The new mom, who asked that she and her family be identified only by their first names out of fear they could be targeted for the unconventional way they’re raising their daughter, said her doctors had known for weeks that she would probably end up with a surgical birth.

Yet because of their uncommon family structure, it wasn’t until just minutes before the obstetrician cut into her belly that the father of her child got permission to go with her into the operating room.

“They were changing shifts so we couldn’t get the right doctor,” Chloe said. “They said it was up to the anesthesiologist on the day of the surgery to agree to having two people there.”

Chloe is polyamorous. By the time of her delivery last year, she and her partners Silvia and Fausto had already endured a medical and legal odyssey in their quest to expand their family.

Polyamory is nothing new in California, and certainly not in Oakland, which in 2024 became the first city in the state to outlaw discrimination based on family structure — a move meant in part to protect multiple partners’ rights to manage a medical emergency in the hospital.

Last month, West Hollywood passed an ordinance seeking to become the first city in California and one of just a handful across the country to offer domestic partnerships to poly groups. But for now, many families still face legal hurdles even in places where polyamory is becoming widely accepted.

In Chloe’s case, she began the pregnancy process by contracting with a fertility clinic to implant an embryo conceived with Silvia’s egg and Fausto’s sperm. When it came time to give birth, the throuple had to get special dispensation to visit their daughter in the NICU.

“You can only get two parents on the birth certificate at the time of the birth, so they have to think about who is going to be the one giving the child health insurance,” said the family’s attorney, Amira Hasenbush, a partner at the boutique Glendale firm All Family Legal.

For Chloe, Silvia and Fausto, that decision also meant weighing which of them would get access to paid family leave — something California law guarantees only to workers with documented proof of parentage.

Experts say multi-partner families are increasingly common in the Bay Area — Chloe noted they were recently outbid for a house by another triad with a child. Yet without laws allowing for domestic partnerships of three or more people, they are left spending thousands of dollars on attorney’s fees to craft a patchwork of legal agreements that afford just small fraction of the contractual protection conferred to married couples by default.

“Families are becoming more and more complex,” said Alana Chazan, Hasenbush’s partner at All Family Legal. “There are polyamorous families that will essentially form an LLC in order to protect their rights, because corporations have more rights under these laws than people do.”

Poly households who end up hiring lawyers are most often throuples or foursomes seeking to protect jointly held assets, parent children in common and ensure they can care for one another in life-or-death crises.

Some, like Chloe’s triad, are all lovers. In many others, two may share a partner in common but aren’t directly involved with each other.

“Having multiple partners is a more difficult legal administrative problem to solve than just making marriage gender neutral and plugging two people in there,” said Kaiponanea Matsumura, a professor at Loyola Law School and an expert on the legal regulation of families. “That is truly easier, legally.”

Math alone makes opening domestic partnership to polyamorous relationships challenging. But the law itself is also a hurdle, he and other experts said.

“Domestic partnership was added to the bigamy law in California, the criminal statute, so there’s currently no way to extend California registered domestic partnership to more than two people,” said Toby Adams a polyamory legal expert who is currently seeking a parentage judgment for her first foursome of clients.

The state bigamy law won’t necessarily bar West Hollywood from registering relationships inside its two-mile-square borders. But it does sharply limit that registry’s power, experts said.

“Many of the valuable rights and benefits that accompany marriage or domestic partnership are state law-created,” Matsumura explained. “Municipalities can’t create that, because it’s a creature of state law.”

Other marriage rights flow from the federal government, leaving little hope they could be expanded soon.

“Marriage conveys over a thousand different rights and responsibilities under federal law, and you can’t get yourself into that with a city ordinance,” said attorney Diane Adams , whose nonprofit Chosen Family Law Center has helped author poly ordinances around the country. “I call this the social welfare state of two. We’ve privatized dependency within marriage.”

