The Brief

The largest food assistance program in the U.S. is undergoing a massive overhaul. But even before the most drastic changes take effect, more than 4 million people are estimated to have already lost the critical food aid between last July and April — many of whom are children.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP or food stamps, has seen a rapid and consistent decline in participation since last July, the same month that a sweeping Republican tax and spending package became law. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act included major changes to the food assistance program. At the time, the White House called SNAP "bloated" and said it was failing its mission to serve as "temporary help for those who encounter tough times."

Starsky Wilson, the president of the Children's Defense Fund, a child advocacy group, says he has been alarmed by the speed of the tax law's impact.

"We're upset about how quickly this has happened," he says. "There are some supports that are still staged to go away later this year. So there could be an even greater sense of desperation among children and their families as we come to the end of this year."

The food assistance program has already begun tightening eligibility. But the biggest shift, the restructuring of SNAP's funding model, starts in October. Each state will soon have to pay millions in additional costs to keep the program going. Food policy experts warn that these new costs could drive states to scale back or withdraw from SNAP. If that happens, neither food banks nor existing government programs would have the capacity to fill the gap, according to Wilson from the Children's Defense Fund. 

" There's no replacement for SNAP if a state gets rid of it," he says.

Here's how the program works, where things stand and what's changed.

Changes in eligibility

Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, more adults need to prove they work or volunteer for at least 80 hours a month to access food benefits. These work requirements now apply to veterans, homeless individuals, young adults aging out of foster care, parents with a child between 14 and 17, and people between 55 and 64.

Changes to work requirements alone are expected to reduce SNAP participation by 2.4 million people in an average month over the 2025-2034 period, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Last summer's tax law also cut food stamp eligibility for certain immigrants. While almost all recipients are either native-born or naturalized citizens, a tiny fraction are noncitizens, according to federal data. Members of that small group — refugees, people seeking asylum and victims of domestic abuse or trafficking — are now no longer eligible for federal food aid.

The current fallout

Last year, an average of 42 million people received food stamps to use toward groceries each month. That's about 1 in 8 Americans. As of April, the total is now 37 million people, according to preliminary data from the Agriculture Department.

Nationally, SNAP participation is down by 11% between last July and April, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a left-leaning think tank. So far, the biggest impact has been in Arizona, where SNAP enrollment is about half the size it was a year ago, or over 400,000 fewer participants. For the first time, there are more Arizonans visiting food banks each month than enrolled in food stamps, according to the Arizona Food Bank Network.

"We think of ourselves as the canary in the coal mine," says Natalie Jayroe, the CEO of the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona. "We are showing the rest of the country a really scary scenario."

Alongside Arizona, some of the steepest declines took place in Louisiana, Florida and Oklahoma. The CBPP also reviewed data from 19 states that provided numbers of children on SNAP and found that in those states alone, over 1 million kids have lost food benefits since last July.

What's driving the decline 

In a July statement, the Agriculture Department told NPR that participation for food benefits tends to fluctuate and the drop isn't representative of any one policy. Back in late April, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins also spoke about the decline, adding that it's possibly a good sign.

"A lot of it is people taking the program that shouldn't have been, and then a lot of it is just a better economy," she said on Fox Business.

Katie Bergh, a senior policy analyst at CBPP, is skeptical of this assessment. She points out that over the past year, unemployment has largely stayed flat while food prices continue to go up.

" What that's telling us is that this is not happening because fewer people need help affording groceries. It's the result of these policy changes," she says.

According to Bergh, part of the issue is that many state agencies are struggling with staffing pressures and paperwork backlogs, especially amid efforts to prevent errors on food aid applications and avoid new federal penalties.

"People are calling and calling, and they can't get through to anyone," she says. "Or they're being asked for more and more and more documentation of every aspect of their lives, and maybe they don't have a way to document everything."

That's in line with a survey conducted by the Urban Institute and the American Public Human Services Association (APHSA). Out of 39 states that responded to the survey, 15 states said they were prioritizing payment accuracy over benefit timeliness.

More drastic changes to come

One of the most consequential changes from last year's tax law is the upcoming cost burden on states.

Before, the federal government split the bill 50-50 with states to cover administrative expenses, such as paying and training staff at state agencies. But starting in October, the federal government will only pay 25% of those costs while states will have to shoulder the remaining 75% of operational expenses.

