The Brief

Thousands of Southern California students have walked out of school to protest the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants since January after the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis.

Some students have told LAist their teachers and principals supported their participation in the walkouts, for example, by allowing them to make protest signs in class. Others said their administrators shared confusing messages about potential discipline for leaving campus.

Broadly speaking, California law requires minors to attend school, but it also protects students’ rights to speak out.

 ”The fact that some students may have a controversial point of view that might make others upset, that's not a basis to restrict the speech under the education code,” said Peter Eliasberg, chief council with ACLU of Southern California.

LAist cannot offer legal counsel but created this guide to help students, families and educators better understand these rights. It’s based on:

• Information from Eliasberg and the ACLU of Southern California. 
• A February webinar hosted by Compton nonprofit Community Lawyers Inc., with the Law Offices of Hirji, Chau and Rodriguez. 

Tl;dr of best practices for students at protests

When preparing to walk out, you might consider the following:

• Have a clear civic and political purpose. 
• Walk out peacefully. Do not create additional disruptions for other students, vandalize school property or physically harm others.  
• Document the purpose of the walkout in writing but be cautious about recording video of participants who may not want to be identified. 
• Ask your principal for school and district policies related to student walkouts and free speech and compare them to district policy and state laws. 
• Request an excused absence for civic and political event (more on how to do this below).  

An overview of the (many) rules

The rules at your school are likely shaped by a larger organization, such as a school district or a charter network. Beyond that is California’s education code, a part of state law that is dedicated to schools.

Apart from that, you have federal policy, like the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees the First Amendment right to freedom of speech.

Ideally, all of these sets of rules should agree with one another, but that’s not always the case, said Rosa Hirji, an educational, civil and disability rights attorney. Hirji said the information shared by school administrators also may not align with the policy of their school, district or California’s education law.

“You need to do your research and identify all of those things that you can do to protect yourself after the fact,” Hirji said. “Make sure that you disseminate that information amongst your peers and friends.”

California’s education code states students have the right to exercise freedom of speech and press, including by:

• Distributing printed materials
• Wearing buttons, badges or other symbols
• Expressing themselves in school publications

Hirji said schools cannot legally prevent students from expressing themselves, but they can make rules for when, how and where that free expression can occur. For example, a school may designate time at lunch for students to march and hold up signs with political messages.

But there are no protections for speech that incites students to create a “clear and present danger” of:

• Committing unlawful acts on campus
• Violating lawful school regulations 
• Disrupting the operation of the school

Does calling for a walkout constitute inciting students to break rules? Not necessarily, Hirji said.

“ The question is — is that advocacy or calling for the walkout so inflammatory that it provokes some kind of disturbance in the school environment?” Hirji said. What qualifies as a “disturbance” is must be defined in policy and is not simply the opinion of the administrator, she added.

Speech that is obscene, libelous or slanderous is not protected.

How can I get an excused absence for walking out?

There are limited circumstances when schools will grant a student an excused absence to participate in a walkout, even when parents are supportive of the action.

California allows middle and high school students one excused absence per school year for a civic or political event. Students must notify the school in advance of the absence. School administrators may grant more than one excused absence related to protests, but they are not required to do so.

Community Lawyers Inc. created a template for this notice that students can print and fill out.

Can I get suspended or expelled for walking out?

Students can't be suspended or expelled solely for walking out, but students can be marked tardy, truant or absent. Multiple incidents may lead to more severe discipline.

Let’s define these terms:

• Tardy means a student has arrived late to class. 
• Absent means a student is not present in class. 
• Truant means a student has missed more than 30 minutes of instruction without an excuse three or more times during the school year. 

Eliasberg said that missing class to attend a protest can’t be punished differently than any other kind of absence.

“The government can't say, 'Well, we think it's worse for you to go out and protest than it is for you to skip class,'” he said.

Truancy, tardiness or absence from school is not a basis for school suspension under California’s education code.

“So if a school district wants to engage in a disciplinary action against a student that walks out, they need to find another reason, another behavior that has occurred,” Hirji said.

For example:

• Causing, attempting or threatening physical injury or violence 
• Possessing weapons or drugs
• Stealing or damaging school property 
• Bullying, intimidating or sexual harassment 

California passed a law in 2023 that prohibits schools from suspending middle and high school students for “willful defiance,” which includes disrupting school activities or defying school personnel.

But there can be consequences for walking out

Once a student is considered truant, the school district is required to notify the student’s family, provide information about alternative educational programs, available mental health support and the right to meet with school staff to discuss the student's absences from school.

