Tag: california

The predators’ playground

Clara didn’t think much of it when the social science teacher gave her his phone number.

She’d met Alex Rai in her fifth-period journalism class. He was friends with the journalism teacher, Eric Burgess, and often stopped by Room 16 during his prep period to kill time. Burgess introduced Rai to Clara, telling her that Rai had been his student a decade before. Burgess thought they’d get along.

In the weeks that followed, Rai would perch on Clara’s desk, leaning over as he asked about her day and who she hung out with after school. He’s only a few years older than my sister, Clara thought when Rai texted her one day after volleyball practice. It was a hot Southern California afternoon in 2008, the kind where dry heat radiates off the asphalt. She was bored. Why not pass the time by chatting with the cool teacher?

Soon, Rai was texting her regularly. At first, the messages were flirtatious. Before long, he was calling Clara late at night. She recalled him asking whether she’d had sex yet with any boys her age. Halfway through her senior year, Clara dropped her humanities class so she could become his teacher’s aide.

She loved her humanities class. But Rai had encouraged her to make the switch. They could spend more time together, she recalled him telling her, and he could make her truancies from ditching other classes disappear.

Clara remembers her sister warning her not to get too close. She’d heard stories about Rai from girls who’d attended Rosemead with him, when he was a wrestler on a team known as much for its aggressive pursuit of teenage girls as its state champions. But Clara brushed the concerns aside. She didn’t show her sister the texts Rai sent, teasing her — “you wish you were sleeping next to me” — and asking if she missed him.

Keep reading

California Governor Signs Bills To Let Doctors Prescribe Psilocybin And MDMA If They’re Federally Rescheduled And To Change Marijuana Testing Rules

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has signed a bill that would allow doctors to immediately start prescribing certain currently illicit drugs like psilocybin and MDMA if they’re federally rescheduled, and he also approved separate legislation to amend THC variance testing requirements for marijuana.

The governor signed off on the measures—which are just two of more than a dozen cannabis and drug policy reform proposals on his desk—on Saturday.

AB 1021, sponsored by Assemblymembers Buffy Wicks (D), Isaac Bryan (D) and Corey Jackson (D), says that, if the federal government reschedules any Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), California health professionals will automatically be able to legally prescribe and dispense it.

This could be especially relevant to the psychedelics psilocybin and MDMA, which have been designated as breakthrough therapies by the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and are expected to be approved for medical use as early as next year.

Following a recent Phase 3 clinical trial, a peer-reviewed study published in the journal Nature last month found that treatment with MDMA reduced symptoms in patients with moderate to severe PTSD. The findings mean federal regulators could consider approving the drug for wider use as soon as next year.

Keep reading

California Looking To Restrict Travel For Classic Cars

The state of California is looking seriously at instituting or allowing local governments to institute zero-emission zones in the near future. In preparation for such a move, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) reportedly is gathering information about classic cars and how their owners use them. We knew something like this was coming to the US and California would likely be first, but this is still concerning.

According to a Daily Caller report, on August 2 CARB sent a survey to owners of classic cars from model year 1978 or earlier. The questions were aimed at ascertaining how those classics are used and store, as well as where they’re driven. It even asks about how many miles show on owners’ odometers. Knowing how increasingly authoritarian many government agencies seems to be trending, this is concerning to many car enthusiasts who still live in the Golden State.

Keep reading

Federal Judge Blocks California Online Age-Checking Law as Unconstitutional

A federal judge has granted an injunction blocking a California law that would force online businesses and social media platforms to estimate the ages of people visiting their sites and protect children from seeing content that might cause harm, stating that the law likely violates the First Amendment and would likely lead to online government-fueled censorship.

The law in question, the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act (CAADCA), is one of the recent crop of bills seeking to “childproof” the internet by either demanding age verification checks of users or by locking away content. CAADCA, passed in 2022 unanimously by the state legislature and supported by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, requires every business in the state with an online component to create a report showing how any new good or service they provided would be accessed by children and investigate and account for any sort of “harms” children might face. Businesses that are not in compliance with the law face fines of up to $2,500 per violation.

NetChoice, a trade organization representing tech firms, sued earlier this year to try to block the law. In NetChoice v. Bonta, the trade organization argued that this overly broad law violates the Constitution by “enact[ing] a system of prior restraint over protected speech using undefined, vague terms, and creat[ing] a regime of proxy censorship, forcing online services to restrict speech in ways the State could never do directly.” In short, the end result of the law would lead to businesses and online platforms having to censor content in order to keep children from seeing it, even though a lot of this content is likely to be protected First Amendment speech.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman of the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California, San Jose Division, agreed and blocked the state from enacting the law, which was scheduled to take effect on July 1, 2024.

Keep reading

In win for AI, Newsom vetoes driverless truck ban

Gov. Gavin Newsom made his choice Friday when confronted with a bill that pitted organized labor versus the tech and business community promoting artificial intelligence. 

Newsom chose AI. 

He vetoed AB316, which would have required a human driver to be present in the deployment of driverless heavy-duty trucks for at least five years as the state evaluates their safety. 

Newsom called the proposed legislation “unnecessary” for the oversight of autonomous trucks,  writing in his veto message that “existing law provides sufficient authority to create the appropriate regulatory framework.” 

Newsom’s veto goes against the wishes of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union, which has 250,000 members in the state and whose president, Sean O’Brien, traveled to California this week for rallies in favor of the legislation. Union officials said the measure eventually could put  350,000 drivers out of work in California.

In his veto message, Newsom said he was directing the state’s Labor and Workforce Development Agency “to lead a stakeholder process next year to review and develop recommendations to mitigate the potential employment impact of testing and deployment of autonomous heavy-duty vehicles.”