Furthermore, in October 2027, the federal government will no longer cover the full cost of food benefits. States will also need to chip in if their error rate — a measure of overpayments and underpayments — is at or above 6%. Almost half of states may each owe $100 million or more because of penalties tied to their error rate, according to the think tank CBPP.

The Agriculture Department has argued that improper payments totaled $10 billion last year. It's important to note that an error rate largely reflects unintentional mistakes by state agencies or food stamp recipients, according to CBPP's Bergh.

"It largely reflects unintentional mistakes by state eligibility workers and participating families," she says. " So someone made a typo or a state worker misapplied a policy or a family didn't understand what information they needed to report and when."

SNAP experts say it takes time to lower those rates, which is why some local officials are urging the federal government to delay the new penalties.

Through all of these changes, the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality estimates that on average, states will need to spend two to three times more on SNAP to keep the food assistance program running — which could result in higher taxes or other state budget cuts.

In the same survey conducted by the Urban Institute and the APHSA, 29% of states said they may consider further narrowing eligibility for food assistance, while 11% said they may need to withdraw or pause the program altogether if the new costs become too burdensome.

" There's really an existential crisis in the future of SNAP," says Lexie Kuznick, the director of policy and government relations for APHSA.

Changes to SNAP have ripple effects — not only on low-income Americans, but also across food banks and grocery stores, according to Kuznick. The National Grocers Association estimates that the drop in shoppers receiving food aid will reduce grocery store sales by nearly $88 billion nationwide through 2034.

"Groceries are a significant cost in the lives of low-income families, and it truly is a lifeline for them to be able to meet their family's needs," Kuznick says. "We also know how critical the benefits are for entire communities."
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A pioneering California law meant to sharply limit use of the familiar “chasing arrows” recycling symbol has been blocked by a federal judge who said it probably violates the First Amendment.

In a preliminary injunction issued earlier this month, U.S. District Judge William Hayes halted enforcement of SB 343 after food, packaging and retail groups sued, finding that key provisions were “unconstitutionally vague” and likely infringed protected commercial speech. Enforcement of the law, passed in 2021, was expected to start this fall.

The decision is a blow to environmental advocates, who had hoped to remove the familiar symbol from a huge array of plastic products, in line with a statewide study showing that only a fraction are widely collected and actually recycled. SB 343 said only goods and packaging accepted by recycling programs serving at least 60% of Californians and then actually sorted for recycling — not collected and thrown away — could bear the chasing arrows.

Hayes’ constitutional reasoning surprised supporters of SB 343 because similar arguments against environmental marketing regulations have historically struggled in court.

“The First Amendment protects free expression, not a corporation’s right to commit consumer fraud,” said Nick Lapis, director of advocacy for the nonprofit Californians Against Waste. “We see this exact playbook every time the plastics industry is asked to stop misleading the public — they suddenly hide behind the Constitution.”

In his decision, Hayes applied a standard four-part test to determine whether SB 343 would unduly restrict companies’ speech rights. The law passed the first two tests handily, as it regulates “potentially misleading” speech and was intended to serve California’s legitimate interests in reducing consumer confusion and improving recycling rates.

The next tests are where the law ran into trouble. Hayes, siding with the industry trade groups, argued that the legislation would not advance those “legitimate interests.” Rather than encouraging companies to redesign their products and packaging to comply with California’s real-world recyclability criteria, the law would prompt them to remove the recycling symbol altogether, the judge said.

Products recycled at a rate below the 60% threshold that the law requires would no longer make it into recycling bins, which could in theory leave more of them bound for the landfill.

Hayes said a less stringent regulation could have better advanced California’s goals. For instance, the state could have passed a law requiring more descriptive qualifiers alongside the recycling symbol. He offered a hypothetical example of a label explaining that an item is “accepted by recyclers in the greater Los Angeles area but nowhere else in California.” Such a label would provide consumers with more and better information, he argued, but would not be allowed under SB 343.

Heidi Sanborn, executive director of the nonprofit National Stewardship Action Council, said the judge’s reasoning reflected a fundamental misunderstanding of the problems facing California recycling systems. People are throwing too much stuff into their blue bins, she said. In addition to not actually being recyclable, much of this refuse — including plastic bags and other plastic films — can gum up sorting machines, causing operational delays and creating safety risks.

