Justice

The state filed 110 lawsuits against the Trump administration over its environmental laws, immigration policies and other rules and rollbacks. So far, it’s won 23 cases, but most are still pending.

From child support to insurance fraud, court cases are delayed throughout California. Only half as many civil and criminal cases were resolved last summer compared with pre-pandemic numbers. “Justice has not shut down. Justice has slowed down,” according to an attorneys' group.

Download and read this 53-page overview of all the major issues facing California policymakers.

1. California widens mental health conditions insurers must cover In the past, state law only required treatment for nine serious mental illnesses. Even before the pandemic, more than half of Californians said most people with mental health conditions couldn’t get the help they needed. Some families even dropped private insurance to qualify for treatment in […]

For decades, many California teens convicted of serious crimes — such as robbery, assault, and murder — were sent to state juvenile prisons. This year Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the closure of these state facilities. Under a new law, California’s three remaining youth prisons will no longer accept newly convicted youth after July 2021. Instead, counties will […]

More than 4 million Africans and their descendants were enslaved throughout the United States. While California joined the Union in 1850 as a state free of slavery, the Legislature passed the California Fugitive Slave Act in 1852, which mandated that government officials and ordinary white citizens help slaveholders recapture people who escaped.  Now, 170 years […]

As California has faced its most devastating wildfire season on record, nearly a third of the people on the frontlines have been state prisoners. Despite their firsthand experience, many incarcerated people couldn’t become firefighters after being released. A new California law aims to change that and make it easier to hire formerly incarcerated firefighters. Until […]

In response to nationwide protests following the Minneapolis killing of George Floyd, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed two new policing laws aimed at improving police practices in California. Starting Jan. 1, California will have its first statewide policy banning police from using a couple of neck restraints: carotid restraints, which temporarily cut off blood flow to the […]

More than 7,500 prisoners sent home in the program — which aims to slow the spread of COVID-19 — would have been released within months anyway. Thousands with health conditions remain in prison, and the virus keeps spreading.

The virus is surging in California's overcrowded prisons as early releases slow. And county jails are struggling with a backlog of inmates awaiting transfers to state facilities.