The Brief

Los Angeles Unified students will be banned from using their smartphones and social media during the school day starting in February 2025.

The LAUSD Board voted to expand the district’s existing technology restrictions in June, citing rising concerns about the impact of the technologies on youth mental health, bullying and distraction from classroom instruction.

California lawmakers voted in August to require all districts to ban student smartphone use by July 2026.

“It is clear that our students, our youth’s addiction to their cellphones and the content that cellphones bring into their lives needs to come to an end,” said superintendent Alberto Carvalho. “The impact on their mental health is real.”

LAUSD officials unveiled full details of the policy at a meeting Tuesday. The school board does not need to vote on it. District officials said the policy is final; now it’s up to individual schools to decide how they’ll enforce it.

What’s the new policy?

Implementation will vary from campus to campus, but at a minimum:

• Students may not use cellphones, smartwatches, and earbuds on campus during school hours.
• Devices must be turned off and stored. 

Students can use devices before and after school and there are exceptions during the school day for students who need their phones for:

• Health-based reasons, i.e. to monitor blood sugar 
• Translation

Students with disabilities who use a cellphone or other technology as part of an Individualized Education Program or 504 plan will also not lose access to their devices.

Schools must also provide students access to their phones in case of an emergency.

The district’s expectation is that when students come back from Presidents’ Day weekend in February, new policies will be in place at every school.

LAUSD Chief of School Operations Andrés Chait said the policy is based on:

• a review of existing research on youth cellphone and social media use; 
• feedback from parents, students and educators via in-person and virtual meetings; and
• consultation with unions, other districts, researchers and media professionals.

Chait said there are at least 50 LAUSD schools that already have strict cellphone policies.

What is an ‘emergency’?

Chait, who oversees school safety among other responsibilities, said there isn't a formal definition of an “emergency.”

“When all else fails, apply common sense," he said.

For example: If students have to leave campus because of an incident, or maybe there's an earthquake, that might constitute a time when staff members will let students have their phones to text their families.

A lockdown in and of itself is not necessarily going to constitute an emergency, however. District officials said they're trying to balance student safety and mental health with the need to try and communicate with family at home.

In terms of basic communication — like if a student forgets their lunch at home — Chait said front offices exist to help bridge parents and their children during the school day.

So I can have a say in my school’s plan?

Schools will be expected to come up with their own rollout plan based on community input.

Options on the table for storing phones include:

• pouches (students put their devices in, and those devices are sealed with a special key); 
• lockers; 
• an honor system (phones in backpacks)

LAUSD will offer schools several options for storing smartphones.

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Courtesy LAUSD

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The district has made a one-time allocation of $7 million to cover costs.

Parents should expect schools to begin communicating the policy and its timeline, and that schools reach out to gather thoughts on how to implement the policy, if they haven’t already.

That communication may come through the Local School Leadership Council (LSLC), which includes parents, community members, school staff, and students.

Chait said the district has “common expectations,” about how the new policy will be enforced, but schools will have discretion over incidents.

“For example, one school may say that the second time that there's an incident, the student may be referred to a dean,” he said. “Another school may say they're referred to a counselor. But in general, the expectation is consistent that there's a lot of dialogue, there's a lot of opportunities for changes to behavior before there's any confiscating of a phone.”

What do charter schools have to do?

The district’s traditional, magnet, and affiliated charter schools will be expected to follow the policy. Unaffiliated charter schools located on the campus of district-run schools are also expected to follow the policy, but they have more leeway, Chait said. For instance, they can use different products than what the district plans to make available to its own schools.

“But at the end of the day,” Chait said, “they have to ensure, one, that cellphone use is restricted for the school day and, two, they're in compliance with state law so that kids still have access to those phones in the case of an emergency.”

Read the policy

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Senior editor for education Ross Brenneman contributed to this story.

The Los Angeles World Cup host committee has quietly posted its guidance on human rights after months of speculation over where the plan was and when it would be published.

Advocates had pushed the committee, an arm of the Los Angeles Sports & Entertainment Commission, to produce its plan. But now that it's out, they're not satisfied with what they're seeing.

The human rights guidance is required by FIFA and outlined on the host committee's website. It includes a list of online resources including where to file complaints with various local and state level agencies and a summary of local, state and federal laws protecting human and civil rights. The committee is also touting a partnership with L.A. County in which people can call 211 to report a concern during the tournament.

"Los Angeles is weeks away from hosting one of the largest sporting events in the world, and yet what has been posted is not a plan,” Stephanie Richard, director of the Sunita Jain Anti‑Trafficking Initiative at Loyola Law School, said in a statement. “It is a list of laws and hotline numbers."

The human rights document also skirts fears around ICE and its potential presence at the tournament and surrounding celebrations. Todd Lyons, the agency's head, said earlier this year that ICE's investigatory branch will play a key role in security for the tournament.

But ICE and immigration enforcement aren't mentioned on the host committee's web page on human rights or in its outline of its approach to human rights. "Immigration status" only gets a mention in the list of existing anti-discrimination laws.

"It certainly could have been much stronger," Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles, said of the plan. She added that her organization participated in a roundtable on the plan, and she was disappointed ICE and recent immigration sweeps weren't mentioned in the resulting document.

