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
-
The city passed a law against harassing renters in 2021. But tenant advocates say enforcement has been lacking. -
After the luxury towers' developer did not respond to a request from the city to step in, the money will go to fence off the towers, provide security and remove graffiti on the towers. -
The climate crisis is destabilizing cliffs and making landslides more likely, an expert says. -
Lifei Huang, 22, went missing near Mt. Baldy on Feb. 4 as the first of two atmospheric rivers was bearing down on the region. -
Since 2021, volunteers have been planting Joshua tree seedlings in the Mojave Desert burn scar. The next session is slated for later this Spring, according to the National Park Service. Just like previous times, a few camels will be tagging along. -
There are three main meteorological reasons why L.A. is so smoggy — all of which are affected when a rainstorm passes through and brings clearer skies.
Best of LAist