“People are wish-cycling, they’re so desperate to recycle,” Sanborn told Grist. “We have to pull all this [contamination] out, which is very labor-intensive, and then everybody wants to know why their bills go up.”

Industry groups welcomed the injunction, saying it would prevent California from “censoring truthful information on packaging.”

Scott Hochberg, general counsel and litigation director for the nonprofit Earth Island Institute, said he’s seen free speech challenges to environmental rules many times before. Big polluters have frequently invoked the First Amendment to oppose regulations that require them to disclose information — like their greenhouse gas emissions — or tone down statements about their sustainability.

“What’s relatively new and concerning is when these arguments succeed and states are blocked from implementing common-sense initiatives to protect their residents,” he said.

A lawsuit Hochberg’s organization is pursuing against Coca-Cola illustrates the same debate. It alleges the company presents itself as a “sustainable and environmentally friendly company” despite its outsize contribution to plastic pollution. Coca-Cola argued that statements about its sustainability efforts — including plastics recycling — were protected political speech rather than commercial advertising. A federal judge rejected that argument in 2024.

The companies that sued California didn’t make that same distinction. Their suit is more like one filed in 1992 that sought to block a California law restricting the use of terms like “biodegradable,” “ozone-friendly,” and “recyclable.”

A judge upheld the law, ruling that it would not stifle free speech because corporations could still use a restricted word or phrase as long as they included qualifiers explaining how, where, or under what conditions it applied.

The injunction against SB 343 leaves California with few easy options. Hayes’ ruling suggests the state faces a difficult road if the case proceeds to trial. Lawmakers could amend the law to address some of the judge’s concerns, though that may be unlikely given the politics surrounding the issue. California could also appeal the injunction, but the lower court would still have to decide the case on its merits.

Earth Island Institute and Californians Against Waste announced on July 27 that they are joining California as defendants. Hochberg said he hoped to provide the court with more information “about how the recycling system actually works.” Losing the lawsuit will make it harder for other states to pursue similar labeling regulations, he said.

It could also jeopardize California’s nation-leading extended producer responsibility law, which shifts responsibility for collecting, recycling, and reducing plastic packaging from taxpayers and local governments to the companies that produce it. It relies on the same definition of recycling and is currently being challenged by a separate lawsuit.

Whatever happens next, Sanborn said she’s ready to work with industry to come up with other solutions — including legislation to clarify labeling rules at the national level.

“We can and should work together to solve this,” she said. “But you should not have the right to lie to people.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/accountability/is-the-recycling-symbol-free-speech-a-judge-just-ruled-it-could-be/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to reporting on climate change.

Los Angeles Unified School District leaders say they are confident they can persuade county officials that the district can avoid a projected cash shortfall and remain under local control, and are preparing for budget cuts, possible furloughs and school consolidation.

A July 2 letter from the Los Angeles County Office of Education found that LAUSD met the criteria for a “Lack of Going Concern,” meaning the district’s financial plan does not show it can meet its future cash obligations. County officials project Los Angeles Unified will face a $231 million cash shortfall in 2027.

The finding, which also comes after the district failed to make sufficient cuts during the 2025-26 budget, triggered a 45-day period for LAUSD to revise its current fiscal plan for the coming school year. The county has appointed an expert to work with the district during that process. If Los Angeles Unified does not make adequate changes, a county advisor would be appointed, giving the county authority to overrule district decisions.

Like many California districts, LAUSD’s financial challenges stem from a combination of declining enrollment, the expiration of Covid relief funding and rising operative costs. Enrollment fell 3% during the 2025-26 school year in Los Angeles, reducing state funding tied to student attendance. Still, the amount LAUSD has received from the state has increased over the past three years.

The county’s letter also cites a series of union contracts reached this spring that will cost the district more than $2.5 billion over the term of the contracts. Union leaders have disputed the severity of the district’s financial crisis.

Superintendent Andrés Chait said during a press conference last week that the county office of education wants the district to prove it can implement its proposed savings, including possible furloughs, and explain its alternative cost-cutting options.

“I just think it’s really important for board members to take very seriously the process that this state has in place to ensure that every district is fiscally solvent,” said Yolie Flores, president and CEO of Families in Schools, a nonprofit focused on student success. A former LAUSD board vice president, Flores was also appointed to the district’s new revenue task force.

