Rob Bonta's career experience includes working as a deputy city attorney in the San Francisco City Attorney's Office.
Attorney General Bonta is defending California’s first-in-class gun safety laws like the assault weapons ban from attacks by the NRA and the gun lobbying. As states across the country saw increased gun violence during the pandemic, Attorney General Bonta’s Department of Justice is expanding proven programs that bring community leaders, law enforcement and youth together to interrupt gang violence before it causes gun deaths. He is expanding the use of gun violence restraining orders that take guns away from people with a history of domestic abuse and those who are prohibited from owning them.
By its size alone, California’s Department of Justice is the country’s largest civil rights practice. he will strongly enforce California’s civil rights code and fight for racial justice and equity. As hate crimes rise across California, he will take on the forces of hate and build bridges between law enforcement and targeted communities.
Attorney General Bonta is taking on transnational criminal organizations that traffic in guns, drugs, and people. A longtime advocate for crime victims, he is working with law enforcement to expand programs that support victims of crime. He is increasing resources to clear the rape kit backlog at law enforcement agencies across the state, and Attorney General Bonta has expanded human trafficking and sexual predator response units across the state.
Attorney General Bonta believes health care is a human right. He is defending Obamacare and California’s health care expansions from GOP legal attacks. He went to court to get justice for Californians who were denied mental health benefits from their insurers, and he is seeking justice for families of opioid victims who were targeted by Big Pharma. At a moment when our reproductive health care is under attack, Attorney General Bonta is defending California’s laws that ensure every woman has access to reproductive health care.
Attorney General Bonta believes that we need to infuse more safety and fairness into our justice system, and as California’s Attorney General, he is advancing solutions that work to make our communities safer – both in the short and long-term. He strongly believes our justice system should be free from bias and treat everyone fairly, and under his watch, the Department of Justice has increased transparency and sought to make our justice system more accountable to the people it serves.
With so many families reeling from the economic consequences of the pandemic, Attorney General Bonta is fighting protect consumers and taking legal action against multi-national corporations who prey upon the most vulnerable.
Too many workers in California are trafficked in the underground economy and denied all the protections they are entitled to under California law. That’s why Attorney General Bonta has prioritized bringing cases against employers who abuse workers, steal their wages and create unfair and unsafe working conditions. California has some of the strongest worker protections in the country and every California worker should benefit from them.
Too often, the most impoverished communities are targeted by big polluters. Attorney General Bonta seeking justice for these communities and ensuring California remains a global leader in the fight against climate change. He is expanding the Department of Justice’s capacity to prosecute polluters and get justice for communities and families who have been harmed.
Immigrants and refugees help make California thrive. Attorney General Bonta is fighting to ensure that every Californian knows their rights and is treated with dignity — regardless of their immigration status. He is taking on predators like notarios who prey on immigrant families.
Two decades after California legalized medical marijuana, Sacramento has proved consistently unwilling to enact state-level regulation of the cultivation, transportation and sale of the quasi-legal plant. A key difference this year: with other states having sanctioned recreational pot, advocates are determined to put full legalization on the 2016 ballot in California. Those who favor broad regulation hope the looming ballot initiative will motivate lawmakers to rein in the medical market before voters potentially launch a new green rush. There are already two bills in the pipeline that would create a statewide cannabis system: one by Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Alameda, and one by Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer, D-Los Angeles.
Key players: California Police Chiefs Association/California Narcotics Officers Association, the League of California Cities, cannabis advocates
November elections had scarcely ended when University of California President Janet Napolitano initiated the first major budget battle of 2015, floating a plan to raise UC tuition annually for five years. She immediately drew a backlash from lawmakers and Gov. Jerry Brown, who believed the university was reneging on a deal to freeze tuition in exchange for Proposition 30 dollars. Leaders in the Senate and the Assembly have since announced alternative plans to avert tuition bumps, and Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, has proposed hauling UC officials in to have them justify their budgets line by line. With California’s coffers flush again, this could be the main pressure point for lawmakers imploring Brown to loosen the purse strings.
With his first bill as a state senator, former Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg has proposed a massive shift in California tax policy, one he says better reflects a 21st century economy where information and services make up a huge portion of economic activity. The Los Angeles Democrat proposes extending the state’s sales tax to many services and devoting the money to education and local governments. As a tax hike, the bill requires two-thirds approval – a heavy lift in a Legislature where Democrats have lost their supermajority. But Hertzberg chairs the committee that oversees tax bills and is widely seen as an ambitious politician. Taxes will also figure big this year as political operatives prepare ballot measures for the 2016 election. Education advocates are calling for an extension of the temporary tax increases voters approved with Proposition 30 in 2012, and liberal activists want to change 1978’s Proposition 13 to increase taxes on commercial property. Public health advocates have said they will pursue a new tax on cigarettes this year, through either legislation or the ballot box.
Expect debates about consumer data, Internet privacy and regulation of some Web-based businesses to loom large this session. The tech lobby beefed up its presence in Sacramento last year, with the Internet Association opening an office here – its first office outside Washington, D.C. The group was instrumental in rallying ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft to oppose legislation increasing their insurance requirements. A similar effort to regulate home-sharing services is likely to emerge in the Legislature this year; one such company, Airbnb, recently retained a Sacramento lobbyist for the first time. The Assembly has established a new committee devoted to privacy and consumer protection, chaired by Assemblyman Mike Gatto. He is carrying a bill that would change the way Californians can use the Internet – it would permit playing poker online.
After legislation stalled last year to provide undocumented immigrants subsidized health care, Sen. Ricardo Lara is making another go of it. SB 4 would give immigrants who are in the country illegally – a group that is not covered by the federal Affordable Care Act – access to health insurance in California. Lara, a Bell Gardens Democrat, has also proposed creating a new state office to help immigrants acclimate to life in California. He’s been given a powerful position as chairman of the Senate’s appropriations committee, and will play a big role in deciding which spending bills live or die. The Legislature’s Latino caucus has been instrumental in backing legislation to expand the freedoms undocumented immigrants can enjoy in California. The caucus gets a new chairman this year: Assemblyman Luis Alejo, D-Watsonville, who in 2013 carried a bill offering driver’s licenses to immigrants who are in the country illegally. He has already introduced legislation for this session that could allow undocumented immigrants to work legally.