But expanding rights piecemeal creates a nightmare for divorce lawyers, who found themselves building the plane in midair with gay breakups in the aughts and early 2010s.

“People don’t live their lives in contemplation of their divorce,” said Steven J. Mandel, a New York City divorce attorney and legal pioneer in same-sex splits. “One hundred percent of the people who get married think they’re gonna be married forever, and 50% of people are wrong.”

California’s first-in-the-nation multi-parentage law arose from exactly the sort of lesbian breakup Mandel made his name litigating.

In June of 2008, an Inland Empire woman named Melissa began a tempestuous relationship with a woman named Irene, according to state appellate court records. The two registered almost immediately as domestic partners despite fighting constantly, the court heard, and during one of their breakups Melissa started hooking up with Jesus, a man with whom she became pregnant.

Their love didn’t last. Melissa got back with her ex, marrying Irene just weeks before Proposition 8 made such unions illegal. The two women were together in the delivery room when the baby was born the following spring.

That union dissolved a few months later and then, in September of 2009, according to the appellate court record, Melissa’s new boyfriend stabbed Irene in the neck while they were drinking beer in a park, landing the baby in state custody.

Melissa, Jesus and Irene sought to each have visitation with their daughter and reunification services to help them figure out a way to co-parent. But the law would recognize only two of them as parents.

After the appellate court’s decision, then-state Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) introduced legislation to expand California’s definition of parentage to include more than two adults where excluding a third would be “detrimental” to the well-being of the child.

“Gay rights were advanced through a lot of breakups,” said Matthew Goodwin, a family lawyer in West Hollywood. “That’s how so much legislation gets drafted, because unique questions were litigated.”

The current state law allows parents like Chloe, Silvia and Fausto to petition for parentage with relative ease. A registry like the one proposed in West Hollywood would confer further recognition, even if it didn’t ultimately earn them more rights.

“It was almost unthinkable in the 1980s that two men or two women could legally marry under California law,” said Matsumura, the Loyola professor. “What [early domestic partnership] ordinances did, it institutionalized this idea, it made it not inconceivable that a government would recognize a type of relationship and say it has value.”

It would also almost certainly extend access to health benefits — a quirk of American marriage that experts said lies at the heart of the legal fight over poly partnerships.

“If tax benefits, if health insurance, if parental rights were not all based upon marital status, we wouldn’t have the issues that we do,” said Chazan, the Glendale lawyer. “Pass universal healthcare, then we wouldn’t have to marry each other for health benefits.”

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“Lake Elsinore Unified School District (LEUSD) is dedicated to our mission to Educate, Equip, and Empower – Every Student, Every Day by providing a safe and welcoming learning environment for all students,” said LEUSD Public Information Officer Melissa Valdez.

“We understand that recent national discussions on immigration policies have raised questions within our community,” Valdez continued. To ensure clarity and address these concerns, Valdez said the district sent a Jan. 31 letter to LEUSD families and the school community to reaffirm established policies regarding student rights, campus security, and visitor protocols.

The letter, which Patch obtained, provides an overview of board-approved policies that can be accessed at https://bit.ly/LEUSDBP.

The policies state, among other things, that district staff must document any verbal or written request for information related to a student’s or family’s immigration or citizenship status. Additionally, any request must be forwarded to the school superintendent, an affected student and their family.

“District staff shall receive parent/guardian consent before a student is interviewed or searched by any officer seeking to enforce civil immigration laws at the school, unless the officer presents a valid, effective warrant signed by a judge or a valid, effective court order,” according to the policy. “A student’s parent/guardian shall be immediately notified if a law enforcement officer requests or gains access to the student for immigration enforcement purposes, unless the judicial warrant or subpoena restricts disclosure to the parent/guardian.”

The policy also outlines steps that district staff must take if an immigration officer shows up on a LEUSD campus.

There have been no reported issues at LEUSD campuses.

As for local law enforcement conducting immigration raids at LEUSD campuses, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said in a Feb. 6 video posted to social media that it’s not happening.