District officials and independent experts say LAUSD’s fiscal challenges have been building for years and are not unexpected. They’ve also warned that the district will likely need to make difficult spending cuts to restore its long-term financial stability, and that additional state funding alone is unlikely to solve its structural budget problems.

“Now we’re in a situation where this constriction is still happening, but now the artificial floor is gone,” said Stephen Aguilar, a professor of education at the University of Southern California. “So now, we’re falling through to the basement, and we’re sort of in this emergency period.”

Painful cuts are expected

The district’s most difficult decisions are expected to come over the next several months. Board member Tanya Ortiz Franklin said schools will receive their budget allocations for the 2027-28 academic year this fall, and the board will discuss workforce reductions needed to balance the budget.

She also said that the district must carefully manage workforce reductions so high-needs schools aren’t disproportionately affected by staff turnover.

The board will also need to weigh other cost-saving measures, including furlough days — a prospect Ortiz Franklin acknowledged could feel like a “slap in the face for our labor unions” — and possible changes to employee health benefit contributions.

Ortiz Franklin also questioned whether the district could successfully save $200 million by reassessing contracts with outside vendors, as some of the items being procured cannot be made in-house.

Looking beyond the immediate budget crisis, she said school consolidation is likely unavoidable as enrollment continues to decline, with those conversations expected to begin this fall.

The board will meet Aug. 11 in a likely closed session meeting to start discussing its fiscal recovery plan.

“The superintendent is clear that these are ambitious strategies, and that the board needs to not only be aware of them but also weigh in, given that we are elected to represent the voices of our communities,” Ortiz Franklin said.

“And we want to do our best to make sure we continue to do that, and don’t have a fiscal advisor appointed, so that we lose the ability to make decisions on behalf of our community who elected us.”

LAUSD’s financial situation

Education finance experts say the findings of the county office of education are serious, but not unusual. Districts across California have faced similar fiscal challenges, and many have restored their financial footing after county intervention.

“Unfortunately,” Flores said, “it takes a threat like what L.A. Unified is now experiencing for them to make the decisions that they should be making to show that they are fiscally responsible as a board and as management.”

The board received a similar letter when Flores was on LAUSD’s school board during the height of the Great Recession.

“I just got here, and that’s all we were doing is cutting, cutting, cutting,” she said. “Feeling the impact of what that would mean for our families and for children. … It was a long year.”

Michael Fine, the CEO of the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, said the debate over whether union contracts pushed the district into its present predicament misses the larger issue. The concern, he said, is whether the board approved contracts without clearly explaining how it would pay for them.

He said that the district should have been more transparent. In July, the parent group Oleada, Inc. published findings from a public records request revealing a series of written warnings from LACOE to Los Angeles Unified dating back to April, months before the school board approved its fiscal stabilization plan.

“It’s when the board says, ‘I’m going to approve these contracts, even though I don’t know how I’m going to pay the bill,’ that’s where the problem is,” Fine said. “It’s not with the negotiations themselves. It’s not with the deal that was made.”

Despite his criticism, Fine said he does not believe LAUSD is beyond recovery.

“I’m normally the one worrying. I’m normally the one on behalf of all district staff all night figuring out or thinking through ‘Uh-oh, do we have a district in trouble?’ ” Fine said. “I’m not feeling that for L.A. right now because I truly believe this is well within their ability to address.”

California unlikely to come to the rescue

For months, LAUSD and its labor unions have lobbied lawmakers in Sacramento for additional education funding. But education experts say new state funding, while helpful, is unlikely to solve the district’s underlying fiscal problems.

Much of that advocacy — including from other districts — has focused on the $3.9 billion of Proposition 98 funds that the state has withheld, Fine said.

Even if the state releases those funds, Fine said, LAUSD’s share is unlikely to make up for the shortfalls. And because the funding may come with restrictions, the money may not come in the form LAUSD needs.

“We should be able to invest in our schools. However, that always has to come with the understanding that we can’t artificially raise the floor again,” Aguilar said.

“Because then, what you’re essentially doing is you’re kicking the can down the road, and I think this time it won’t even travel as far if you kick it.”

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

Lawmakers have returned to Sacramento ready to hammer out — and potentially spike — several legislative deals before they adjourn for the year on Aug. 31 and hit the campaign trail.

Think of this year’s end-of-session as a bonus episode to last year’s saga over climate and energy policy. Much of the unresolved business has roots in the deal that renewed the state’s carbon market. But new topics have entered the plot too, and Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limón will bring a different dynamic to negotiations among the “Big Three.”

