CalMatters: 770 new laws coming to California 

Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed the largest expansion of California’s college financial aid system in a generation during the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants’ first playoff game Friday night. Hours later, it was all over: Newsom signed his final bills on Saturday, a day ahead of the Oct. 10 deadline to act on the 836 proposals state lawmakers sent to his desk. Of those, he signed 770 (92-percent) and vetoed 66 (7.9-percent), according to Sacramento lobbyist Chris Micheli.

Here’s a look at the significant new laws coming to the Golden State — as well as ideas Newsom prevented from becoming law.

Signed bills into law:

• Making ethnic studies a high school graduation requirement, as CalMatters’ Joe Hong reports. Under a bill Newsom signed last year, California State University students must also take an ethnic studies course to graduate.
• Mandating mental health instruction in middle and high schools that have an existing health education course.
• Requiring public colleges, universities and secondary schools to provide free menstrual products on campus.
• Requiring large department stores to maintain a gender-neutral section of toys and child care items.
• Restricting sentence enhancements for many crimes, as recommended by an obscure committee examining California’s penal code.
• Ensuring police can’t block journalists from covering protests and demonstrations.
• Cracking down on sideshows and illegal street racing by allowing courts to suspend convicted motorists’ licenses for up to six months.
• Giving cities more authority to reduce their speed limits.
• Making it illegal to protest outside of vaccination clinics. First Amendment experts say several aspects of the law — including an exemption for “lawful picketing arising out of a labor dispute” — may be unconstitutional.
• Ending “surprise billing” for COVID-19 tests and vaccinations.
• Extending a phone tax to fund high-speed internet in underserved areas.
• Allowing restaurants to continue selling to-go cocktails, using parking lots for expanded seating, and serving alcohol in parklets.
• Offering year-round fishing licenses.
• Banning the sale of new gas-powered leaf blowers, lawnmowers and other small off-road engines by as soon as 2024.
• Phasing out controversial donor dog facilities to create a new canine blood bank system.

Vetoed:

• Massively expanding Cal Grant, the state’s chief financial aid program. (The move came a few days after Newsom approved a stack of bills he said would increase college affordability and accessibility.)
• Creating non-hospital facilities for young people insured by Medi-Cal who are experiencing mental health crises.
• Paying people struggling with drug addiction to stay sober.
• Permitting cannabis products to be advertised on most freeway billboards.
• Decriminalizing jaywalking, which would have allowed people to cross the street outside of crosswalks without getting a ticket.
• Allowing bicyclists to roll through stop signs.