California Legislation, Regulations & Policy

CWA has a long history of advocating for children and families in California, through sponsoring and supporting legislation, budgetary requests, and simply educating our representatives in Sacramento about WIC and the benefits and support it provides to their constituents. WIC is the state’s largest nutrition and lactation public health workforce, an excellent resource for decision makers as they consider policy that will impact how the needs of local families are met. CWA works to make sure that California’s legislators are knowledgeable about WIC and have good access to WIC’s wealth of knowledge!

Bills that CWA sponsors, supports, or is monitoring are summarized below.

2023 Bill Monitor Report – Stay Tuned for Our 2024 Bill List!

AB-518 - Paid family leave: eligibility: care for designated persons
AB 518 (Wicks): CA Work & Family Coalition “Chosen family” bill, would extend eligibility for paid leave (it’s already job-protected leave) to those caring for a loved one outside of the immediate family criteria. This is a two-year bill that we supported last year.

CWA Position: Support

SB-1016 - Latino and Indigenous Disparities Reduction Act
SB 1016 (Gonzalez): This bill aims to uncover health and related disparities by requiring state departments to collect and disaggregate more detailed data for Latine and Indigenous Mesoamerican populations in California.

CWA Position: Support

AB-2090 - Office of Farm to Fork: food deserts: transportation
AB 2090 (Irwin): Bill to address food deserts with a multi-pronged approach. This bill would require the Office of Farm to Fork in the Dept of Food & Agriculture to work with transportation agencies and to prioritize the department’s efforts in food deserts throughout the state, especially counties that are most impacted by food insecurity. The bill would require the Office to identify distribution barriers that affect limited food access and work to overcome those barriers by facilitating partnerships between statewide, regional, and local transportation agencies to address inadequate public transportation lines in urban and rural communities, with the aim of connecting all communities to adequate and nutritional food access, as provided. Bill aims to encourage more WIC vendors in food desert areas. The bill would also require the Office to coordinate with school districts and representatives to assess access to school breakfast and lunch programs during scheduled academic calendar breaks and school closures.

CWA Position: Watch

SB-949 - Superior court: lactation accommodation
SB 949 (Blakespear): This bill would require as of July 1, 2026, superior courts in CA to provide “any court user” with a reasonable amount of time to take a break during court to express their breast milk. It would also require the Judicial Council to amend their rules on this issue.

CWA Position: Support

AB-1975 - Medi-Cal: medically supportive food and nutrition interventions
AB 1975 (Bonta): Bill to transition medically supportive food and nutrition (“food as medicine”) interventions from optional services in healthcare through CalAIM to permanent Medi-Cal benefits.

CWA Position: Support

AB-1965 - Public health: Office of Tribal Affairs
AB 1965 (Rubio): Bill to address racial disparities in tribal communities by establishing the Office of Tribal Affairs within the department to be led by a Tribal Health Liaison to assist in addressing the public health disparities impacting Tribal communities.

CWA Position: Support

SB-600 - California CalFresh Minimum Benefit Adequacy Act of 2023
SB 600 (Menjivar): Would set a minimum for CalFresh benefits of $50/month.

CWA Position: Support

AB-311 - California Food Assistance Program: eligibility and benefits
AB 311 (Santiago): 2-year Food4All bill. This bill would remove the current 55 years+ age limitation and make any individual eligible for the program if the individual’s immigration status is the sole basis for their ineligibility for CalFresh benefits. By extending eligibility for the California Food Assistance Program (CFAP), which is administered by the counties, this bill would impose a state-mandated local program.

CWA Position: Support

SB-245 - California Food Assistance Program: eligibility and benefits
SB 245 (Hurtado): Companion Food4All bill to AB311.

CWA Position: Support

AB-2263 - The California Guaranteed Income Study and Funding Act
AB 2263 (Friedman): Universal basic income “pilot to policy” bill, would establish the Guaranteed Income Study and Funding Act Coordinating Council, consisting of 6 members, appointed by the Legislature, as specified. The bill would require the council to seek to attain, among other things, the objective of examining the feasibility, benefits, and challenges of scaling up permanent guaranteed income programs to reach a larger proportion of California’s socially and economically vulnerable populations, focusing on regions with a high cost of living.

CWA Position: Support

SB-1090 - Unemployment insurance: disability and paid family leave: claim administration
SB 1090 (Durazo): CAWFC priority bill, would allow for early Application for PFL and DI Benefits so that one wouldn’t have to already have left work (i.e. be in labor or have just given birth) in order to apply.

CWA Proposed Position: Support

AB-2123 - Disability compensation: paid family leave
AB 2123 (Papan): Changes paid family leave policy so that you don’t have to use your vacation leave before you start using PFL.

CWA Position: Support

AB-2527 - Incarceration: pregnant persons
AB 2527 (Bauer-Kahan): Bill to require better nutrition, treatment, etc. of incarcerated pregnant people.

CWA Proposed Position: Support

AB-1830 - Corn masa flour: folic acid fortification
AB 1830 (Arambula): Bill to require fortification of corn masa with folic acid.

CWA Position: Support

AB-3059 - Human milk
AB 3059 (Weber): This bill would specify that a general acute care hospital is not required to have a license to operate a tissue bank to store or distribute pasteurized human milk that was obtained from a mothers’ milk bank. This bill would specify that coverage of essential health benefits under a health care service plan or health insurance policy includes, with respect to maternity and newborn care, the same health benefits for human milk and human milk derivatives covered under the Medi-Cal program as of 1988.

CWA Position: Support

AB-2901 - School and community college employees: paid disability and parental leave
AB 2901 (Aguiar Curry): This bill would require a public school employer to, for a certificated employee or an employee in the classified service of the public school employer, and would require a community college district to, for an academic employee or an employee in the classified service of the community college district, provide up to 14 weeks of a leave of absence with full pay for an employee who is required to be absent from duty because of pregnancy, miscarriage, childbirth, termination of pregnancy, or recovery from those conditions.

CWA Proposed Position: Support

AB-2110 - Medi-Cal: Adverse Childhood Experiences trauma screenings: providers
AB 2110 (Arambula): This bill will allow Community Health Workers (CHWs) and Doulas to bill Medi-Cal for ACEs screenings.

CWA Proposed Position: Support

HEALTHY FAMILIES...STRONG COMMUNITIES...BRIGHT FUTURES!

CALIFORNIA WIC ASSOCIATION | 3960 INDUSTRIAL BLVD, SUITE 500 WEST SACRAMENTO, CA 95691 | PHONE: 916-572-0700