The veto drew a swift rebuke Friday from Lorena Gonzalez, leader of the 2.1 million-member California Labor Federation, who called out Newsom for siding with his business world allies over his friends in labor. 

Keep reading

Federal Judge Blocks California ‘High-Capacity’ Magazine Ban for Second Time

U.S. District Court Judge Roger T. Benitez blocked California’s ban on ammunition magazines holding more than ten rounds on Friday.

This is the second time Benitez has issued a decision against the ban.

On June 29, 2017, Breitbart News reported that Benitez blocked the ban to prevent “otherwise law-abiding” citizens from being criminalized.

He noted that the ban takes away Second Amendment rights “and amounts to the government taking people’s private property without compensation.”

On Friday, Benitez issued a decision against the ban again by following the Bruen (2022) framework, which requires tradition to be on the side of the gun control in question.

KQED quoted Benitez noting, “There is no American tradition of limiting ammunition capacity.”

He noted that, historically speaking, detachable magazines “solved a problem with historic firearms: running out of ammunition and having to slowly reload a gun.”

He added, “There have been, and there will be, times where many more than 10 rounds are needed to stop attackers,” Benitez wrote. “Yet, under this statute, the State says ‘too bad.’”

Keep reading

Gas station sparks backlash over sign banning Romani women

A Chevron gas station in Rowland Heights, California has triggered outrage over an ostensibly anti-shoplifting sign that banned women of Romani descent from the premises.

“The sign contained two ethnic slurs commonly used to portray Romanis as traveling thieves,” reported Nicole Comstock for CBS News. “‘It’s been used against them as a weapon frequently,’ said Hemet resident Anya Regewell. ‘Much like the N-word is to Black people, Gypsy that’s what that is to Romani people from Europe.’ Regewell said a Romani community member sent her a picture of the sign. Since then, she has tried to call the gas station and took the issue to social media, hoping that it will get the hateful sign removed.”

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits businesses from excluding people based on racial or ethnic categories.

Keep reading

He told on ‘badge bending’ and was fired. Now, former Vallejo cop will get nearly $1 million

A former police captain who alleges in a lawsuit that he was fired for whistleblowing on his colleagues and exposing corruption within the Vallejo Police Department will receive nearly $1 million in a settlement with the city.

John Whitney and his attorney, Jayme Walker, agreed to the settlement last week, in which the city will be required to pay Whitney $900,000 as well as all costs, liens and attorney fees.

“I feel vindicated by the settlement agreement because of the amount,” Whitney told The Times in an interview Monday. “You don’t settle for nearly $1 million if you did everything correct.”

Whitney alleges in a lawsuit filed against the city and his former employers in 2020 that he was fired after he told Vallejo City Manager Greg Nyhoff, Mayor Bob Sampayan and then-City Atty. Claudia Quintana that members of the Police Department were bending the corners of their badges to commemorate every time an officer killed a civilian.

Keep reading

California To Drop ‘Medical Misinformation’ Law After Judge Blasts ‘Dramatic Examples’

California has quietly announced it’s ditching Gov. Gavin Newsom’s draconian ‘Covid-19 medical misinformation’ law, which would threaten the licenses of doctors who don’t agree with “scientific consensus” on various issues.

The law, AB 2098, was signed into law by Newsom last year. In response, five doctors alleged it to be unconstitutional under the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the US constitution.

The five doctors, Tracy Hoeg, Ram Duriseti, Aaron Kheriaty, Pete Mazolewski, and Azadeh Khatibi, argued that the law prevents them from providing information to their patients that may contradict what the law permits or prohibits. They also alleged the law was used to intimidate and punish physicians who disagreed with prevailing views on COVID-19.

Keep reading

Ninth Circuit rebukes lawmakers, grants injunction against California law targeting gun marketing

A California law ostensibly aimed at restricting the marketing of firearms to minors infringes on the free speech rights of adults, according to a three-judge panel on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. In its ruling handed down on Thursday morning, the panel vacated a lower court decision denying an injunction against the law’s enforcement and delivered a resounding win for both First and Second Amendment advocates.

Writing for the majority, Judge Kenneth Lee ruled that the law forbidding marketing and advertising firearms that “reasonably appear to be attractive to minors” is likely to infringe on the First Amendment, given that the statute is so broadly written that advertisements aimed at adults who can lawfully purchase a firearm would be swept up in its provisions.

While California has a substantial interest in reducing gun violence and unlawful use of firearms by minors, its law does not “directly” and “materially” further either goal. California cannot straitjacket the First Amendment by, on the one hand, allowing minors to possess and use firearms and then, on the other hand, banning truthful advertisements about that lawful use of firearms. There is no evidence in the record that a minor in California has ever unlawfully bought a gun, let alone because of an ad. Nor has the state produced any evidence that truthful ads about lawful uses of guns—like an ad about hunting rifles in Junior Sports Magazines’ Junior Shooters—encourage illegal or violent gun use among minors. Simply put, California cannot lean on gossamers of speculation to weave an evidence-free narrative that its law curbing the First Amendment “significantly” decreases unlawful gun use among minors. The First Amendment demands more than good intentions and wishful thinking to warrant the government’s muzzling of speech.

California’s law is also more extensive than necessary, as it sweeps in truthful ads about lawful use of firearms for adults and minors alike. For instance, an advertisement directed at adults featuring a camouflage skin on a firearm might be illegal because minors may be attracted to it.

While the state of California had argued that the statute didn’t violate the First Amendment given the broader latitude given to regulations on commercial speech, the panel was unswayed, with Lee writing that even under a lowered standard of intermediate scrutiny the law fails to pass constitutional muster in light of the fact that the “state has made no showing that broadly prohibiting certain truthful firearm-related advertising is sufficiently tailored to significantly advance the state’s goals of preventing gun violence and unlawful firearm possession among minors.”

Keep reading