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2024 Reparations Priority Bill Package: New California Laws Taking Effect

A guide to new laws addressing racial discrimination and civil rights inequities, sponsored by members of the California Legislative Black Caucus and stemming from the findings of the California Reparations Report

Bill Summary and Finding Legislative History

AB-2319 California Dignity in Pregnancy and Childbirth Act

AB-2319 was introduced in February 2024 by Assemblymember Lori Wilson (D-Suisun City) and signed into law on September 26, 2024 as 2024 Cal. Stat. ch. 621. The act amends Sections 123630.1, 123630.2, and 123630.3 of, and adds Sections 123630.6 and 123630.7 to, the Cal. Health and Safety Code. You can find the bill text, bill analysis, and other documents relating to this law's legislative history on the California legislature's website. 

See our California legislative history guide for information on how these documents all work together as persuasive legal authority in determining the intent behind the law as well as clarifying significant additions or deletions as the bill moved through the legislature.

AB-2319 Bill Summary (via Legislative Counsel's Digest)

  • Existing law requires the State Department of Public Health to maintain a program of maternal and child health, which may include, among other things, facilitating services directed toward reducing infant mortality and improving the health of mothers and children.
  • Existing law requires the Office of Health Equity within the department to serve as a resource for ensuring that programs collect and keep data and information regarding ethnic and racial health statistics, and strategies and programs that address multicultural health issues, including, but not limited to, infant and maternal mortality.
  • Existing law makes legislative findings relating to implicit bias and racial disparities in maternal mortality rates.
  • Existing law requires a hospital that provides perinatal care, and an alternative birth center or a primary clinic that provides services as an alternative birth center, to implement an evidence-based implicit bias program, as specified, for all health care providers involved in perinatal care of patients within those facilities.
  • Existing law requires the health care provider to complete initial basic training through the program and a refresher course every 2 years thereafter, or on a more frequent basis if deemed necessary by the facility.
  • Existing law requires the facility to provide a certificate of training completion upon request, to accept certificates of completion from other facilities, and to offer training to physicians not directly employed by the facility.
  • Existing law requires the department to track and publish data on pregnancy-related death and severe maternal morbidity, as specified.
  • This bill would make a legislative finding that the Legislature recognizes all birthing people, including nonbinary persons and persons of transgender experience.
  • The bill would extend the evidence-based implicit bias training requirements to specified health care providers at hospitals that provide perinatal care, alternative birth centers, or primary care clinics, as specified.
  • The bill would require an implicit bias program to include recognition of intersecting identities and the potential associated biases.
  • The bill would require initial basic training for the implicit bias program to be completed by June 1, 2025, for current health care providers, and within 6 months of their start date for new health care providers, unless exempted.
  • The bill would require specified facilities to, by February 1 of each year, commencing in 2026, provide the Attorney General with proof of compliance with these provisions, as specified.
  • The bill would authorize the Attorney General to pursue civil penalties for violations of these provisions, as specified.
  • The bill would require that Attorney General be awarded all attorney’s fees and costs in any civil action in which a court imposes any of those civil penalties.
  • The bill would authorize the Attorney General to post on its internet website a list of facilities that did not timely submit proof of compliance or were assessed penalties under these provisions, as specified.
  • The bill would authorize the Attorney General to post any other compliance data they deem necessary and would authorize the Attorney General to biennially publish a report outlining compliance data related to these provisions.
  • The bill would make the provisions of the act severable.

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