As Newsom exits, abortion rights group seeks to codify shield laws

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Hello and welcome back to Capitol Confidential!

We remain on bill-signing watch duty. There are hundreds of bills waiting for the governor’s signature and just about two weeks for him to get through them.

Over the past few years, California lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom have shored up legal protections for abortion access in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

The right to abortion was enshrined in the state Constitution later that year, and the state passed several new laws ensuring access to medication abortion drugs, such as mifepristone. This wave of post-Roe responses also included abortion shield laws, designed to insulate California patients and healthcare providers from out-of-state criminal prosecution for providing abortion care to individuals in other states where it is outlawed.

They’ve become some of Newsom’s signature legislative efforts during his two terms as governor, and further catapulted his political brand (and California’s) as a foil to the Trump administration.

As Newsom’s time in office draws to a close, there are a handful of bills that would codify and further strengthen the state’s shield laws in advance of a new gubernatorial administration. 

AB1854 by Assembly Member Maggy Krell, D-Sacramento, would expand California’s protections against out-of-state enforcement and subpoenas tied to legally protected healthcare activities such as abortion and gender-affirming care. It would also bar the governor, except as required by existing extradition provisions, from recognizing extradition demands for individuals for providing or aiding in such healthcare activity.

AB2631 by Assembly Member Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, D-Orinda, would prohibit issuing state search warrants, wiretap orders or electronic communication intercepts to investigate protected activities. This includes preventing a corporation from complying with a warrant that seeks information about a person performing or assisting in reproductive or gender-affirming care. 

AB2164 also by Bauer-Kahan would extend California protections to people who aid in providing reproductive or gender-affirming care in another state and bars extradition demands of Californians to other states for providing or assisting in that care. It essentially turns Newsom’s 2022 executive order declaring the state will not extradite individuals who provide abortion care or assistance to out-of-state patients here, and expanding it to include gender-affirming care as well. 

Lizzy Hinkley, legal director for the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine Access, a sponsor of Bauer-Kahan’s AB2164, said the group want to further cement these protections in state law so they are insulated from future governors.

“An executive order can be rescinded by the same governor that put it in place, or the next governor who takes office,” Hinkley said. “And with something as legally risky as engaging in providing telehealth abortion care to folks, no matter where they live, we really need to ensure it's in state law, because there's just too much legal risk at stake for people to be at the whims of shifting political climates.”

In January, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill indicted and attempted to extradite a Bay Area doctor who allegedly mailed abortion medication into the state. Newsom denied the request, in a high-profile illustration of California’s abortion shield laws designed to protect healthcare providers from other states that have strict laws against abortion care.

Other challenges to the state’s shield laws have come from Texas, whose government passed a law seeking to keep abortion medication out of the state by allowing individuals to sue out-of-state providers, including its so-called 2021 bounty hunter law.

Xavier Becerra, the Democratic candidate favored to win in the overwhelmingly blue state in November, has supported abortion rights laws and efforts, said during a May gubernatorial debate that he would not extradite the California doctor charged in Louisiana. 

Steve Hilton, the Republican candidate in the race, hedged, saying it was “not about abortion,” but about “one state trying to undermine another state’s laws,” but later flipped his position and said in a July interview that he would not extradite the doctor. 

Hinkley said Newsom has been “a champion of reproductive rights and abortion rights.” “It's just an issue of, as he's leaving office, ensuring that this protection is in law so that it's much harder to erode that protection for future administrations,” she said.

From the Chronicle’s Raheem Hosseini:

You couldn’t accuse Riverside County natives Sabrina and Clarissa Cervantes of avoiding conflict with California’s most recognizable sheriff.

As Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco mounted a Republican campaign for governor, Sabrina Cervantes, a Democratic state senator, and Clarissa Cervantes, a Riverside City Council member, worked the legislative and judicial branches to restrain his activities as sheriff.

In February, Sabrina Cervantes introduced legislation to strip Bianco of his title as coroner in a county where jail deaths tested national records and contributed to nearly $100 million in legal settlements. Cervantes filed her bill — singling out Bianco among California’s 48 sheriff-coroners — shortly before a separate controversy involving the sheriff broke open.

Because just weeks later, Bianco’s officers raided the Riverside County Registrar of Voters office for all 650,000 ballots that were cast in the November 2025 election on Proposition 50, which won by wide margins in California and the purple Inland Valley county.

The highly unusual seizure became a national storyline amid the Trump administration’s ongoing attempts to commandeer the state’s elections process and as Bianco, a dark-horse candidate for the state’s highest office, echoed President Donald Trump’s unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud.

The California attorney general’s office and UCLA Voting Rights Project petitioned the state Supreme Court to stop Bianco, with Clarissa Cervantes headlining the latter challenge. Sabrina Cervantes then introduced two bills to prevent Bianco or other law enforcement officers from interfering with elections.

Now, the Cervantes sisters appear poised to run the table on their sheriff, whose gubernatorial bid ended in June with a fourth-place finish. Newsom already signed one of the bills and has two other Bianco-related bills on his desk, including the one to strip him of his duties as county coroner. And last month the California Supreme Court expressed withering skepticism of Bianco’s legal justifications for February’s raid.

“I think the California Supreme Court is about to administer a pretty sizable smackdown,” opined Loyola Law School professor Justin Levitt, an elections law scholar tracking the cases.

Contending that Bianco’s office failed to assert probable cause for conducting a criminal investigation into November’s election — an argument state Supreme Court justices appeared to be swayed by during oral arguments on Aug. 24 — Levitt said he didn't think the law “was that unclear beforehand.”

Bianco, whose profile has risen since his dark-horse run to lead the state, has definitely taken umbrage to the Cervantes sisters’ attention, calling the sibling lawmakers “a disgusting example of partisan politics and an ideological agenda that’s destroying California.”

Read Hosseini's full story on how all three came to power – and into conflict – here.

The Trump administration moved to block California’s plan to phase out sales of the single-use propane cylinders that campers use to fuel their camping stoves, objecting to a law signed by Newsom in 2024. 

SB1280, by Sen. John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, bans sales of disposable one-pound propane products beginning in 2028. 

As the Chronicle’s Gregory Thomas reported, that includes the handheld, forest-green canisters made by Coleman and Bernzomatic that are nearly ubiquitous at any campground. 

Advocates for the ban say switching to reusable cylinders that can be refilled at home or through a canister-exchange program will save consumers money and cut down on hazardous waste.

The Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration last week called the forthcoming ban “radical” and “unlawful,” decrying it as a “climate scam mandate.” The administration claimed that eliminating the commonly used gas canisters with which campers are familiar would force consumers to buy “more expensive and heavier alternatives.” The agency also said federal regulations concerning the transportation of hazardous materials preempt California’s forthcoming ban.

In response, Laird last week called the federal government’s determination “a disastrous decision for our environment.”

Questions? Thoughts? Interesting tidbits to share? Reach out at [email protected], and follow me on X, @KathrynPlmr.