Sacramento Democrats are scrambling to outlaw electric shock gloves before federal immigration agents get the chance to use them, moving quickly after reports surfaced that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is preparing to buy thousands of the devices for deployment nationwide, potentially including California.
State lawmakers advanced Assembly Bill 2760 this week, a measure that would bar ICE agents, along with state and local law enforcement officers, from wearing any equipment capable of delivering an electric shock. The bill would also prohibit California police departments from spending public funds to acquire such devices.
The legislation comes from Assemblymember LaShae Sharp-Collins, a San Diego Democrat, who introduced it just days before the legislative session was set to wrap up. She used a legislative maneuver known as a “gut and amend,” which strips an existing bill of its original content and replaces it with new language, allowing it to move through the process on an accelerated timeline.
The rush to act follows a Department of Homeland Security filing published earlier this month indicating that ICE intends to spend as much as $20 million on shock-emitting gloves manufactured by Compliant Technologies, a company based in Kentucky. The product, marketed under the name G.L.O.V.E. — short for Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter — is described by the manufacturer as a non-lethal tool designed to help officers de-escalate confrontations. The Associated Press first broke the story after reviewing the federal notice.
By Thursday, ICE had confirmed it awarded the company a $16.7 million contract to supply 6,000 pairs of the gloves.
Sharp-Collins told colleagues at a hearing this week that she felt compelled to act before any incidents occur in California. “While the gloves are not currently being used in California, waiting for a tragedy to act, in my personal opinion, and so many others, would be something that California could not handle,” she said.
She pointed to a case in Kentucky in which a man died last year after being shocked 27 times with the gloves and an additional 13 times with a Taser while in custody, according to reporting from The Guardian.
The controversy has also drawn attention in Washington. U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla joined other congressional Democrats in sending a letter Thursday to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, calling on the department to scrap its contract with the glove manufacturer. The lawmakers described the devices as “hand-worn tasers disguised as restraint equipment.”
Civil rights advocates have rallied behind the California bill, framing the gloves as a dangerous and unnecessary escalation of force. “Electroshock gloves by any law enforcement agency makes Californians less safe,” said Anallely Martin of the California Immigrant Policy Center during testimony at the hearing.
Law enforcement groups, however, are pushing back hard against the proposal. The California State Sheriffs’ Association and several other organizations representing police argue the measure would strip officers of a useful tool for defusing tense encounters. Cory Salzillo, a lobbyist for the sheriffs’ association, told lawmakers the bill amounts to little more than a symbolic gesture aimed at the federal government. “This is a bad policy from a California law enforcement perspective, and it’s really only gonna be a message to the feds that’s going to fail to land,” he said.
The shock glove ban is the latest in a series of efforts by California Democrats to push back against the Trump administration’s expanded immigration enforcement operations. Earlier this week, lawmakers approved a separate bill that would prevent federal agents from serving alongside state or local police, and another that would make it easier for individuals to sue federal agents over alleged civil rights violations.
Not all of these efforts have withstood legal scrutiny. In April, a federal court struck down a 2025 California law that required masked immigration agents to identify themselves, ruling that the state had overstepped its authority by attempting to impose rules on federal personnel.
Legal experts expect the new legislation, if signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, to face a similar fate in court. Vikram Amar, a law professor at UC Davis, said states generally lack the authority to dictate how federal agents carry out their duties. “States simply can’t regulate how federal officers do their jobs, even if we don’t like how they do their jobs. That’s up to the federal government,” Amar said.
He added that without a stronger constitutional argument tying the gloves to violations of individual rights, the bill may carry more symbolic weight than legal force. “It makes a lot of bills like this kind of more performative than real,” Amar said.
Original source: CalMatters