Immigration enforcement is the federal government’s responsibility, and Bianco said any rumors that his deputies are conducting raids at local schools “are simply not true.”

The sheriff promised that his personnel would not target schools, businesses, or churches and reiterated that his deputies would not perform “any type of immigration enforcement.”

California’s Senate Bill 54, approved in 2017, bars local law enforcement agencies from using public money for immigration enforcement. It also prohibits police from transferring people to immigration authorities except in some instances involving certain violent felonies and/or misdemeanors.

Bianco criticized the law, and said in his video post that he would “continue to fight to reform an extremely dangerous sanctuary state law.”

Two days before Bianco’s message, California Attorney General Rob Bonta issued guidance to students, families, educators, and school officials on how to respond if an immigration officer comes to campus. The guidance also informs immigrant students and their families about their educational rights and legal protections.

Bonta said the guidance helps “ensure a safe and secure school environment for all.”

“All children have a constitutional right to access a public education, regardless of their immigration status,” the attorney general said. “Schools are meant to be a safe place for children to learn and grow. Unfortunately, the President’s recent orders have created fear and uncertainty in our immigrant communities.”

Litigation is amassing over U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to deport large numbers of people who are in the country without authorization. But on Thursday, Feb. 6, the administration sued the state of Illinois, Chicago, and Cook County, Ill., accusing them of obstructing the federal government’s enforcement of immigration laws.

The counties of San Francisco and Santa Clara in California, in addition to King County, Washington, and the cities of Portland, Oregon, and New Haven, Connecticut, took preemptive action on Friday, Feb. 7: They sued the Trump administration, alleging it has threatened and unlawfully targeted sanctuary jurisdictions, according to the lawsuit filed in the Northern District of California.

The plaintiffs say their lawsuit seeks to check the administration’s “abuse of power” and asks the court to declare Trump’s actions unlawful and prevent any enforcement.

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California would have become the first to require such systems for all new cars, trucks and buses sold in the state starting in 2030. The bill, aimed at reducing traffic deaths, would have mandated that vehicles beep at drivers when they exceed the speed limit by at least 10 mph (16kph).

The European Union has passed similar legislation to encourage drivers to slow down. California’s proposal would have provided exceptions for emergency vehicles, motorcycles and motorized scooters.

In explaining his veto, Newsom said federal law already dictates vehicle safety standards and adding California-specific requirements would create a patchwork of regulations.

The National Highway Traffic Safety “is also actively evaluating intelligent speed assistance systems, and imposing state-level mandates at this time risks disrupting these ongoing federal assessments,” the Democratic governor said.

Opponents, including automotive groups and the state Chamber of Commerce, said such regulations should be decided by the federal government, which earlier this year established new requirements for automatic emergency braking to curb traffic deaths. Republican lawmakers also said the proposal could make cars more expensive and distract drivers.

The legislation would have likely impacted all new car sales in the U.S., since the California market is so large that car manufacturers would likely just make all of their vehicles comply.

California often throws that weight around to influence national and even international policy. The state has set its own emission standards for cars for decades, rules that more than a dozen other states have also adopted. And when California announced it would eventually ban the sale of new gas-powered cars, major automakers soon followed with their own announcement to phase out fossil-fuel vehicles.

Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener, who sponsored the bill, called the veto a setback for street safety.

“California should have led on this crisis as Wisconsin did in passing the first seatbelt mandate in 1961,” Wiener said in a statement. “Instead, this veto resigns Californians to a completely unnecessary risk of fatality.”

The speeding alert technology, known as intelligent speed assistance, uses GPS to compare a vehicle’s pace with a dataset of posted limits. If the car is at least 10 mph (16 kph) over, the system emits a single, brief, visual and audio alert.

The proposal would have required the state to maintain a list of posted speed limits, and it’s likely that those would not include local roads or recent changes in speed limits, resulting in conflicts.