As usual, much of the negotiating will take place at the leadership level behind closed doors. Here are five deals we’re watching this month.

Climate fund a centerpiece to budget talks

How to spend the state’s main climate fund will be a primary sticking point this month after Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative Democrats failed to reach an agreement in time for the June budget.

Now, they have less than a month to settle their differences. Assembly Budget Committee Chair Jesse Gabriel, an Encino Democrat, told reporters in June that the climate budget would be “at the top of the list” for negotiations during the summer recess.

Newsom and lawmakers last fall reauthorized the state’s carbon market, which charges companies to pollute and deposits the dollars in the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund for climate programs. The deal also set the order in which projects would receive funding.

But that revenue source, which was estimated to generate $4 billion a year, could shrink by half under new climate rules the Newsom administration adopted this year, endangering funding for various legislative priorities and angering Senate Democrats, who in turn threatened to block Newsom’s funding proposals and presented alternative spending plans in June.

Legislative leaders agreed to use $115 million of the fund for Newsom-backed electric vehicle incentives and another $1.25 billion to backfill the state fire department’s budget. But still at stake is funding for the controversial high-speed rail project, which was set to receive $1 billion a year until 2045. Projects such as safe drinking water, affordable housing and transit are also at risk of losing funding.

Separately, top leaders put off negotiations over Proposition 4, the voter-approved $10 billion bond for climate projects. Last year, state lawmakers fought to secure a piece of the fund for pet projects, some tangentially related to environmental protection, in their own districts in a secretive process that even many lawmakers bemoaned.

Tech-backed California Forever seeks a deal

California Forever, the tech-billionaires-backed group seeking to develop swaths of Solano County farmland, is hoping to get a carve-out on environmental rules for the development.

For months, the group and its labor union allies told state lawmakers the relief was necessary to help California land a deal with Saronics Technologies Inc., a Texas-based shipbuilder they said was eyeing California for its next shipyard. The group wanted the state to streamline environmental reviews and override county restrictions for the development, but no legislation materialized as opponents accused the group of bypassing local resistance and sidestepping environmental regulations.

The shipbuilder announced last month that it would build in Texas, a decision California Forever blamed on state lawmakers. “We were passed over because … our approval process cannot accommodate the required speed without special legislation, which was not passed in time,” the group said in a statement.

“California and Solano County must not miss the next opportunity,” it continued.

California Forever has spent $455,000 since last year lobbying state lawmakers and the governor’s office, according to its lobbying report released Friday.

The proposed development appears to have Newsom’s blessing. The governor’s office called a meeting Thursday to discuss the project with a couple of Solano County supervisors, California Forever representatives and Assemblymember Lori Wilson and Sen. Christopher Cabaldon, who represent the region.

Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limón, who rose to the role this year, will be a key player in end-of-session negotiations for the first time.

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Dee Dee Myers, who heads the governor’s office of business and economic development that’s been pushing for the development, was also present. In a memo last month, her office called the region a “world-class industrial site” and touted the importance of building a shipyard and an advanced manufacturing hub in the area.

“California is better positioned to attract billions of dollars in investment, tens of thousands of new good-paying jobs and a more resilient supply chain than it has been in decades,” the memo said. “And no project represents this opportunity more clearly than the proposed Solano Shipyard and Solano Foundry.”

Will Newsom's wildfire plan benefit utilities?

Newsom is also proposing legislation to address growing wildfire risks in California but is not giving specifics.

Consumer advocates, wildfire survivors and insurers say he’s trying to reduce utilities’ liability for causing wildfires, shift wildfire recovery costs to insurance policyholders and make it harder for fire victims to get compensation or legal representation — claims Newsom’s office declined to address.

Newsom spokesperson Anthony Martinez said discussions about potential legislation followed a California Earthquake Authority study in April that examined ways to better prepare California for natural disasters. The study was required by a last-minute deal Newsom and state lawmakers struck last year, which required utility companies to pay into the state’s wildfire fund while allowing them to shift certain costs onto customers.

Wildfire Survivors First, a utilities-funded coalition despite its name, is lobbying state leaders to adopt several proposals listed in the study, arguing they would reduce wildfire risks and make property insurance more affordable.

