by Jason Burruel, Legislative Director
We have had action on several bills since last week’s update including AB 391, which is backed by our incoming President, Chief Rick Braziel. AB 391 will create a single, statewide reporting system for pawn transactions. This bill will require a coin dealer who makes more than 10 transactions per week file their transactions electronically with the Department of Justice. If the coin dealer makes less than 10 transactions a week, they will be allowed to maintain transactions on paper. CPOA worked extensively with Assemblymember Pan’s office over a month ago on this bill and are extremely happy to see this bill move through the Senate.
Recently many of you have probably seen news reports about a couple bills going through the legislature that will prohibit employers from requesting login information to potential employee’s personal social media accounts. The first bill is AB 1844 authored by Assemblymember Torres. I want to point out that although this bill specifically states that employees cannot request the information, it does not state public employees in the bill and therefore it excludes them. Court doctrine states that in order to include public employees in social media privacy laws, public employees must be specifically stated in the bill/law. In the dissent pulled from California Correctional Peace Officers’ Association v. State of California, “These provisions are silent as their applicability to public employees. Generally, however, provision of the Labor Code apply only to employees in the private sector unless they are specifically made applicable to public employees.” With that being said this bill clearly stays away from affecting law enforcement.
However, SB 1349 authored by Senator Yee is the bill that law enforcement needs to be cautious about. This bill clearly states public and private employers. It is of note to realize that the main point of this bill is postsecondary education, and Senator Yee has “snuck” in public employees to an education bill. The point is to not let postsecondary schools not accept a potential student, based on the students personal social media account. However, the bill encompasses in a few words, public employees. The politics behind this are the fact that Senator Yee knows that by tucking this into a postsecondary bill, no one will try to fight it and it will hopefully slide through the legislature. This bill will be discussed in this month’s Law and Legislative committee.
SB 1506 is a bill we have written about before and discussed the dangerous effects of and we can happily announce that at the moment the author, Senator Leno, seems to have felt the pressure from law enforcement.
This week is our monthly Law and Legislative Committee where we will be discussing and deciding our position on roughly a dozen bills. We are also happy to announce that Incoming President, Chief Rick Braziel has named Beverly Hills PD Captain, Mitch McCann the Vice Chair of the Law and Legislative Committee.
As always do not hesitate to get in contact with us regarding any questions on legislation!
Visit us again each Monday to find out
WHAT’S HAPPENING AT THE CAPITOL!
To view previous posts,
click here.