The technology has been used in the U.S. and Europe for years. Starting in July, the European Union will require all new cars to have the technology, although drivers would be able to turn it off. At least 18 manufacturers including Ford, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Nissan, have already offered some form of speed limiters on some models sold in America, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.

The National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration estimates that 10% of all car crashes reported to police in 2021 were related to speeding. This was especially a problem in California, where 35% of traffic fatalities were speeding-related — the second highest in the country, according to a legislative analysis of the proposal.

Last year the NTSB recommended federal regulators require all new cars to alert drivers when they speed. Their recommendation came after a crash in January 2022, when a man with a history of speeding violations ran a red light at more than 100 mph (161 kph) and struck a minivan, killing himself and eight other people.

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A judge halted enforcement Tuesday of a new statewide rule requiring law enforcement officers to disclose their own gender identity in reporting traffic stops to a California anti-discrimination board.

As part of the state’s Racial and Identity Profiling Act, passed in 2015, California police officers are required to record information about people they stop and submit the data to the state, which compiles and analyzes the information in annual reports. Since Jan. 1, new regulations by Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office have required officers to also notify their employer whether they are cisgender, transgender or nonbinary, information the police agency relays to the state.

The temporary restraining order by Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Christopher Krueger came in a lawsuit by the Peace Officers’ Research Association of California, the California Association of Highway Patrolmen and organizations of police chiefs and sheriffs. Krueger did not spell out his reasons in the brief order, but scheduled a hearing for March 19 on a preliminary injunction that would keep the new requirements on hold while the case continued.

“PORAC remains committed to protecting the rights of all our members to live as they wish, identify as they see fit, and to share that identity on their own terms,” the organization’s president, Brian Marvel, said in a statement. PORAC says it has more than 78,000 members from 955 law enforcement organizations in the state. The group also opposed the initial law that created the data reporting requirements, and regularly criticizes annual reports showing officers disproportionately stop and search drivers of color.

David Mastagni, a lawyer for the police groups in the suit, said Bonta was contradicting the privacy standard the attorney general had declared for schools that require teachers to inform parents when a student identifies as transgender.

In a “Legal Alert” to school officials in California on Jan. 11, Bonta said that “forced gender identity disclosure policies — which target transgender and gender nonconforming students by mandating that school personnel disclose a student’s gender identity or gender nonconformity to a parent or guardian without the student’s express consent — violate state law.” He has taken that position in lawsuits against school districts in state and federal courts.

“Paradoxically, his DOJ (Department of Justice) refused to afford peace officers these same privacy rights,” Mastagni said. He said the rules also violate California’s civil rights law, the Fair Employment and Housing Act, which prohibits discrimination based on gender as well as race, ethnicity, age, religion and disability.

Bonta’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Under the attorney general’s rules, PORAC said, an officer’s gender identity would be disclosed on a form that could be accessed by supervisors and coworkers. Those who refused to disclose the information could be fired, and those who misstated their gender identity could lose their licenses, the organization said.

If enforced, PORAC said, the regulations would have the effect of “dissuading officers who are nonbinary or transgender from joining or remaining in the profession.”

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — A California law that bans people from carrying firearms in most public places will take effect on New Year’s Day, even as a court case continues to challenge the law.

A U.S. district judge issued a ruling Dec. 20 to block the law from taking effect, saying it violates the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and deprives people of their ability to defend themselves and their loved ones.

But on Saturday, a federal appeals court put a temporary hold on the district judge’s ruling. The appeals court decision allows the law to go into effect as the legal fight continues. Attorneys are scheduled to file arguments to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in January and in February.

The law, signed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, prohibits people from carrying concealed guns in 26 places including public parks and playgrounds, churches, banks and zoos.

The ban applies regardless of whether the person has a permit to carry a concealed weapon. One exception is for privately owned businesses that put up signs saying people are allowed to bring guns on their premises.