"In order for all of this to happen, immigrant workers are part of it," she said of the World Cup. "Your hotel workers, your service workers, stadium workers, drivers." 

LAist reached out to spokespeople for the host committee for comment via email, phone and text, but did not hear back in time for publication. FIFA's press team also did not respond to an email from LAist.

According to the host committee's website, the human rights plan is the result of coordination with the city and county of Los Angeles, the city of Inglewood, and 14 roundtable discussions held in the fall of 2025.

"As a non-profit organization, the Host Committee’s role is primarily and necessarily focused on aligning and collaborating with governmental and non-governmental organizations," the document sums up the committee's approach.

The plan also promises more actions, including "Know Your Rights" training for L.A. residents and visitors and "Know Your Responsibilities" training for businesses and vendors. The committee also says it will develop a "rapid response" strategy to respond to potential problems at the tournament.

Available details on those plans were scant. And with the tournament just 30 days away, labor unions and community groups are continuing to voice concerns about potential ICE presence at SoFi Stadium and other potential consequences of the tournament coming to town.

The mayor of Arcadia has agreed to plead guilty to a charge she acted as an agent for China, federal prosecutors announced Monday. She has resigned from her position with the city.

Eileen Wang, 58, faces one count of acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The charge carries a potential sentence of up to 10 years in federal prison.

What we know about the criminal case

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Wang and Yaoning “Mike” Sun of Chino Hills worked at the direction of the Chinese government and with individuals based in the U.S. to promote pro-People’s Republic of China propaganda in the United States. Those actions occurred between 2020 and 2022, prosecutors said.

According to federal prosecutors, Wang and Sun operated a website — known as U.S. News Center — billed as a news source for the local Chinese American community in Los Angeles County. They posted content on the site, described as "pre-written articles," based on directives from Chinese government officials.

Sun, 65, pleaded guilty in October 2025 in federal court to acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government. He is serving a four-year federal prison sentence.

Prosecutors also said Wang communicated with John Chen, whom they described as “a high-level member of the [Chinese government] intelligence apparatus,” in November 2021, and asked him to post an article from her website.

In a group chat, Wang referenced the article and wrote: “This is what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs wants to send,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Chen pleaded guilty in New York to acting as an illegal agent of the People’s Republic of China and conspiracy to bribe a public official. In 2024, he was sentenced to 20 months in federal prison.

What's next

Wang, who was elected to the City Council in November 2022, was expected to make her first appearance in U.S. District Court Monday afternoon.

Citing a plea agreement, prosecutors said she's expected to enter the guilty plea within the next few weeks.

Arcadia's mayor is selected from the elected council members. A post on the city's website announced that Wang had resigned her position as of Monday and that a new mayor would be picked from the remaining council members at the next meeting.

The Supreme Court on Monday gave itself more time to consider a national ban on telemedicine access to the abortion pill mifepristone.

Justice Samuel Alito extended an earlier order he issued by three more days, so rules for prescribing mifepristone online or through the mail remain in effect through Thursday at a minimum.

The case at issue

The tumult over the future of telemedicine access to mifipristone started on May 1 with a ruling from the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. That ruling re-instituted prescribing rules from before the pandemic that required patients to receive mifepristone in person in a doctor's office or clinic.

The Food and Drug Administration determined that the rule was medically unnecessary in 2021. The state of Louisiana sued last fall, arguing that telemedicine access undermines the state's abortion ban.

What is telemedicine abortion?

The telemedicine abortion process starts with a patient connecting with a healthcare provider on the phone or online. If the patient is eligible, that provider can prescribe two medications — mifepristone and another pill called misoprostol. Patients can pick up the medicine at a local pharmacy, or providers can mail the drugs to a patient's home.

That access is a big part of the reason why the number of abortions nationally has actually increased since the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in 2022. Now, most abortions in the U.S. use this combination of medications, and one quarter happen via telemedicine.

After the 5th Circuit ruling, some providers said they would continue offering telemedicine access to abortion medication using a different protocol that involves higher doses of misoprostol and no mifepristone.

Researchers say that method is just as safe and effective, but tends to cause more pain for patients and more side effects, like nausea and diarrhea. Misoprostol has other medical uses, such as treating gastric ulcers and hemorrhage, and has been on the market longer than mifepristone. It is likely to remain fully accessible, even if mifepristone is restricted.

Since the FDA's prescribing rules for medications apply to the whole country, a change to the rules about how mifepristone can be accessed has national impact. That means it affects states with constitutionally-protected access to abortion, states with criminal bans, like Louisiana, and all states in between.

States' rights

Nearly two dozen Democratic-led states submitted an amicus brief in this case, writing that the appeals court decision put the policy choices of states with bans above the choices of states "that have made the different but equally sovereign determinations to promote access to abortion care."

There are also stakes related to the power of FDA and other expert agencies to set rules. While the Trump administration's FDA did not respond to the Supreme Court's request for briefs, a group of former leaders of the agency, who served under mainly Democratic and some Republican presidents, wrote about this in an amicus brief.

They defended the FDA's process in approving the medication and modifying the rules for prescribing it, and say the appeals court decision "would upend FDA's gold-standard, science-based drug approval system."

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