Summary of the bills signed or vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown prior to Sunday’s deadline.
SACRAMENTO — California became the first state in the country to require that women be included on companies’ boards of directors, as Gov. Jerry Brown literally sent a message to Washington on Sunday in signing legislation that corporate associations opposed as unconstitutional.
Brown signed SB826, which mandates that all publicly traded California companies have at least one woman on their boards by the end of 2019.
The requirement ramps up in 2021: Five-member boards will be expected to have two female members, and boards with six or more members will be expected to have three.
In a signing statement, Brown acknowledged that “serious legal objections have been raised” about the bill. “I don’t minimize the potential flaw that indeed may prove fatal to its ultimate implementation.”
However, Brown added, “recent events in Washington, D.C. — and beyond — make it crystal clear that many are not getting the message.”
Brown cc’d his signing message to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, which last week heard Palo Alto University psychology Professor Christine Blasey Ford accuse Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of trying to rape her when they were teenagers, along with Kavanaugh’s angry denial.
Opponents include the California Chamber of Commerce, the California Restaurant Association and the California Ambulance Association, which said the measure “favors one element of a diverse workforce over all others” and is probably unconstitutional.
Brown signed the measure on a day when he acted on 127 bills passed by the Legislature. The governor:
Approved housing in BART parking lots: AB2923 by Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, allows BART to draft plans to fill empty station parking lots with dense housing and shops.
The bill empowers the transit agency to zone its own properties and limits cities’ ability to delay or obstruct development.
Vetoed campus abortion pills: SB320 by Sen. Connie Leyva, D-Chino (San Bernardino County), would have required health centers at the University of California and California State University campuses to offer students medical abortions — pills that women take to end pregnancies — starting in 2022.
In a veto message, Brown said such services are “widely available” to students at offcampus clinics.
Changed murder charges: California will no longer allow people to be charged with murder when they were not directly involved in a killing. SB1437 by Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, overturns the state’s felony murder rule that holds an accomplice in an offense such as robbery liable for a homicide that happens during the crime, regardless of whether the defendant was involved in the killing.
There is one notable exemption: any case in which a police officer is killed.
Cleared hurdles for a new A’s ballpark: AB734 would prevent environmental complaints from significantly stalling the construction of a new ballpark for the Oakland A’s should they choose to build at an industrial waterfront spot.
With AB734, legal challenges to the project must be resolved within 270 days. The law applies only to a possible ballpark at Howard Terminal northwest of Jack London Square.
Opened police misconduct records: SB1421 by Skinner loosens confidentiality rules that have barred public access to almost all police misconduct records.
Under the bill, an officer who commits sexual assault or lies on the job by planting evidence or falsifying reports will no longer be shielded by California’s blanket protections that keep police personnel documents private.
Brown also signed AB748 by Assemblyman Phil Ting, DSan Francisco, which requires law enforcement to release the police body-camera footage or audio within 45 days of a critical incident.
Signed one rape-kit bill and vetoed another: Brown signed AB3118 by Chiu, which requires law enforcement agencies and labs to tell the state Justice Department how many rape kits — evidence collected after a sexual assault — they have in their possession. However, he vetoed another priority bill for victim advocates, SB1449 by Leyva. That bill would have required that rape kits be sent to a lab within 20 days, and that labs complete their analyses within 120 days.
Barred secret settlements: California employers can no longer require workers to sign nondisclosure agreements as part of sexual harassment, discrimination or assault cases under SB820 by Leyva.
Of the 1,217 bills that reached his desk this year, Brown signed 1,016 of them and vetoed 201. Over his 16 years as governor, he signed and vetoed nearly 20,000 bills. Chronicle staff writers Kimberly Veklerov and Rachel Swan contributed to this report.