“This ruling will allow our common-sense gun laws to remain in place while we appeal the district court’s dangerous ruling,” Newsom posted to X, formerly Twitter, after the appeals court acted Saturday. “Californians overwhelmingly support efforts to ensure that places like hospitals, libraries and children’s playgrounds remain safe and free from guns.”

The California Rifle and Pistol Association sued to block the law. When U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney granted a preliminary injunction blocking the law, he wrote that the law was “sweeping, repugnant to the Second Amendment, and openly defiant of the Supreme Court.”

Carney wrote that gun rights groups are likely to succeed in proving it unconstitutional, meaning it would be permanently overturned.

The law overhauls California’s rules for concealed carry permits in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, which set several states scrambling to react with their own laws. That decision said the constitutionality of gun laws must be assessed by whether they are “consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

Newsom has said he will keep pushing for stricter gun measures.

Newsom has positioned himself as a national leader on gun control while he is being increasingly eyed as a potential presidential candidate. He has called for and signed a variety of bills, including measures targeting untraceable “ghost guns,” the marketing of firearms to children and allowing people to bring lawsuits over gun violence. That legislation was patterned on a Texas anti-abortion law.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta appealed Carney’s decision. Bonta, a Democrat, said that if the district judge’s ruling to block the law were allowed to stand, it “would endanger communities by allowing guns in places where families and children gather.”

The California Pistol and Rifle Association’s president, Chuck Michel, said in a statement that under the law, gun permit holders “wouldn’t be able to drive across town without passing through a prohibited area and breaking the law.” Michel said criminals are deterred when law-abiding citizens can defend themselves.

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — In a setback to California gun rights advocates, a federal appeals court has temporarily blocked a lower court’s ruling that the state cannot ban gun owners from having detachable magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.

The ban on higher-capacity magazines remains in effect while the case is still pending.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal on Tuesday granted state Attorney General Rob Bonta’s motion for a stay of last month’s ruling by U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez.

The appeals court wrote that the attorney general’s defense of the law is likely to succeed.

The September ruling came in a legal action filed by five individuals and the California Rifle & Pistol Association challenging the law’s constitutionality under the Second Amendment. It was the second time Benitez struck down the law. The first time he struck it down was in 2017 and an appeals court ended up reversing his decision.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court set a new standard for how to interpret the nation’s gun laws. The new standard relies more on the historical tradition of gun regulation rather than public interests, including safety.

The Supreme Court ordered the case to be heard again in light of the new standards. It’s one of three high-profile challenges to California gun laws that are getting new hearings in court. The other two cases challenge California laws banning certain weapons and limiting purchases of ammunition.

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AMY BENTLEY | Correspondent

Q: John Lessing of Corona asked how veterans can avoid paying toll road fees under the new California law that took effect this year which exempts some veterans from certain toll road charges.

A: The 91 Express Lanes and 15 Riverside Express Lanes have different discount policies for drivers who have special recognition license plates including disabled Veterans plates. The 91 Express Lanes has a special recognition plates program that allows account holders to sign up for a Special Access Account to receive toll-free travel. Eligible account holders with a Disabled Veteran or Special Recognition license plate must provide proof of their Department of Motor Vehicles registration and a photo of the license plate to qualify. Account holders with verified eligibility may use the 91 Express Lanes toll free at all times. More information is available online at www.91expresslanes.com/general-info/promotions-discounts/ and https://myaccount.91expresslanes.com/#/FAQS.

The 15 Riverside Express lanes are different as they are considered High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes. Under Assembly Bill 2949, which was signed into law last year, vehicles are not exempt from paying tolls on HOT lanes, so there is no discount program for disabled veterans or other special recognition plates. However, Riverside Express account holders with Disabled Veterans or Special Recognition license plates can register their account to drive toll-free on other eligible toll lanes like the 91 Express Lanes, explained Ariel Alcon Tapia, a spokesman for the Riverside County Transportation Commission. Call the 91 Express Lanes customer service line at 1-800-600-9191 or the 15 Riverside Express customer service line at 855-951-1500.

