This story is free to read because readers choose to support LAist. If you find value in independent local reporting, make a donation to power our newsroom today.
Emergency room workers are facing more attacks. A new California law increases penalties
Oscar Casillas, the medical director of emergency medicine at Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital in Los Angeles, checks in on patients inside tiny cubicles that are used for treatment, on July 26, 2022.
(
Pablo Unzueta
/
CalMatters
)
Those who physically attack doctors, nurses and other emergency department workers in California face harsher penalties in 2025 thanks to a new law.
In September, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 977, which increased penalties from six months to a year in jail for those convicted of assaulting California’s hospital emergency room workers.
The bill’s author was Assemblymember Freddie Rodriguez, who spent 30 years as an emergency medical technician in the San Gabriel Valley.
Rodriguez, a Democrat whose term ended in 2024, said he was compelled to introduce the legislation after seeing too many of his friends and former colleagues attacked on the job. He felt that there needed to be tougher penalties to discourage future attacks.
-
Chief Bill Scott, in an interview with LAist, did not discount the recruitment challenges affecting law enforcement nationwide. -
Prosecutors say Israel Claustro headed up a scheme to defraud California’s workers' compensation fund. -
Reiner, 32, was expected to be arraigned Wednesday in connection with the deaths of his parents, Hollywood legend Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner, last month.
As he made his case to lawmakers this year, he testified that his daughter, Desirae, a respiratory technician, was recently assaulted on the job. Other health care workers testified that they too had been attacked.
Recent polling shows they’re hardly alone. A poll from the American College of Emergency Physicians found that more than 90% of ER doctors said they’d been attacked within the last year.
Sponsored message
Though the bill ended up passing overwhelmingly, some progressive Democrats either voted against or didn’t vote for the proposal which counts the same as a “no” vote. They, along with prison reform advocates and the California Public Defenders Association, argued that increasing penalties doesn’t deter crime and that many of those assaulting ER workers are mentally ill. They noted that laws on the books already prohibited assault.
Former Gov. Jerry Brown, who faced a U.S. Supreme Court order to shrink the state’s prison population, had vetoed an identical bill from Rodriguez in 2015.
The California Medical Association, the lobbying group for California’s physicians, was glad Newsom didn’t do the same.
“Thank you Governor Newsom, Assemblymember Rodriguez, and the Legislature for having the backs of health care workers across the state,” the association’s president, Dr. Tanya Spirtos, said in a statement after Newsom signed the bill.
Trending on LAist
-
Two nonprofits unite to offer fire-resistant designs and help people in Altadena bypass certain permitting and building hurdles. -
One of the state’s largest landlords — the man at the center of an LAist investigation — is being sued for allegedly letting his properties fall into dangerous disrepair. -
A series of demonstrations across the U.S. will take place on Saturday, including in many parts of the Los Angeles region. Here's what you need to know. -
At a time when many other Southern California newsrooms are retreating and shrinking, LAist’s journalism has never been stronger or more ambitious. -
DHS Security Kristi Noem was giving a news conference when the senior senator from California tried to interrupt with questions. -
“It makes it appear that the United States or America is a battleground,” one veteran Marine said.
Best of LAist