The penalties for truancy can escalate the more often a student is absent and may include:

• Attending makeup classes
• Referral to an attendance review board, a group of people whose goal it is to help get students back in school 
• Community service 

What should I do if I get in trouble for walking out?

Before a student can be suspended, they must be informed of the reason for the suspension and whether other means of correction were attempted, Hirji said. Examples of those other forms of correction include additional school, community service or communicating with a parent.

 ”School is not supposed to suspend you on your first offense,” Hirji said.

Hirji said the school should provide evidence of the offense allegedly committed and allow students to provide their version of events. This is due process.

Students may be able to appeal a suspension, which means asking the school to reconsider the punishment.

Where can I find my school district or charter network’s policy?

Here are examples of documents a school or district may have related to students' free speech and protest rights.

School board policies and administrative regulations

• What they are: rules approved by a school district’s elected board
• Where to find them: your local school board’s website

School safety plan

• What it is: a plan for each school and required by California law that addresses potential risks and emergencies.
• Where to find them: You may find it on a school’s website or request it directly from an administrator. 

However, schools and districts may have outdated policies that do not comply with existing law.

Hirji suggests comparing what a teacher, principal or other administrator says with the school, district and state’s rules.

Can the police get involved? 

In mid-February, the Los Angeles Police Department warned that protesting students may face legal consequences for violating a city law that bars minors from public places during school hours.

The city of L.A.’s daytime curfew law states it is unlawful for minors under 18 to be in public places when they would normally attend school. There are several exceptions, including for emergencies and minors accompanied by a parent or guardian.

At one point, LAPD was issuing thousands of tickets a year during curfew sweeps, but the agency agreed in 2011 to ease enforcement after pushback from civil rights attorneys, parents and community activists.

Hirji said students who have excused absences for civil and political reasons should not be subject to the daytime curfew law and suggests protesting students carry proof of their excused absence with them — for example, a copy of the letter or email provided to the school to excuse the absence.

Turner’s Outdoorsman on Mohawk Street in Bakersfield, California, sits on a busy intersection across from an oil drilling site. Over the past three years, this sporting goods store sold more than 16,000 firearms — and also appeared hundreds of times during criminal investigations as the source of guns found at crime scenes.

In Bakersfield alone, law enforcement traced 83 guns to the store from 2023 to 2025, according to newly-released data from the California Department of Justice (CADOJ). That was the highest number for a store with an active firearms dealer license in any of the state’s 10 most populous cities.

The Trace reported in May that the Turner's Outdoorsman chain, which has more than 30 locations across California, accounted for a disproportionate share of crime guns recovered in the state. CADOJ defines crime guns as those used in a crime, suspected to have been used in a crime, or illegally possessed.

The latest data adds a new dimension, showing the number of crime guns traced to individual stores by law enforcement in the state’s biggest cities.

The Turner’s on Mohawk Street has been in operation since late 2020. The business that previously occupied that storefront, Second Amendment Sports, which is no longer an actively licensed dealer, had 100 sales traced to recoveries in Bakersfield. All together, that means 183 firearms sold at that location were later recovered by law enforcement as crime guns in the same city during this three-year window. That number is higher than the combined total of the top 5 dealers for any other city in the data, including Los Angeles, Oakland, or San Diego.

In Bakersfield, outreach workers are making links between the store and violence in the city. Juan Avila, of the community violence intervention group Garden Pathways, said crime guns came up at a recent meeting between the Bakersfield Police Department and local CVI groups. "Many of those were being traced to Turner's," Avila said.

He said that tracking crime guns was a newer metric for the city’s violence intervention workers. “That's really what grabbed my attention is to see how many guns actually can be traced back to a local shop,” Avila said.

In response to a request for comment, Bakersfield police spokesperson Sally Selby said the department is “unaware of there being any illegal firearms sales or transactions that are occurring.”

Turner’s outlets are among the top firearms dealers tied to crime guns in Los Angeles, Fresno, Anaheim, and Long Beach. One Sacramento-area store, just outside city limits, was connected to 38 crime guns recovered by law enforcement in the capital.

Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarty said that the prevalence of guns from that store, and from the dealer connected to the most crime guns for Sacramento, River City Gun Exchange, merit scrutiny from state and local law enforcement “to see if there's any shortcomings in background checks and procedures to make sure that guns aren't getting in the wrong hands.”

Experts, including former ATF agents and researchers, said a mix of factors may be behind the number of guns traced to a store, including location, inventory, prices, clientele, and nearby competition.