Q: Carol Cooper said there is long-term road construction in the area where she lives near Highland, on the eastbound 210 Freeway. In two locations, Cooper said, when she drives she hears a “singing” sound coming from the road surface. “Just curious what makes the sound. It is momentary and eventually stops,” she said.

A: Caltrans has not heard of any issues like this on the 210. Spokesman Eric Dionne said he wonders if perhaps the sound is coming from our reader’s car hitting the grooves in the concrete sections that are there for traction when the road is wet. Other than that, we’ll have to chalk this up to being another one of life’s mysteries.

We’d like to share an idea from Patrick Rutten of Temescal Valley that, if regularly enforced, could help reduce the annoying noise from modified exhaust equipment on vehicles, which we addressed in a recent column. Here’s what Rutten suggests: “When cars go in for smog checks, have noise evaluated on modified exhausts. Or, make it illegal to modify exhausts without a noise clearance.” It’s already illegal, as we wrote, to sell motor vehicle exhaust systems, or their parts, including mufflers, unless they meet certain regulations and standards, or to modify a vehicle’s exhaust system in a way that would increase the noise the motor gives off if the vehicle doesn’t meet other legal standards.

Finally, if you’ve had a permanent disabled person parking placard for six or more years, you have until June 30 to provide the Department of Motor Vehicles with a signature to renew it. Placards expire on June 30, 2023. Remember, a new law changed the renewal process so the disabled parking placards are no longer automatically renewed.

You can renew online with an e-signature at dmv.ca.gov/DPP. There is no fee to renew and you don’t need a doctor’s note – you just need to do it.

Placard holders who fail to renew in time will not have a valid placard after June 30.

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Robert Barnes | Contributed

The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld California’s right to forbid the sale of pork in the state unless producers abide by more humane regulations on the treatment of pregnant sows. The decision touched on constitutional issues of interstate trade and splintered the justices outside of their usual liberal-conservative blocs.

There was even disagreement within the majority. Dissenting Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh provided something of a scorecard to show what tests justices believed could be applied to decide whether one state’s law improperly interferes with businesses elsewhere.

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, writing the majority in what boiled down to a 5-4 decision, rejected what he called a request by pork producers for the court to fashion “new and more aggressive constitutional restrictions on the ability of States to regulate goods sold within their borders.” “While the Constitution addresses many weighty issues, the type of pork chops California merchants may sell is not on that list,” Gorsuch wrote for a majority that included, at times, Justices Clarence Thomas, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett.

Pork producers must turn to Congress for relief from state laws they dislike, he wrote. Then he added that “despite the persistent efforts of certain pork producers, Congress has yet to adopt any statute that might displace Proposition 12 or laws regulating pork production in other States.”

Four members of the court — Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr., Kavanaugh and Ketanji Brown Jackson — were in favor of keeping the challenge to the law alive and sending it back to a lower court for more work. Roberts said because of the size of the California market, pork producers will have little choice but to abide by California’s rules, which in Gorsuch’s words forbid confining breeding pigs in “stalls so small they cannot lie down, stand up or turn around.”

The rules could increase costs by more than 9 percent, Roberts wrote, for what is described as a $20-billion industry. “California has enacted rules that carry implications for producers as far flung as Indiana and North Carolina, whether or not they sell in California,” the chief justice wrote, adding that in the past the court has considered such “sweeping extraterritorial effects … to be pertinent.” It’s uncontested that states can regulate pork raised within its borders.

But Proposition 12, passed by nearly 63 percent of Californians in 2018, went beyond that parameter, banning the sale of products derived from sows that are not allowed at least 24 square feet of space — regardless of where the sows are raised. California raises little pork, but consumes about 13 percent of the nation’s total. The referendum was challenged by the National Pork Producers Council and the American Farm Bureau Federation, and drew support from business groups who worried about the ability of a state to regulate activity beyond its borders.