Most legislative leaders were tight-lipped about the potential package. Sen. Ben Allen, a Los Angeles Democrat running for state insurance commissioner, said he would “carefully review” any legislation and urged against proposals to “simply shift around the costs consumers pay.” Democratic Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, who represents Eaton Fire survivors, said she would oppose last-minute deals to cap compensation for fire victims.

Business and labor clash over antitrust proposal

Lawmakers will determine the fate of a controversial bill that would give Californians the ability to sue large companies in state court for using monopolistic practices to stifle competition.

The bill, known as the COMPETE Act, has infuriated the business community and set the California Chamber of Commerce on a warpath. The powerful industry group has called Assembly Bill 1776 “the largest expansion of antitrust law in world history” and warns its members that the legislation would “leave every business of every size in California vulnerable to massive legal liability.”

Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas will be negotiating deals with Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limón and Gov. Gavin Newsom.

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Business advocates also argue that the bill gives predatory law firms a new way to shake down California businesses by opening the floodgates for what’s known as “private right of action” lawsuits. For years, business owners have complained about California laws that allow activists and a cottage industry of lawyers to bombard them with cash demands and lawsuits over disability access, product warning labels, labor complaints and consumer privacy.

The legislation, authored by Assembly Majority Leader Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, a Davis Democrat, has support from labor-friendly progressive lawmakers, but also some who have more moderate records such as Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains and Senator Melissa Hurtado, both Central Valley Democratic lawmakers.

Several of the state’s most powerful unions have lined up as co-sponsors, including the California Federation of Labor Unions, SEIU California and the United Food and Commercial Workers.

The bill is scheduled to be heard in the Senate appropriations committee on Aug. 10.

Counties seek reprieve from costly assault claims

Los Angeles County is leading a behind-the-scenes effort to limit lawsuits from Californians who allege they were abused as children by public employees while in county or school district custody.

The effort comes in response to a deluge of lawsuits that followed a 2019 law that dramatically expanded the time people have to sue for the alleged abuse. Survivors now have until they turn 40 to file claims, rather than the previous cutoff of age 26 or within five years of becoming aware of trauma caused by the alleged abuse. The resulting litigation and settlements have cost counties and school districts billions of dollars.

Last April, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a $4 billion settlement with 6,800 people who claimed they suffered abuse while in county juvenile detention facilities. Some of those cases dated back more than 65 years.

Lawmakers attempted to broker a compromise, Senate Bill 577, at the end of last session that would satisfy survivors and roll back the scope of the law to provide some financial reprieve to cash-strapped counties and school districts. But that effort, led by Sen. John Laird, a Democrat from Santa Cruz, couldn’t gain traction, and Laird eventually shelved the issue.

Now, public employee unions are pushing for a reprieve again, largely to avoid potential pay concessions from their financially burdened public employers. Negotiations will likely take place at the Democratic leadership level between Limón and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas.

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

In the past year alone, they’ve helped catch suspected murderers, bank robbers and hit-and-run drivers. They’ve located dozens of stolen cars and helped send a wildland arsonist to prison.

They’re also distrusted and despised by privacy rights activists on the left and on the right. Just last month, police accused a suspect in Monterey County of yanking down three of them with his pickup.

They’re called automated license plate readers. Every day, untold numbers of Californians drive past the thousands of cameras that at least 230 police and sheriffs’ departments have posted along roadways or installed on their patrol cars. The cameras in real time capture and read plate numbers, then cross-reference them with law enforcement databases of vehicles police want to locate, such as stolen cars, getaway vehicles or those that may be carrying a missing or wanted person.

Since 2019, California Democratic lawmakers have unsuccessfully sought to further restrict how police use the technology. They’re trying again this year with a bill that would add limits on how long police may retain license plate data, how they access it and with whom they share it.

Police agencies and officers’ unions across the state oppose the latest measure, which is similar to a bill Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed last year.

“This bill is about one simple principle: Protecting the privacy and safety of Californians while ensuring law enforcement tools are used responsibly before it’s too late,” the author of this year’s legislation, Riverside Democratic Sen. Sabrina Cervantes, told the Assembly privacy committee last month. She did not respond to a request for an interview from CalMatters.

Critics of the technology cite high-profile examples of California police using license plate data inappropriately, including to stalk or harass innocent people. As CalMatters reported last year, California officers have repeatedly violated an 11-year-old state law that prohibits sharing the data with federal authorities and others outside the state.

