This past year has seen some historic victories for retail, particularly in the realm of organized retail crime, as well as numerous successes in fending off significant threats to retail supply chains and restrictions on retail business practices. There were, as usual, some disappointments in the Legislature, but we retain hope that the Governor will see fit to address at least some of those issues with his veto pen.
Below is a quick recap of priority bills that CRA engaged on for the retail industry in California.
As a reminder - the Governor has 30 days (until September 30th) to sign or veto bills.
BILLS CRA SUCCESSFULLY ADVANCED ON BEHALF OF RETAIL
SB 301 (Skinner) SUPPORT. CA INFORM Act. Online marketplace transparency. Requires online marketplaces to verify, and high-volume, third-party sellers to display to the consumer, specific contact information for the seller on the order confirmation and transaction history.
Status: To the Governor.
Read signature request letter here.
SB 154/SB 178 (Budget) SUPPORT. Real Public Safety Plan. ORC Funding. Provides over $100 million annually over the next three years for improved enforcement of retail theft and ORC. Allocates $6 million per year to expand and make permanent the CHP’s ORC Task Force. Includes $10 million annually in grants for dedicated ORC prosecutors, $6 million for a special theft unit at the Office of the Attorney General, and $85 million in grants for additional local law enforcement dedicated to ORC and retail theft.
Status: Chaptered. Effective July 1, 2022
Read support letter here.
SB 1215 (Newman) SUPPORT. Embedded Battery Products: E-Waste. Adds embedded battery products to the state’s electronic waste (E-Waste) program.
Status: To the Governor.
Read signature request letter here.
AB 2406 (Aguiar-Curry) SUPPORT. Ports: Detention and demurrage fees. Expands prohibitions on detention and demurrage fees where pickup or return of a container is impeded by port congestion or other circumstances out of the control of the cargo owner or shipper.
Status: To the Governor.
Read signature request letter here.
SB 54 (Allen) NEUTRAL. Product Packaging: Recycling and source reduction. Provides specific targets for recycling and source reduction of plastic packaging. Includes all packaging types within the stewardship program. This negotiated measure moved the plastic packaging tax off the November 2022 ballot.
Status: Chaptered.
SB 1262 (Bradford) Courts: indexes. SUPPORT. Reverses a court decision and restores the status quo for background checks by allowing filtering of court records by date of birth and driver’s license number.
Status: To the Governor.
Read signature request letter here.
SB 1338 (Umberg/Eggman) CARE Court Program. SUPPORT. Authorizes specified adult persons to petition a civil court to create a voluntary CARE agreement or a court-ordered CARE plan and implement services, to be provided by county behavioral health agencies, to provide behavioral health care to adults who are currently experiencing a severe mental illness and have a diagnosis identified in the disorder class schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders, and who meet other specified criteria.
Status: To the Governor.
Read signature request letter here.
BILLS WHERE CRA WON AMENDMENTS TO REDUCE/ELIMINATE HARM TO RETAIL
AB 1287 (Bauer-Kahan) NO POSITION. Gender pricing. Prohibits a person, firm, partnership, company, corporation, or business from charging a different price for any two goods that are substantially similar if those goods are priced differently based on the gender of the individuals for whom the goods are marketed and intended. Authorizes the Attorney General to seek an injunction to enjoin and restrain the continuance of those violations. Authorizes civil penalties not to exceed $10,000. CRA worked with the author and committees to keep a private right of action out of the bill and to cap penalties.
Status: To the Governor.
AB 2273 (Wicks) NO POSITION. Internet age-appropriate content and data management. Establishes new privacy standards and internet content restrictions for businesses that offer an online service or product “likely to be accessed by a child”. Prohibits the business from using the personal information of a child to profile the child or use the information in a way that is materially detrimental to the child. CRA obtained amendments that narrow the impact to retail and improve the bill’s right to cure.
Status: To the Governor
AB 1817 (Ting) NEUTRAL. PFAS: textiles. Prohibits the manufacture or sale of textile articles containing PFAS after January 1, 2025. Delays implementation for products related to extreme weather conditions to 2028. CRA won amendments to delay implementation to 2025 and 2028, reduce retailer liability and for a more reasonable product testing threshold.
Status: To the Governor.
Read removal of opposition letter here.
AB 2448 (Ting) NO POSITION. Hate incidents: public settings. Establishes a pilot program for businesses to report incidents of harassment on their premises. CRA won amendments to limit and later eliminate new reporting requirements for retailers.
Status: To the Governor.
SB 1162 (Limon) OPPOSE. Pay Data: Job Postings. Requires employers of 100 or more employees to submit specified pay data to DFEH including median and mean hourly rate for each combination of race, ethnicity, and sex within each job category. Requires DFEH to publish the data on its internet website. Further requires employers to include the pay scale for the position for any third-party job postings. CRA successfully lobbied to eliminate the requirement to publish individual company pay data.
