Last week marked the halfway point in the legislature for the year, and our two highest priority bills have successfully made it to the State Senate.

• The Racial Justice Act for All (AB 256, Kalra) is one step closer to providing relief for every Californian who has faced a racially-biased conviction or sentence. The #RJA4All will make the provisions of the Racial Justice Act retroactive to ensure that everyone is afforded an opportunity to pursue justice.
• AB 796 (Berman) is on its way to streamlining the voter registration process at the DMV. Our court case, League of Women Voters of California v. Annis, temporarily improved the DMV’s practices to enhance consistency, uniformity, and fairness. Now we are working to permanently enshrine these best practices into law.

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And that’s not all. We are advocating for (and against) over 50 pieces of legislation. Here are a few that are also on their way to the second house:

• SB 459 (Allen) offers greater transparency and more timely information about the big money groups who spend millions of dollars every year to lobby the legislature and influence legislation.
• SB 27 (Skinner) is a crucial step to help California reach carbon neutrality by 2045 by creating CO2 removal targets for natural and working lands.
• SB 2 (Bradford) is a common sense measure that would create a statewide process to revoke the certification of a peace officer following the conviction of certain serious crimes or termination of employment for causes due to misconduct.
• SB 10 (Wiener) will ease some of the barriers to building small multifamily developments, and in doing so, address one of the factors that has led to an undersupply of “missing middle” housing or medium-density housing near jobs and transit.

These bills still have to overcome several obstacles before they become law, but we wanted to give you a progress update and say thank you for helping these important pieces of legislation make it this far. Whether by making a donation or contacting your state representatives to advocate for our priority bills, you are driving the work we do to make a more just and equitable future in California.

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These are hard-earned victories, and there’s a lot left to do. We thank you for helping us get this far, and we hope we can count on you again when the next fight comes.

Check out our Bill Status Report for 2021-2022 to stay up to speed on each bill the League is working on.