SAN FRANCISCO—California Governor Edmund G. Brown signed Senate Bill 393 on October 11, the Consumer Arrest Record Equity (C.A.R.E.) Act, to seal arrest records and halt barriers to employment and housing for individuals arrested, but never convicted of a crime. The CARE Act, which was signed into law by the governor, was authored by State Senator Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens) and was sponsored by San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón. The law goes into effect January 1, 2018.
SACRAMENTO—Yesterday, Governor Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 190, a major, bipartisan juvenile justice reform bill that will improve youth rehabilitation and increase public safety. Effective January 1, 2018, SB 190 ends the harmful, unlawful and costly practice of charging administrative fees to families with youth in the juvenile system.
Around the country, juvenile defense lawyers and law students have begun to challenge this billing system, arguing that it is akin to taxing parents for their child’s loss of liberty.[…]In California, grassroots activists teamed up with lawyers at the East Bay Community Law Center in Berkeley to bar the imposition of the fees in several counties.
California tenants have a new arrow in their quiver: a law to protect them from being unfairly placed on rental blacklists that jeopardize their credit ratings and shut them out of the housing market. Signed this week by Gov. Jerry Brown, the measure is scheduled to take effect Jan. 1. [2017] Unpopular with landlord groups, the bill was a squeaker in the Legislature, narrowly passing through the Assembly in May and the Senate in August.
Governor Brown signs AB 816, an EBCLC sponsored bill that would facilitate the creation of worker-owned businesses in California.
Unscrupulous debt collection agencies have misused the courts to steamroll low-income consumers in recent years, but the State of California took a major step towards ending these unfair practices when Governor Jerry Brown signed into law the Fair Debt-Buying Practices Act (SB 233).
