A bill to end the abuse of solitary confinement in California prisons falters at 11th hour

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‘MANDELA ACT’ FALTERS IN THE FINAL STAGE, GETS MADE A TWO-YEAR BILL

A California lawmaker’s attempt to restrict the use of solitary confinement in California prisons fell apart Wednesday. It narrowly passed the Senate but was pulled before it went to a concurrence vote in the Assembly.

AB 280, by Assemblyman Chris Holden, D-Pasadena, — dubbed the “Mandela Act” after South African leader Nelson Mandela, who spent years in prison, including lengthy stays in solitary confinement — will instead become a two-year bill, meaning it will not be taken up again until the Legislature reconvenes in 2024.

The bill’s primary provision would be to limit the use of solitary confinement to no more than 15 consecutive days.

According to advocates of the bill, this is to allow time to “facilitate good faith negotiations” with Newsom, who vetoed a previous attempt at limiting the use of solitary in prisons.

“Solitary confinement is torture and it must end. The governor has repeatedly attempted to undermine or gut the Mandela Act, in order to continue to torture thousands of people in California prisons and other detention sites, while worsening safety for everyone,” said Hakim Owen, an undergraduate student with the UC Berkeley Underground Scholars program.

The bill was the subject of vigorous debate in the Senate on Wednesday.

Sen. Kelly Seyarto, R-Murrieta, said that the bottom line was that solitary confinement cells “have a purpose for what they do in the prisons.”

Fellow Republican Sen. Brian Dahle, of Bieber, said that solitary confinement is necessary to thwart the activities of prison gangs.

Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, defied fellow lawmakers who pointed to Newsom’s previous veto of similar legislation, saying that AB 280 was not the same bill. She added that even if Newsom vetoed the legislation, “it is still our responsibility and right to communicate what we think is appropriate policy. That is our role.”

Skinner said that most prisoners will one day be released from prison, “so we want them in the best possible shape when they return home, so they can thrive and return to our communities and not be criminalistic or have exacerbated mental health problems.”

Democratic Sen. Henry Stern, of Los Angeles, said that while there are many laudable provisions in the bill, he couldn’t support the 15-day limit.

Fellow Los Angeles Democrat, Sen. Maria Elena Durazo, said that the bill simply adopts standards set by the United Nations for the minimum acceptable treatment of incarcerated people.

“Colleagues, this is the international standard that we should follow,” she said.

Reached for comment, Holden told The Bee that the Senate vote allowed him to get “a temperature read” on the bill, but that making it a two-year bill gives him more time to have legislation that meets the approval of both the Legislature and the governor.

“So I just thought it was a prudent move on our part, to be patient just a little while longer and see what was what gets produced from the administration’s thinking around this issue. And then everyone sit around the table and try to figure out a way possible to bring it together and hopefully come up with a bill that we can really be proud of,” he said.

LEGISLATURE APPROVES STAFF UNION BILL

Via Maya Miller...

Cheers erupted on the Assembly floor as legislative employees clinched a long-awaited victory Wednesday after their bosses approved a bill that would give them the right to unionize.

The Assembly voted 61-4 to concur with Senate amendments and send Assembly Bill 1 to Gov. Gavin Newsom. The measure would give legislative employees the legal right to organize and collectively bargain with the Assembly and Senate Rules Committees starting in 2026.

“I’m a little calmer than I was yesterday, because I trusted in my house,” said Assemblywoman Tina McKinnor, the Inglewood Democrat who carried the bill, shortly after the vote. “I really, really love the bipartisan support,” McKinnor said.

Labor-leaning Democrats have increasingly felt pressure to support the bill, especially given the backdrop of the “hot labor summer” of strikes sweeping the state. Republicans have generally been less vocal, but Assemblyman Joe Patterson of Rocklin stood up to offer his support as a former legislative staffer. He said he hoped the union formed out of AB 1 could help close some of the pay disparities that exist between Republican and Democratic legislative employees.

