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
-
All of the proceeds from the sales, which were finalized before the fires, go into a new South Pasadena affordable housing fund. -
‘It was just a regular morning’: Californians picked up in recent ICE raids include kids, volunteersJob seekers, dedicated community members, green card holders among those hit by deportations, according to interviews. -
During the latest round of layoffs, the tiny team was among the hundreds let go. And though some parts of the educational program remain, educators across the country mourn what was lost. -
Andrew Do pleaded guilty to felony bribery last year. The suspension is a step in the California State Bar's process leading to disbarment. -
One month after the fires, many renters still can’t move back to their homes because their landlords won’t say when, or if, they plan to clean up toxic ash. -
Rob Caves and his partner's Christmas Tree Lane home survived the Eaton Fire, like the majority of houses on his block. But with ash in the air and no drinkable water, few of his neighbors have returned.
Best of LAist
