Protect Californians Right To Choose - Oppose AB 455
Full Text to Amendments(
By Katy Grimes, August 25, 2021
"AB 455 by Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland), was a bill to authorize the Bay Area Toll Authority to designate transit-only traffic lanes on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, in consultation with the Department of Transportation, Caltrans.
Gut-and-amend bills can be particularly insidious. This secretive process often leaves lawmakers, as well as the public, little or no time to review entirely new legislation dropped into an old bill. And usually, the subject of the legislation has nothing to do with the bill’s previous legislative issue.
Gut-and-amend typically happens with budget issues and heavy special interest legislation. Lawmakers have complained loudly for years that the gut-and-amend process has been grossly abused by whichever party is in power.
Sources say they don’t know if this bill will come to fruition or not.
Assembly Bill 455, once a transportation bill, is being amended. Here’s how:
- Amendment 1 adds Members Wicks, Low, and Akilah Weber.
- Amendment 2 adds “Principal coauthors: Senators Newman, Pan, and Wiener.”
- Amendment 3 inserts: An act to add Section 52.8 to the Civil Code, to add Section 12940.4 to the Government Code, and to add Section 248.4 to the Labor Code, relating to COVID-19 vaccination requirements, and declaring the urgency thereof, to take effect immediately.
- Amendment 5: 52.8. (a) Notwithstanding any other law, an establishment, as defined in subdivision (b), shall require each person who is eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, who seeks to enter the indoor facilities of that establishment, to show proof to an employee or authorized agent of the establishment that the person has been vaccinated against COVID-19.
Note: “To the extent allowable under state and federal law and any employment agreement entered into on or after the effective date of this act, an employee who refuses to comply with this section may be subject to termination.”
And suddenly, a bill which could not pass through the Legislature legitimately in the committee process, would mandate the COVID vaccine on employees in private industry or be fired."
By Katy Grimes, August 26, 2021
Another California Legislature gut-and-amend-bill has been amended to replace existing legislation with language that seeks to order an employer to require a COVID-19 vaccination as a condition of employment. The bill also warns that to avoid further shutdowns and prevent the health care system from becoming overwhelmed, “it is critical that all eligible Californians get vaccinated against COVID-19.”