“This Supreme Court decision will not only affect every small, family-run farm in the nation, but it changes the standard of how state governments can impose regulatory burdens on businesses and consumers outside of that state,” said Beth Milito, the executive director of the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) Small Business Legal Center. “Proposition 12 will have a staggering impact on pork farmers, consumers, and interstate commerce as a whole. Today’s decision sets a dangerous precedent, and small businesses will bear the consequences.”

But Gorsuch said the Constitution’s Commerce Clause forbids discriminatory practices by states to protect their businesses and burden others, and not even the pork producers alleged California’s law does that. Writing for two other justices, Gorsuch said it was not for courts to decide how to balance the moral and health benefits of state residents against costs for producers. “In a functioning democracy, policy choices like these usually belong to the people and their elected representatives,” he wrote.

Sotomayor and Kagan were not ready to agree the judicial role is so limited, which would amount to throwing out a test the court has employed in the past. But Sotomayor wrote that “alleging a substantial burden on interstate commerce is a threshold requirement that plaintiffs must satisfy,” and concluded the pork producers had not done so.

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Madison Hirneisen | Contributed

California will prohibit minimum parking requirements for new housing development and commercial projects near public transit under a new law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, a measure supporters say will reduce the cost of crucial housing production. Assembly Bill 2097 addresses costly parking requirements that can add thousands of dollars to the cost of critical housing development and increase rent for tenants, supporters say.

A garage can cost between $24,000-$34,000 to build per spot on average. Underground parking can cost between $50,000-$60,000 per spot to build, according to the bill’s author Assemblymember Laura Friedman, D-Glendale. “Having the huge amount of cost of doing what’s usually subterranean parking if it’s not necessary, if it’s against our goals, it really does drive up the cost of housing,” Friedman told The Center Square. “I’ve seen developers who are trying to build in places like Fresno and San Bernardino literally walk away from building housing. And if they don’t, they still pass those costs directly on to renters or buyers.”

The new law represents a shift in California housing policy that supporters say previously prioritized cars over people. Other California cities, including San Francisco and San Diego, already have local laws prohibiting minimum parking requirements in certain areas. With the Golden State facing a shortage of millions of homes, advocates hope the law brings more affordable residences near public transit. “Long term, I hope this moves the state in the direction of providing more lower-cost apartments that don’t have parking, maybe that are built in places that would have otherwise been parking, like big surface lots,” Louis Mirante, vice president of public policy at the Bay Area Council, told The Center Square.

In a signing message, Gov. Gavin Newsom highlighted the bill’s ability to tackle two of the state’s most pressing problems – the housing crisis and climate change. Newsom said the bill would address “both issues simultaneously” by reducing vehicle reliance and building more homes. “Basically, we’re making it cheaper and easier to build new housing near daily destinations, like jobs and grocery stores and schools,” Newsom said Thursday. The law contains exceptions. Local agencies could impose parking mandates if they prove a substantial “negative impact” on meeting housing goals.

Additionally, the bill does not hinder developers from providing parking spaces based on the needs of the area. Opponents of the bill, including Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, feared it could deter developers from utilizing the city’s incentive program, allowing builders to construct larger projects with fewer parking spaces if they include affordable housing units. To avoid “unintended consequences” of this law, Newsom wrote in a signing message that he is directing the Department of Housing and Community Development to monitor implementation and identify “unintended outcomes.” Friedman said she agrees that the state should monitor the outcomes of the law because “if they’re as positive as I think they are, that hopefully will spur these kinds of changes even beyond the scope of the bill.”

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A federal judge has thrown out California’s new 30-foot buffer zone designed to restrict protests at coronavirus vaccination sites, though his ruling left in place other parts of a new state law despite arguments that it infringes on free speech.

