granting of a veterans' preference pursuant to the bill, in and of itself, shall be deemed not to violate any local or state equal employment opportunity law or regulation, including, but not limited to, the antidiscrimination provisions of FEHA. The bill would revise the existing veteran status provision in FEHA to remove references to discrimination on account of sex and to Vietnam-era veterans, and would, instead, provide that nothing in that act relating to discrimination affects the right of an employer to use veteran status as a factor in hiring decisions if the employer maintains a veterans' preference employment policy established in accordance with the Voluntary Veterans' Preference Employment Policy Act. The bill would prohibit a veterans' preference employment policy from being established or applied for the purpose of discriminating against an employment applicant on the basis of a protected classification, as specified. The bill would make the Voluntary Veterans' Preference Employment Policy Act contingent upon the United States Department of Defense rescinding a specified policy prohibiting transgender individuals from serving in the United States Armed Forces, as provided.

This measure would recognize the month of June 2019 as Alzheimer's and Brain Awareness Month and Friday, June 21, 2019, as The Longest Day, and would urge all Californians to commemorate the month of June 2019 as Alzheimer's and Brain Awareness Month.

Existing federal law establishes the federal Pell Grant Program under Title IV of the federal Higher Education Act of 1965 to provide need-based grant awards to low-income students in order to promote access to postsecondary education. This measure would respectfully request the Congress and the President of the United States to immediately take action to increase the maximum annual amount of the federal Pell Grant Program award from $6,195 to at least $7,500 to further help low-income college students alleviate the burden of postsecondary education debt.

This measure would declare the month of June 2019 as Portuguese National Heritage Month.

This measure would declare June 5, 2019, as California Nonprofits Day in recognition of the importance of nonprofit organizations to the economy and well-being of this state.

This measure would recognize June 21, 2019, as the 2019 International Day of Yoga in California.

This measure would declare the support of the Legislature for the expansion of sensory-friendly movie screenings and similar programs for people with autism, and would encourage families to attend a sensory-friendly movie screening during April 2019, which is National Autism Awareness Month.