Status: To the Governor.
Read veto request letter here.
SB 1044 (Durazo) NEUTRAL. Emergency conditions: employees. Prohibits an employer, in the event of a state of emergency or an emergency condition, from taking or threatening adverse action against any employee for refusing to report to, or leaving, a workplace within the affected area because the employee feels unsafe. Also prohibits an employer from preventing any employee from accessing the employee’s mobile device or other communications device. This bill was amended to limit circumstances where employees can leave the workplace.
Status: To the Governor.
BILLS CRA STOPPED THAT WOULD HAVE NEGATIVELY IMPACTED RETAIL
SB 1189 (Wieckowski) OPPOSE. Employee biometrics. On or before September 1, 2023, requires a private entity in possession of biometric information to develop and make available a written policy establishing a retention schedule and guidelines for permanently destroying the biometric information, as prescribed. Prohibits a private entity from disclosing biometric information unless certain criteria are met, or from conditioning the provision of a service on the collection, use, disclosure, transfer, sale, or processing of biometric information unless biometric information is strictly necessary to provide the service. Authorizes a private right of action for aggrieved individuals.
Status: Failed in Senate Appropriations Committee
AB 2026 (Friedman) OPPOSE UNLESS AMENDED. Online retail packaging. Prohibits by 2024 for large online retailers, and 2026 for small online retailers as defined, from using expanded or extruded polystyrene or single-use plastic shipping envelopes, cushioning, or void fill to ship products to consumers.
Status: Failed in Senate Appropriations Committee
AB 2840 (Reyes) OPPOSE. Warehouse siting. Creates extensive “ban zones” for siting of new warehouses over 100,000 square feet in Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Further requires extraordinary mitigation measures beyond those already required in the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).
Status: Failed in Senate Finance and Governance Committee
AB 1192 (Kalra) OPPOSE. Requires employers to report data regarding wages, benefits, scheduling, and safety for their entire United States workforce. The data would be published on the Labor and Workforce Development Agency’s website by employer name.
Status: Failed on the Assembly Floor.
AB 710 (E. Garcia) OPPOSE. Prohibits the sale of certain imported agricultural products unless they are produced in compliance with specified California laws regardless of where they are produced.
Status: Failed in Senate Business and Professions Committee
SB 260 (Wiener) OPPOSE. Greenhouse gas emissions. Supply chain reporting. Requires the reporting of greenhouse gas emission data throughout the entire supply chain to include activities such as business travel, employee commutes, procurement, waste, and water usage, regardless of location.
Status: Failed on the Assembly Floor
SB 1149 (Leyva) OPPOSE. Settlement Agreements. Prohibits confidential settlement agreements and protective orders in actions involving an allegation of product defect or environmental hazard and would subject attorneys engaged in these actions to professional discipline for noncompliance.
Status: Failed on the Assembly Floor.
BILLS CRA OPPOSED;
CRA WILL REQUEST/HAS REQUESTED VETO FROM GOVERNOR
AB 2440 (Irwin) OPPOSE. Battery recycling: extended producer responsibility. Creates an extended producer responsibility program for single-use batteries, rechargeable batteries, and battery embedded products up to an unspecified weight. Requires retailers who sell any of these items and have five (5) or more locations in the state to offer their store locations to serve as a collection site for covered items.
Status: To the Governor.
AB 257 (Holden) OPPOSE. Fast food franchises. Authorizes the creation of a Fast Food Council which would have the authority to set wages and standards for working conditions within fast food restaurants.
Status: Signed into law by Governor.
AB 2183 (Stone) OPPOSE. Agricultural workers. Unionization. Authorizes the use of a “card check” vote to approve union representation for agricultural workers, or a vote-by-mail option if the employer agrees to relinquish all rights to communication with workers regarding unionization.
Status: To the Governor.
Read veto request letter here.
AB 2777 (Leyva) OPPOSE. Confidential Settlement Agreements. Creates a one-year “reviver” window in which private sector employers can be sued over ancient allegations of sexual assault – “reviving” these claims no matter how far back in time they may have occurred.
Status: To the Governor
Read veto request letter here.
SB 1256 (Wieckowski) OPPOSE. Disposable propane tanks. Bans the sale of disposable propane tanks of up to two pounds by 2028.
Status: To the Governor
Read veto request letter here.
BILLS SPONSORED OR SUPPORTED BY CRA THAT THE LEGISLATURE FAILED TO ADVANCE
No extension of the CCPA exemptions for employee and business-to-business data.
AB 2390 (Muratuschi) SPONSOR. Retail theft. Penalties. Would have allowed prosecutors to aggregate the value of petty thefts for purposes of charging grand theft.
Status: Failed Assembly Public Safety Committee.
Read Co-Sponsor letter here.