Every fall, bills pile up on the governor’s desk – some that made headlines for divisions, and some that didn’t get attention because there was agreement. It’s worth pausing on the second kind: the ones that got there because industry, advocates, and lawmakers worked together.
This month, several bills that TechNet actively supported, and in some cases helped shape, are becoming law. They are the product of an industry showing up early, working with legislators, and helping build policy that protects Californians and strengthens the state’s economy.
Protecting kids where they are: online
Start with student safety. AB 1766 (Krell) and AB 1792 (M. Rodriguez) update health curriculum so California students can better learn to recognize digital-era versions of dangers: human trafficking, online exploitation, dating abuse, and digital violence. These are all threats that parents, and lawmakers when they were younger, largely faced offline. AB 2071 (Hoover) expands mental health instruction to include digital wellness, and SB 1128 (Stern) asks schools to build real policies around take-home devices and age-appropriate screen time. TechNet supported all four because our member companies build the platforms these students use every day, and we believe the industry has a responsibility to help schools prepare kids for that digital environment.
TechNet also supported AB 2561 (Valencia), which passed the Legislature without a single “no” vote and now sits on the governor’s desk. The bill stops apps from quietly reverting a user’s privacy settings without their consent, closing a real gap that consumer advocates and industry both recognized as a problem. This is the type of bill that gets written when industry and consumer groups start from the same premise.
Investing in the workforce California needs
TechNet also backed AB 2298 (Irwin), which brings cybersecurity skills into English language arts and development curriculum, and AB 2660 (Alvarez), which establishes grant programs to build STEM pathways in higher education. Both bills were written because the technology sector cannot keep growing without a pipeline of workers who are ready for it – and that pipeline starts in California’s public schools and public universities.
Modernizing rules that no longer fit the problem they were meant to solve
Two more bills this session show TechNet working with policymakers to fix existing legislation. SB 690 (Caballero) narrows a 1967 wiretapping statute that plaintiffs’ attorneys had turned into a cottage industry of lawsuits against ordinary website features like chat tools and analytics. It passed the Assembly 66-0 and is now before the governor. SB 1306 (Cortese) aligns California’s chemical regulations with existing federal DEA standards for a solvent used in semiconductor manufacturing, a technical fix that keeps California’s chip industry, which contributes more than $100 billion a year to the state’s economy, competitive without weakening public safety protection. Both bills passed with broad, bipartisan support because they solve real problems.
Now it’s time to finish the job
Getting these bills through committee, floor votes and conference took months of good faith with legislators, coalition partners, and Sacramento staff. That’s the unglamorous part of policymaking that rarely gets covered, but it’s the work that TechNet and its members spend the bulk of their time on every year. Fortunately, Governor Newsom has signed many of these bills, and each one earns his signature on its own merits: curriculum updates that will help a generation of students recognize danger online before it finds them, workforce investments that will keep California’s economy competitive, and legal fixes that let companies spend less time in court and more time building.
Today, we urge Governor Newsom to sign all of them.