Legislation passed in 2020 to impact attorneys’ work

2020 will be remembered as a year when the California Legislature didn't do much. But there are still some new laws that went into effect Jan. 1 that attorneys should keep in mind.

Lawmakers passed measures in areas of court procedure, labor and law enforcement. Many battles from last year will continue into 2021.

The new year will also feature new faces. The Senate Judiciary Committee will get its first new chair in nearly seven years, with Sen. Tom Umberg, D-Santa Ana, replacing the termed out Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson. Both Umberg and longtime Assembly Judiciary Chair Mark Stone, D-Scotts Valley, told the Daily Journal that COVID-19 has exposed the need for procedural changes in California's courts. Stone said his 2021 priorities will include looking into the related issues of the California Bar Exam and diversity in the legal profession.

Umberg said he's going to take a "nuts-and-bolts" approach to the job. His SB 1146, co-sponsored by the California Defense Counsel and the Consumer Attorneys of California, makes Judicial Council Emergency Rules 11 and 12 allowing for remote deposition and electronic service. He said he will look this year for other ways to make courts more efficient, a problem brought into sharp relief by the pandemic.

"The cost and the time consumed in discovery are overwhelming the civil litigation process," Umberg said. "One of the things I will focus on is reducing the gamesmanship and the cost that are currently part and parcel of discovery."

Among the changes litigators might notice first in their day-to-day work are new procedures around juries. This movement has largely been led by Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco. His SB 592 requires representative jury pools to be drawn from lists that include all tax filers in an area. The idea is that tax filings create a more complete, and therefore diverse, cross section of the eligible population.

"Currently, juries are selected using lists of registered voters and licensed drivers or identification card holders," Wiener said in a news release. "However, these lists are not demographically representative, and thus the jury pool pulled from these lists tend to skew whiter, wealthier, and overall, less diverse than the state actually is."

Assemblywoman Shirley Weber's AB 3070 bars peremptory challenges based on a juror's race, ethnicity, gender and other characteristics. The San Diego Democrat is poised to become California's next Secretary of State, after Alex Padilla takes the U.S. Senate post vacated by Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris.

Weber has announced her priority will be expanding voting rights. She has already announced a plan to make permanent the procedure that the state used in 2020 when every voter was sent a vote-by-mail ballot. This could set up new court battles. A Sutter County judge ruled last year that Gov. Gavin Newsom's vote-by-mail system was unconstitutional, though that case has been stayed on appeal.

Newsom also signed many criminal justice changes. AB 1950 reduces probation periods to two years for a felony and one for a misdemeanor. AB 1775 increased penalties for people who misuse the 911 system, including making people found to have called 911 in order to harass someone because of their race a potential hate crime. AB 2655, the so-called "Kobe Bryant bill," makes it a misdemeanor for a first responder to take or distribute a photo of an accident or crime scene for non-official purposes.

A major set of battles looms in the new year over policing, including use of force. AB 1506 creates a new Police Practices Division in the California Department of Justice to investigate use of deadly force incidents by law enforcement.

But during a year marked by protests nationwide, several bills did not pass. These include SB 731, which could have decertified police officers who left one department after being found to have used excessive force, making it harder for them to get a job in another department. The idea is expected to come up again.

There will also be major battles over labor policy in 2021, after the passage of Proposition 22. This voter initiative excused gig companies from AB 5, the law inspired by the Dynamex decision that laid out new rules about who can be classified as an independent contractor. AB 5's author, Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, has pledged to introduce new legislation around the gig economy.