One chain, 8,500 crime guns

The Turner’s Outdoorsman chain remains the biggest source of crime guns across California, according to the report released in July. From 2023 to 2025, law enforcement in the state traced more than 8,500 crime guns to Turner’s.

The retailer is California’s largest gun seller, and its sale of 540,000 firearms makes up a significant percentage of all sales in the data’s three-year time period: 21.8% . The chain makes up an even greater share of guns sold and traced during the time span: 25.9% .

The outsize share of crime guns alarms those who track these trends.

“Turner's is doing something on a corporate level — or they're not doing something on the corporate level — to prevent this,” said Christian Heyne of the gun safety group Brady United. “They have been a rash on this report for the last four years.”

Other large retailers like Bass Pro Shops and Sportsman’s Warehouse don’t top the list, he said, and see smaller percentages of their sales recovered as crime guns. Statewide, Turner’s locations in Southern California occupied the top 8 spots in the list of traces.

“People are being killed by the guns Turner’s sells, and it demands investigation and action,” Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn told The Trace about the new data. Hahn called for a probe into the company following the Trace’s initial reporting. Brady later joined Hahn in urging investigation.

Turner’s Outdoorsman attracted national attention this spring, after Cole Tomas Allen, who allegedly attempted to kill President Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in April, was revealed to have been armed with a shotgun he purchased at a Turner’s in the Los Angeles suburb of Torrance.

Turner’s Outdoorsman did not respond to a request for comment for this story. In a statement in June to the right-wing outlet The Daily Caller, a Turner’s executive said the company had a “proven commitment to regulatory compliance” and that data on traces “does not indicate wrongdoing by the retailer.” ATF occasionally inspects gun seller operations and called one Turner’s store recordkeeping “meticulous” in a 2015 report.

The new report shows state inspectors found a number of violations at the Turner’s locations inspected in 2025. Many were for minor issues, but an inspector identified a possible straw purchase violation at the San Bernardino location. The San Bernardino store was connected to more crime guns than any other dealer in the state: 781 from 2023 to 2025.

In the new data, guns sold at Turner’s stores showed up at crime scenes at a rate higher than guns sold at other dealers in the state.

The crime guns traced to the chain also wound up at crime scenes quickly — less than a year after purchase — 36% more often than guns from other dealers. Regulators consider a “time-to-crime” of less than one year an indicator of trafficking.

Guns take several paths to crime scenes. Some are stolen from their owners. Others are bought through straw purchases — the act of illegally buying a gun on behalf of someone else — or trafficked into the underground market. And some are legally purchased by a person who later commits a crime.

No other U.S. state publishes data on the stores connected to crime guns, and Congress has prohibited the ATF from sharing retailer-level data since 2003.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Los Angeles is making a new push to turn empty and underused offices into housing.

One developer is holding a large portfolio of somewhat underutilized or vacant office buildings in Koreatown and Westlake, giving them a chance to respond to the city’s housing crisis.

Jamison, Koreatown’s largest commercial landlord, has owned office buildings along the Wilshire Boulevard corridor for decades and two more of its proposed conversions are near Lafayette Park in Westlake.

At least 15 Jamison office buildings in the two neighborhoods have been converted into housing, are under construction or under proposal for conversion into apartments, according to a review of city records and company documents.

Together, the projects could account for 3,652 apartments, though more than 900 of those units are still only proposals.

The landlord is primed for the moment as the city eased its restrictions earlier this year to convert older offices and other commercial buildings into housing.

The expansion of the Adaptive Reuse Ordinance makes it easier to turn old offices, hotels and other commercial buildings into homes. The ordinance previously only allowed conversions within or near downtown, but now those rules apply across the entire city.

City officials estimate this could open up more than 43,000 new homes across the city. 

“These projects represent the kind of innovation we are applying to break away from the status quo that has stunted LA’s housing production and driven up rents for decades,” Mayor Karen Bass said in April. “Work from home and other shifts mean there is a large supply of office space that we can use for housing, but for too long, outdated city regulations stood in the way.”

Jaime Lee, Jamison’s former CEO, said in a March interview with the Los Angeles Times that the firm has stopped pursuing new ground-up construction as financing and other challenges have made it harder to build. 

“We ourselves as a firm have been pencils down on ground-up construction for two years now,” Lee said. “What we’re really, really focused on is how can we make more units out of nothing, which is converting office buildings into multifamily.”

Here’s where those 15 projects stand. A spokesperson for Jamison acknowledged a request for comment, but the company did not immediately provide comment for this story. 

