Gov. Gavin Newsom issues first vetoes since legislative session ended
Gov. Gavin Newsom issued his first vetoes since the legislative session ended last month, striking down 21 bills on Wednesday including one that Republican lawmakers had urged him to dismiss because they said it would “promote gender ideology.”
Newsom dismissed Assembly Bill 86, a technical bill that would have tweaked language about health education standards for kindergarten through 8th grade. Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones, R-Santee, sent Newsom a letter last week decrying the bill for “introduc(ing) the theory that reproductive anatomy does not necessarily determine a person’s gender.”
“For third grade students the framework states, ‘When providing instruction on sexual and reproductive organs, teachers can introduce the concept that gender does not always match the sexual and reproductive organs described,’” Jones wrote, urging Newsom to veto the bill. “Teaching controversial gender theories to students as young as eight or nine years old is not a practice that most Californians support, nor want to see happening in our schools.”
Republicans and parental rights advocates have seized upon anxieties about public school instruction to argue that teachers acknowledging the existence of LGBTQ people is akin to sexually “grooming” students and removes parents’ wishes from what their children learn in school.
In a signing message, Newsom said he was vetoing the legislation because he thought the bill should be considered after a state study scrutinizing health curricula was completed.
Newsom’s relationship with the LGBTQ community has been under scrutiny since March, when he told the late MAGA pundit Charlie Kirk during a podcast interview that it was “unfair” for transgender athletes to compete with cisgender ones.
Critics slammed his remarks as an about-face from Newsom’s mayoral days in San Francisco when he legalized gay marriage, and the debacle exposed a simmering conflict between his office and the Legislative LGBTQ Caucus. Republicans, including Kirk, claimed victory that they had swayed a West Coast liberal politician on the issue of transgender rights.
On Wednesday, Newsom vetoed 20 other bills, including one from Senator Sabrina Cervantes, D-Riverside, that would have prohibited public agencies from holding onto data captured by automated license plate readers for longer than 60 days, with some exceptions. Some cities and law enforcement agencies opposed the bill because they said the data could be important evidence in criminal cases.
In a government claim filed last month, Cervantes alleged the legislation played a factor in police officers’ decision to arrest her and claim she was under the influence of drugs after another car hit hers at a Sacramento intersection. She tested negative for any narcotics or alcohol and is now considering a defamation lawsuit against the Sacramento Police Department.
Newsom said he was vetoing the bill because he thought the language was too strict in its time requirements for deleting data that could be used to investigate crimes or track down missing people. He said it also created cost pressures and would require the state Department of Justice to spend extra funds to randomly audit agencies and ensure they were following the law.
The governor also signed almost 100 bills into law Wednesday, mostly technical ones tweaking the language of existing laws.
One of them, Senate Bill 47, requires the State Auditor to investigate the results of the February State Bar exam, which was plagued with glitches and crashes, and report its findings to the bar’s board of trustees, the California Supreme Court Chief Justice, and the Legislature’s Senate and Assembly judiciary committees.
This story was originally published October 1, 2025 at 8:03 PM with the headline "Gov. Gavin Newsom issues first vetoes since legislative session ended."
