Asm. Jo Anne Simon

Relates to the procedure for filling a vacancy in the office of state senator or in the office of member of assembly occurring in a district consisting of parts of more than one county in a city with a population of one million or more; allows for independent nominating petitions to be presented and provides for a special election to be held forty-five days from the date of the governor making a proclamation for a special election.

Establishes the "education equity act" which provides language assistance to parents or guardians who have children enrolled in public school and whose primary language is not English; defines terms; creates an annual language assistance plan to assess language needs in the district; requires the department of education to establish web pages detailing the rights of parents to translation services in each covered language; requires annual reports by each school district to the local board of education.

Relates to establishing unlawful discriminatory practices relating to models; requires models to be informed of what constitutes an unlawful discriminatory practice and how to file a complaint.

Relates to the authority of the commissioner of general services to lease public buildings.

Relates to establishing a computer coding and basic programming course for secondary schools.

Relates to the "uniform employee and student online privacy protection act"; relates to the protection of employee and student online accounts.

Bans smoking in hotel and motel rooms.

Requires hospitals to provide language assistance services to a patient or a patient's assistant for communication of clinical and other information, including but not limited to health care, billing and making appointments, to ensure effective communication; provides that such interpreter may be a qualified interpreter, volunteer or medical personnel at such hospital; provides for such services to be available at all locations during all times that patient care is available; provides that translations of frequently used forms essential to a patient's care and treatment be available in all of the hospital's primary languages; provides for training of those providing interpretation services; requires the hospital to submit to the commissioner an annual report assessing compliance; defines primary language and patient visits.

Relates to gun violence restraining orders; provides a procedure whereby family members may prohibit persons from owning or possessing firearms if the person poses an immediate and present danger of causing personal injury to himself, herself, or another by having in his or her custody or control a firearm and a gun violence restraining order is necessary to prevent personal injury to the subject of the petition or another because less restrictive alternatives either have been tried and found to be ineffective, or have been determined to be inadequate.

Relates to intimidating a victim or witness in the third degree.