Eight of the projects were completed between 2013 and 2025, and two more recently opened.

Completed projects

Westmore, 3075 Wilshire Blvd.

The Westmore brought 127 apartments and ground-floor retail to a former office building in November 2013.

The nine-story building is on the eastern side of Koreatown, a few blocks east of Vermont Avenue and near the Wilshire/Vermont Metro station.

Westmore is the earliest completed Jamison office conversion identified in Koreatown and Westlake.

Crosby, 3350 Wilshire Blvd.

The 216-unit Crosby occupies a 1957 office tower that once served as Texaco’s West Coast headquarters. Designed by prominent Los Angeles architect Welton Becket, the building sits across from the historic Gaylord Apartments and near Immanuel Presbyterian Church.

The office conversion was completed in 2020 and the developer also built additional apartments on top of the adjoining parking garage, but those are excluded from this count because they weren’t created from office space.

Atlas House, 2500 Wilshire Blvd.

One block west of MacArthur Park, the 13-story Atlas House opened in 2022 with 248 apartments inside what had been a roughly 240,000-square-foot office building. 

About 12,500 square feet of commercial space was kept on the ground floor.

Five other Jamison office conversions are already finished along the Wilshire corridor and total more than 860 apartments. 

Recently opened and in the works

Grayson, 695 S. Vermont Ave.

Grayson is now open and leasing, with 255 apartments inside the former office tower.

The 19-story building dates to 1971 and was originally built as an expansion of Pacific Indemnity Co.’s headquarters, which also occupied the neighboring tower at 3200 Wilshire Blvd.

The conversion kept the existing tower and parking garage.

The building is a short walk from the Wilshire/Vermont Metro station.

Mason, at 3325 Wilshire Blvd. in Koreatown, is now open and leasing. The former 13-story office building was converted into 236 apartments.

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Hanna Kang

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The LA Local

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Mason, 3325 Wilshire Blvd.

Mason is also now open and leasing, with 236 apartments inside a former 13-story office building.

The roughly 233,000-square-foot building is at Wilshire and Berendo, on the same block as Immanuel Presbyterian Church. About 15,000 square feet of retail space is on the ground floor, and the parking garage has 450 spaces.

Work on the conversion began in 2024. Jamison called Mason its 10th adaptive-reuse project, and the project was financed in part with $60 million in taxable multifamily housing revenue bonds, according to Urbanize LA. 

Walker, 3550 Wilshire Blvd.

Construction is still underway at Walker, where a 20-story office tower is being turned into 507 apartments, making it the largest Jamison office-to-housing project identified in Koreatown and Westlake.

While the city originally approved 495 apartments, Jamison later added another 12 units on the 20th floor. 

The building is a few blocks east of the Wilshire/Normandie Metro station.

3424 Wilshire Blvd.

Work is underway at 3424 Wilshire Blvd., where the former Los Angeles-area headquarters of IBM is being turned into 260 apartments.

The 13-story building dates to 1958 and has roughly 250,000 square feet of space. IBM originally occupied the property, and it later became the headquarters of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

The conversion will turn the former office floors into apartments while keeping about 13,000 square feet of existing retail space. Plans also include racquetball courts, a fitness center, game and karaoke rooms and an outdoor deck, according to Urbanize LA. 

Proposed projects

Jamison has filed plans for three more office conversions, but none could be confirmed as under construction based on city records.

Wilshire Park Place is one of several buildings in Koreatown that Jamison Properties wants to convert into housing.

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Brian Feinzimer

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The LA Local

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Wilshire Park Place, 3700 Wilshire Blvd.

Plans call for turning the 11-story Wilshire Park Place office tower into 370 apartments. 

The building sits behind the large lawn commonly known as Liberty Park, one of the few green spaces in dense, park-poor Koreatown. Liberty Park is a privately owned green space that has been used for community gatherings, including World Cup watch parties. The park and office building were designated a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 2018 after a neighborhood campaign to preserve the site.

According to the proposal, some space inside the existing parking structure would be converted into amenities for residents.

520 S. La Fayette Park Place

Another proposed conversion sits near Lafayette Park, where a six-story office building could become 141 apartments.

Plans filed in 2023 call for turning the roughly 95,000-square-foot building at 520 S. La Fayette Park Place into a mix of studios, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments. The building sits on top of parking for nearly 200 vehicles.

The former Los Angeles Superior Court office building at 600 S. Commonwealth Ave. in Westlake. Jamison Properties has proposed converting the 19-story building into 428 apartments.