404 Media also reported last year that a Texas cop searched a national license plate database to try to locate a woman who had an abortion, leading to fears that conservative states that criminalize abortion are accessing California’s plate data to hunt down patients or providers.

Cervantes’ bill would generally limit to 30 days the amount of time agencies could keep license plate data, unless it pertains to an active investigation or is part of a search for missing people. It also sets limits around who can access the data and adds training and search-tracking requirements.

Police and sheriffs’ departments would be prohibited from entering into contracts with camera companies that provide default access to plate databases that federal and out-of-state police can search.

That provision is in response to Flock Safety, a prominent license plate reader company that allowed federal authorities to search local license plate data as part of a pilot program, said Tracy Rosenberg of Oakland Privacy, one of the bill’s supporters.

“(Police departments) learned after the fact, like our advocates did,” Rosenberg said. “And we all said, ‘What the …’ You know, pick your four-letter word.”

Flock Safety did not respond to CalMatters’ request for an interview, but the company says on its website that it doesn’t work with immigration agencies and it stopped its federal pilot programs. Local agencies have total control over the data Flock readers collect, the company said.

“By default, sharing with federal agencies is disabled,” the company wrote. “ICE does not have direct access to Flock cameras, systems or data.”

Why police are opposed

At least 39 police agencies and officers’ unions oppose Senate Bill 1013. Combined, they have spent at least $5.6 million on legislative campaigns since 2000, according to the CalMatters Digital Democracy database.

Police say the technology has proven invaluable at helping them solve crimes.

Tustin Police Chief Sean Thuilliez, president of the California Police Chiefs Association, said the technology helped clear an innocent man. It also identified a suspected killer when a woman was shot and killed on a street in the Orange County city in May.

The woman had just testified against her ex-husband in a restraining order case, making him a prime suspect, Thuilliez said.

But Thuilliez said that thanks to the city’s 102 license plate readers, eight of which are from Flock, detectives quickly ruled out her ex-husband and were able to apprehend her former boyfriend at the Mexico border. He’s now charged with first-degree murder.

“It’s technology mixed with good investigative work,” he said in an interview. “But within one weekend, we were able to arrest the suspect for this person’s murder.”

The Berkeley Police Department noted similar successes after 52 Flock cameras were installed last year. In a report to the Berkeley City Council, the department noted license plate readers had been used in 121 cases, contributed to 58 arrests and led to the recovery of 37 stolen vehicles.

The department noted its rate for solving robbery cases climbed from 34% in 2024 to 49% the following year, thanks in part to the license plate data.

“The technology has fundamentally improved how officers patrol and how detectives investigate crimes spanning a range of serious offenses including robbery, kidnapping, carjacking, burglary, weapons violations, organized retail theft, stolen property and DUI,” the report said.

Why Newsom vetoed last year’s bill

Such investigative success stories may have helped persuade Newsom to veto last year’s bill, which would have required police to dump their license plate data within 60 days.

In his veto message, he said the restrictions on sharing data and forcing departments to purge it could hinder officers’ ability to solve cold cases and find missing people.

State Sen. Sabrina Cervantes also authored last year’s license plate reader bill, which Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed.

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Newsom also said there was no money in the budget to pay for the mandatory California Department of Justice audits last year’s bill would have required.

To address Newsom’s concerns, this year’s proposal allows police to retain data to locate missing people and it makes a state audit program contingent on future funding.

Newsom’s press office declined to say whether he has a position on the latest bill, which has advanced through the Legislature with only Republicans voting against it. The measure is now pending before the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

Meanwhile, at least one Republican lawmaker is taking the issue to Congress. U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky recently shared a meme of a “Don’t Tread on Me” snake wrapped around a camera. The riff on the yellow Gadsden flag says, “Don’t Flock me.”

“I’ll soon be sponsoring a bill to withhold federal money from municipalities and police departments that deploy Flock (and other style) cameras to surveil law-abiding citizens,” Massie wrote on Facebook.

Rosenberg of Oakland Privacy said she understands the cameras’ usefulness to California police, but she thinks they’ve become ubiquitous. Police, she said, also shouldn’t have a permanent pass to keep “mountains” of data for as long as they want.

“There is kind of a balancing act. We as human beings also need some camera-free space,” she said. “We don't want to be on camera every minute of every single day.”

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