“I think it’s a great thing for the employees here in the state Legislature to join a union if they desire to do so,” Patterson said.

The governor now holds the power to either grant or deny legislative aides, analysts, schedulers, committee staff, sergeants and support staff the collective bargaining rights that the state’s civil service workers already have.

At least five previous bills fell short. Most of them were authored by former Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, who now heads the California Labor Federation, AB 1’s main sponsor.

“There’s not quite words to describe how excited I am for the staff who worked so hard to make this happen,” Gonzalez Fletcher said Wednesday.

After the vote, McKinnor said she was honored to carry the bill over the finish line, and she feels confident that the governor will sign it.

“The good news is, he hasn’t said anything opposed to it.”

THE RETURN OF CURSIVE LESSONS IN SCHOOLS

Via Maya Miller...

California elementary and middle school students could soon see a renewed commitment to teaching cursive writing in their English and language arts classes.

Assembly Bill 446 would require cursive handwriting instruction in first through sixth grade. The bill comes from Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva, D-Fullerton, a former public elementary school teacher herself. Legislators sent the measure to Newsom’s desk Wednesday.

Although cursive writing instruction is already part of the California educational standard, Quirk-Silva said the implementation of the curriculum varies greatly from classroom to classroom. The bill doesn’t pinpoint a specific grade in which teachers would have to teach cursive, but rather requires them to be more intentional about making sure they include some instruction on it each year from first through sixth grade.

Quirk-Silva said the main goal of the bill is to give students the ability to read in cursive, as well as writing it. She pointed out that most historical records, such as diaries, letters, ledgers and other documents, were written in cursive.

“A lot of the historical documents going back two or three decades are actually in cursive,” she said. “I went on 23andMe looking for some family records and they were all written in cursive.”

Additionally, with the rise of artificial intelligence in the classroom, she theorized that more teachers would return to handwritten essay exams. Students who can write in cursive would be able to write faster.

Quirk-Silva said former Gov. Jerry Brown was a major supporter of the bill when he was in office, and she texted him shortly after the Assembly passed the bill to let him know about its success.

“He said, ‘Get this bill to me and I’ll sign it,’” Quirk-Silva recalled of her conversations with the former governor. “But we could never get it through the education committee.”

As the Assembly considered the bill on a concurrence vote Wednesday, the Fullerton Democrat read handwritten notes from some of her colleagues — written in cursive — in support of the bill.

“Dear Sharon, no one has more beautiful handwriting than me. Period. End of story,” wrote Assemblywoman Diane Papan, D-San Mateo.

“Thank you, Mr. Marshall, my fourth grade teacher, for teaching me how to write in cursive!!!” wrote Assemblyman Reginald Byron Jones-Sawyer, D-South Los Angeles.

AB 446 was joined together with two additional education bills that would mandate instruction on climate change and mental health in first through sixth grades.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Everyone loves you when you’re fighting in the octagon, but will any of those people be there for you when you’re in your nineties paying the price?”

- Former MMA superstar Ronda Rousey, in previous testimony supporting AB 1136, a bill to create a state pension fund for mixed martial arts fighters. It passed out of the Legislature on Wednesday and now sits on Newsom’s desk.

Best of The Bee:

• A federal judge on Wednesday refused to extend his injunction barring the city of Sacramento from clearing homeless camps, via Sam Stanton.

• California lawmakers are on the verge of sending Gov. Gavin Newsom a bill to strengthen penalties for child sex traffickers, a measure that roiled the Capitol this summer, via Lindsey Holden.

• Most of California’s state workers are on track to see raises in their paychecks soon, after legislators in the California Assembly and Senate gave their stamp of approval to new union contracts that govern pay and working conditions, via Maya Miller.

• Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday night that California would file a brief supporting the city of San Francisco in a court case that has significantly limited homeless encampment sweeps in the city where he was once mayor, via Maggie Angst.