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Hanna Kang

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The LA Local

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600 S. Commonwealth Ave.

On the other side of Lafayette Park in Westlake, Jamison has proposed a much larger conversion where a 19-story office tower could become 428 apartments.

The nearly 350,000-square-foot building has long housed Los Angeles Superior Court offices. The proposal would turn the office space into 428 apartments, while keeping most of the building’s existing parking and converting some of it into storage and other spaces for residents.

At 428 apartments, it would be Jamison’s second-largest office conversion identified in Koreatown and Westlake, behind the 507-unit Walker project.

Come back here for more updates.

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

The Trump administration announced Tuesday that it is rolling back a rule prohibiting logging and road construction in undeveloped parts of national forests, including more than 4 million acres of federally managed forest lands in California.

The change could open some of California's most remote backcountry to new roads and development — even as U.S. Forest Service research shows that roads are a major source of wildfire ignitions in the state's national forests.

People start most of California’s wildfires, including on federal land — and it’s not just sparks from faulty power lines. Fires can start in many ways: A hiker might burn toilet paper in the backcountry, a hot tub might be miswired, or someone might drag a tow chain or pull a hot car onto dry grass.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, who first announced the plan last year, said Tuesday that federal officials filed a proposal and environmental impact statement to rescind the rule in order to reduce barriers to managing fuels on public lands.

“For too long, outdated restrictions have kept tens of millions of forested acres off-limits to the very treatments that improve forest health and reduce wildfire risk to our communities,” Rollins said in a statement.

But in California, the U.S. Forest Service’s own research points to a complication: Roads and the people who travel on them are known conduits for fire.

Scientists with the U.S. Forest Service mapped 26 years of fire ignitions along roughly 850 miles of roads in the Angeles, San Bernardino, Los Padres and Cleveland national forests. All of them, according to a Forest Service map, also contain roadless reaches.

The mapping effort revealed that nearly two-thirds of the fires people caused in these forests sparked along roadsides — places where people, the sparks they create and fuel in the form of flammable, invasive grasses often converge.

California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot said that the roadless rule has not hindered California’s forest management and prescribed fire efforts.

“In fact, more than 240,000 acres of roadless land in California have undergone vegetation treatments to reduce wildfire risk and protect nearby communities,” Crowfoot said in a letter to Rollins last September. He cited an example in the Caples Creek roadless area south of Lake Tahoe, which he said helped shield communities during the 2021 Caldor Fire.

Crowfoot warned that opening these areas to construction, timber harvests and mining “may put rural communities at increased risk of fire and significantly increase firefighting costs of California.”

A national pattern

It’s not just California. A recent peer-reviewed study by scientists with the Wilderness Society reported earlier this year that wildfire ignitions in national forests across the country are four times more likely near roads. From 1992 to 2024, wildfire ignition densities were lowest in designated wilderness areas, followed by roadless areas. They were highest within 50 meters of roads.

“Opening our backcountry forests to more roads and development and therefore more ignitions is also not a wildfire solution and never will be,” said Josh Hicks, the Wilderness Society’s director of conservation campaigns.

The Trump administration said rescinding the rule doesn’t automatically mandate timber harvests or building roads. Instead, it would leave decisions to local national forest managers.

“Future land management decisions would be based on natural resource conditions and needs and informed by states, tribes and communities,” the Agriculture Department’s announcement said Tuesday.

Why more roads?

Environmental advocates are skeptical, especially in light of the Trump administration's executive order last year calling for an “immediate expansion of American timber production.”

The roadless rule also already allows for roads to be constructed or rebuilt to protect health and safety from the threat of wildfire.

Retired U.S. Forest Service chiefs, including one who served during the first Trump administration, said in an opinion piece last year that repealing the rule threatens key watersheds and wildlife.

“Why build more roads when the agency, strapped for resources, can’t even maintain the ones that already exist?” they asked. “Let’s not forget the reasons these backcountry areas do not have roads. The easily accessible high-value timber from national forests has been harvested. What little that remains in these roadless backcountry areas is difficult and costly to access.”

U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman, a California Democrat and ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, blasted the Trump administration for moving forward on rescinding the rule during a catastrophic fire season following the Trump administration’s slashing of the U.S. Forest Service. He vowed to fight it in Congress.

“The Trump administration is at again, selling out our public lands to corporate polluters, ignoring the overwhelming objections of the American people,” Huffman said in a statement. He added: “It’s reckless.”

The public has until midnight on Sept. 21 to comment.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.