
As we enter the second year of a two-year legislative session, the ACLU’s top priorities reflect our sense that even in a tight budget year, we can gain ground in a number of our core areas. The following bills call for stemming wrongful convictions, ensuring access to disaster-relief services, and protecting Californians from increasing violations of personal privacy. Included below are new bills as well as familiar bills that stalled or failed in prior years.
Stopping Wrongful
Convictions
These bills propose much needed reforms to minimize wrongful
convictions by addressing the three leading causes of wrongful convictions in
the United
States: reliance on uncorroborated testimony
from “in-custody” informants, false confessions, and erroneous eyewitness
identifications. The California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice
sponsored the bills, which Gov. Schwarzenegger vetoed last year:
SB 1589 (Romero, D-Los Angeles)
Would prohibit conviction based on the uncorroborated
testimony of an in-custody informant.
ACLU-NC Position:
Support
Status: Passed Senate; pending vote on Assembly Floor
Read More »
SB 1590 (Alquist,
D-San Jose)
Would have required that police interrogations in cases
involving homicides or other violent felonies be recorded electronically.
ACLU-NC Position:
Support
Status: Placed on
suspense in the Senate Appropriations Committee because of the state’s fiscal
crisis and will not move forward
Read More »
SB 1591 (Ridley-Thomas, D-Los Angeles)
Would have required the Department of Justice to develop
voluntary guidelines for eyewitness identification procedures for all California law
enforcement agencies.
ACLU-NC Position:
Support
Status: Placed on
suspense in the Senate Appropriations Committee because of the state’s fiscal
crisis and will not move forward
Read More »
Providing Justice for the Wrongfully
Convicted
AB 2937 (Solorio, D-Santa Ana)
Would ensure that exonerees have the same access to resources
that ex-offenders receive; clarify the statute of limitations to file damages
claims; ensure that criminal records relating to wrongful convictions are
sealed; and adjust the amount of compensation for wrongful convictions to
reflect federal standards. Also known as the Arthur Carmona Justice for the
Wrongfully Convicted Act.
ACLU-NC Position:
Support
Status: Passed
Assembly; pending in Senate Appropriations Committee
Read More »
Championing Accurate,
Un-Biased Sex Ed
SB 1600 (Kuehl, D-Santa Monica)
Would have required charter
schools that choose to teach sex education to follow the same standards as
public schools. (In 2003, the ACLU sponsored SB 71, which required sexual health
education in California’s public schools to be medically
accurate, age-appropriate, and unbiased.) Through negotiations with the charter
schools, we have reached a non-legislative agreement that will require the
charter schools to follow standards found in SB 71, which were recently adopted
by the Board of Education. As a result, legislation is no longer needed to
address this issue.
ACLU-NC Position:
Support
Status: Per the agreement reached between sex-ed
advocates and the charter schools, this bill has been placed on the inactive
file
Read More »
Ensuring Access to
Disaster-Relief Services
AB 2327 (Caballero, D-Salinas)
States that those providing disaster-related assistance and
services will strive to provide all victims with the assistance and services
they need and for which they are eligible. Additionally, public employees who
assist victims would not be permitted to request information or documents that
are not strictly necessary to determine eligibility for services under state or
federal law. During last year’s wildfires in San Diego, evacuees were asked for
identification documents to access emergency services. Many people did not have
identity documents with them and were denied services.
ACLU-NC Position:
Support
Status: Passed
Assembly; pending on Senate Floor
Protecting Identity
Documents
The ACLU is working to require basic privacy protections for
government identity documents that are issued with RFID (Radio Frequency
Identification) chips. Without privacy protections, RFID chips are susceptible
to unauthorized reading and cloning. These three bills, co-sponsored by the
ACLU, were held over from last year:
SB 29 (Simitian, D-Palo Alto)
Would set a three-year moratorium on the use of RFID chips in
school identity documents while research is done to determine appropriate
privacy protections.
ACLU-NC Position:
Support
Status: Passed
Senate; pending on Assembly Floor
Read More »
SB 30 (Simitian,
D-Palo Alto)
Would set minimum standards and protections for the use of
RFID chips in any type of government-issued identity document.
ACLU-NC Position:
Support
Status: Placed on
the inactive file pending completion of a study by the California Research
Bureau on appropriate privacy protections for the use of RFID chips
Read More »
SB 31 (Simitian, D-Palo Alto)
Would impose penalties for skimming, spoofing, and other
unauthorized accessing of information on the chip.
ACLU-NC Position:
Support
Status: Passed
Senate; passed Assembly Judiciary Committee; pending in Assembly Appropriations
Committee
Read More »
Sending Real ID Back
to the Drawing Board
Formerly Assembly
Joint Resolution 51 (Nava,
D-Santa Barbara)
Called on Congress to repeal the Real ID Act of
2005 -- a law creating a de facto national ID card that concentrates the
personal data of all U.S. drivers into one giant DMV
database.
ACLU-NC
Position: Support
Status: The author rewrote this bill on June 26 and it is
now a resolution on a
different topic. We have no position on the revised
bill.
Read
More »
Promoting Cell Phone
Privacy
AB 3011 (Huffman,
D-San Rafael)
Would have amended the Public Utilities Code to extend the
privacy protections for residential land line consumers to cell phone users.
Would have prohibited telephone companies from disclosing the calling patterns,
financial information, and demographic information of consumers to other
companies or persons without first receiving the written consent of the
consumer.
ACLU-NC Position:
Support
Status: Failed on
Assembly Floor
Pressing to Restore
Public Oversight of Police Agencies

