Sacramento Report: Efforts Are Afoot to Rewrite LGBTQ Laws

Last month, I wrote about the competing state tax measures voters will see on the November ballot. And now, there’s more. 

There are conflicting measures on LGBTQ rights, including one which would enshrine marriage equality in the state constitution, and another that could impose limits on transgender students.

The marriage equality initiative aims to reverse Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure banning same sex unions.

It would also create a backstop to the 2015 Supreme Court Decision, Obergefell v. Hodges, which struck down Prop. 8 and other state laws against those marriages. In that decision, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion that the choice to marry is a fundamental right, protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

By 2021, more than a million same-sex couples had married, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. It seemed that the matter was settled.

“I feel that the question has been resolved post 2015, and the world is fine, and people who enjoy the right to marry are happier,” Assemblymember Chris Ward, D-San Diego, vice chair of the state legislature’s LGBTQ Caucus, told me.

But in its 2022 decision, Dobbs v. Jackson, the Supreme Court overturned its landmark Roe v. Wade decision guaranteeing the right to abortion, which for half a century was accepted as the law of the land. 

Moreover, Justice Clarence Thomas called for the court to overturn other precedents including those protecting contraceptive use and same sex marriage, arguing that the right to those intimate decisions isn’t explicitly laid out in the constitution.

That’s what LGBTQ advocates are watching out for.

“We know that there are court challenges right now to same sex marriage and other rights that are working their way through the courts right now, and may come to the Supreme Court,” Ward said.

To preempt a potential Supreme Court reversal, California lawmakers proposed the ballot measure to protect same sex marriage in California. 

The initiative states that it would strike down Prop. 8 and “amend the California Constitution to include the fundamental right to marry as furthering the rights to enjoy life, liberty, safety, happiness, and privacy, and the rights to equal protection and due process.”

On the other side is a separate measure that’s still in the works, and would limit options for transgender students. As of April 1, its proponents had gathered a quarter of the more than half million signatures it needs.

It would require schools to restrict same sex facilities such as bathrooms and locker rooms to people assigned that gender at birth, and bar transgender female students from participating in girls’ sports from seventh grade on. It also would make schools notify parents if their child is using a new gender identity “without exception for safety,” and prohibit gender-affirming healthcare for transgender minors.

That measure has been entangled in litigation since proponents sued state Attorney General Rob Bonta for relabeling it the “Restricts Rights of Transgender Youth” initiative, in place of its original name, the “Protect Kids of California Act.” They complained that the starker title could turn off voters.

A Superior Court judge tentatively ruled in Bonta’s favor, concluding that the new title accurately described the initiative.

Legislative Hits and Misses

Sen. Catherine Blakespear’s bill to expand California’s plastic bag ban passed the Senate Environmental Quality Committee on Wednesday.

Blakespear, D-Encinitas, introduced SB 1053 to prohibit the use of plastic film bags at grocery checkouts. Ten years ago California passed a ban that swapped out flimsy plastic bags for thicker ones, under the premise that the sturdier bags could be recycled or reused.

But they haven’t.

CalRecycle data show that Californians discarded 47 percent more bags since the ban than before it. 

“Almost none of those bags are recycled and they end up in landfills, polluting the environment,” Blakespear said in a statement.

Her bill would eliminate plastic film bags, and require paper bags to be made from 100 percent recycled material.

Bill to block utility fee strikes out. State Sen. Brian Jones, R-San Diego, didn’t fare so well last week. On Monday the state Senate Energy, Utilities, and Communications Committee rejected SB 1326, his bill to repeal an income-based utility fee to California ratepayers.

The fee was imposed through a 2022 budget bill that called for a fixed charge on utility bills, with higher fees at top income tiers.  The premise was that the fixed fee would reduce power rates and lead to lower bills, or at worst be a wash.

Except that people who use less energy would pay the full fee but see limited reduction in their bill. That could create a disincentive to conserve: exactly the opposite of what lawmakers intended.

Some Democratic Assembly members took issue with that, and introduced their own bill capping the potential fees at $5 to $10 per month. That bill hasn’t been heard in committee yet. 

Tijuana River Earns Dire Distinction

An environmental nonprofit named the beleaguered Tijuana River one of America’s 10 most endangered rivers this month, because of the toxic waste and raw sewage that flow across the border.

“The Tijuana River Watershed, the ancestral and current homeland of the Kumeyaay People and a vital lifeline for millions on both sides of the U.S./Mexico border, faces a mounting threat as pollution chokes its waters, endangering public health and undermining local economies,” American Rivers stated.

The organization advocates for dam removal and river cleanup on polluted waterways.

On a related note, the International Boundary and Water Commission says it has collected 12 shipping containers full of trash – about 126 tons of debris – from the Tijuana River. That includes paper, plastic and wood that washed in with winter storms.

The Sacramento Report runs every Friday and is part of a partnership with CalMatters. Do you have tips, ideas or questions? Send them to me at deborah@voiceofsandiego.org.