The law that took effect Oct. 8 makes it illegal to come within 30 feet (9.14 meters) of someone at a vaccination site “for the purpose of obstructing, injuring, harassing, intimidating, or interfering with that person.”

U.S. District Judge Dale Drozd ruled Saturday that the 30-foot limit, which is contained in what he called the law’s “uncommon definition of ‘harassing,’” is too restrictive.

So he issued a temporary restraining order barring the state from enforcing the “harassing” portion of the law, while leaving in place the ban on obstructing, injuring, intimidating or interfering.

Those other portions of the law “appear to more precisely target the harms that the Legislature sought to prevent and further the state’s interest in ensuring that Californians can freely access vaccination sites,” he ruled.

Opponents said the bill is written so broadly that it includes any vaccine and can also apply to anti-abortion protesters.

Alliance Defending Freedom sued on behalf of Right to Life of Central California, which is located next to a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic that offers the HPV vaccine against the human papillomavirus, but not vaccinations against COVID-19.

The anti-abortion group said the law, as written, would block its members from approaching women on the public sidewalk and street outside its own building and even in its own parking lot.

The ruling came as the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday coincidently considered whether it would allow legal challenges to a Texas law that has virtually ended abortion in the nation’s second-largest state after six weeks of pregnancy.

The problem in California, the most populous state, lies with the law’s definition of harassing, which “is far broader than the dictionary definition of the word ‘harass,’” Drozd said in his 28-page decision.

It includes approaching within 30 feet of a person or vehicle, without consent, “for the purpose of passing a leaflet or handbill to, displaying a sign to, or engaging in oral protest, education, or counseling with, that other person in a public way or on a sidewalk area.”

Moreover, the state attorney general’s interpretation of the law, in court filings and oral arguments, “is so vague that it is conducive to different and conflicting interpretations on what conduct is even prohibited by its terms,” Drozd wrote.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office, which defended the law, said it would “continue to defend the law and work to ensure that any Californian who would like to be vaccinated is able to obtain their COVID-19 vaccine without intimidation.”

“There can be no doubt that access to COVID-19 vaccines is essential to ‘stemming the spread of COVID-19,’ and that a state’s interest in ensuring its citizens can access and obtain COVID-19 vaccinations is compelling,” Dozd wrote, though he said it is less clear whether that should apply to all vaccines.

“Despite these undeniable facts, the court recognizes that the COVID-19 vaccines have been a subject of controversy and protest,” he wrote.

Yet the groups said the law violated their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, religion and association, and Fourteenth Amendment rights to due process and equal protection when it comes to opposing abortions.

Violators could face up to six months in jail and a fine up to $1,000. But lawmakers included an exemption for picketing during a labor dispute, which Drozd said created another legal conflict.

Both sides claimed victory after the initial decision.

“Free speech won the day not just for our client, Right to Life, but for every other speaker in California,” Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Denise Harle said in a statement. She said the law’s exemption for labor picketing created a “double standard in restricting pro-life outreach while permitting other types of speech.”

Democratic Sen. Richard Pan, a pediatrician, prominent vaccination proponent and author of the bill, said the judge “ultimately ruled against anti-vaccine extremists who attempt to obstruct and interfere with vaccination delivery.”

Crystal Strait, board chairwoman of bill proponent ProtectUS, said in an email that the ruling “is a step in finding balance between dangerous/reckless behavior of extremists and the first amendment.”

A second lawsuit in a different federal court, this one by Life Legal Defense Foundation ‘s chief legal officer, Katie Short, makes a much broader free speech argument.

“Creating speech-free zones around every drug store, stand-alone health clinic, and supermarket in the state in order to re-assure the occasional customer seeking a vaccine of some kind is hardly a narrowly drawn restriction on speech,” the foundation’s lawsuit contends.

The foundation’s request for a restraining order in that case has yet to be decided.

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