SUMMARY
- California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed AB 2624, extending special state privacy protections to employees and volunteers working for organizations that provide services to immigrants.
- The legislation originally allowed protected workers to issue demands preventing people from posting their images or personal information online for four years, even without establishing any threatening intent.
- Democratic lawmakers introduced and advanced that language before a loud political and legal backlash forced them to retreat.
- Although the enacted law now generally requires a specific intent to threaten somebody or incite imminent violence, free-speech advocates warn that its demand-letter and private-litigation system could still intimidate journalists into removing lawful reporting.
- The measure forms part of a wider Californian effort to control the online information environment, including mandatory “media literacy” education and British-inspired rules pressuring websites to determine their users’ ages.
California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a watered-down version of a controversial law restricting the publication of images and personal information belonging to employees and volunteers at organizations that provide services to immigrants. Assembly Bill 2624, authored by Democratic Assemblywoman Mia Bonta, was signed by Newsom on August 22nd and will become operative on October 1st next year.
The measure was nicknamed the “Stop Nick Shirley Act” by Republican Assemblyman Carl DeMaio and other opponents, after independent video journalist Nick Shirley attracted millions of viewers with investigations into alleged fraud involving publicly funded daycare and hospice providers. Shirley responded to the bill’s signing by accusing California politicians of protecting organizations from scrutiny after his investigations exposed suspected fraud.
The legislation Newsom ultimately signed is significantly narrower than the version that first generated those warnings. But that narrowing occurred only after lawmakers faced a loud campaign from Shirley, Republican legislators and free-speech organizations pointing out the bill’s extraordinary implications.
Despite eventually removing some of its most openly censorious language, Bonta and the bill’s supporters still proposed and advanced a measure under which workers at politically favored organizations could have attempted to stop journalists and citizens from publishing truthful images and information about them for four years.
AB 2624 establishes an address-confidentiality program for people who provide, assist with or receive immigration support services. The definition covers a wide range of activities, including legal representation, advocacy, case management, humanitarian relief, translation, counselling and healthcare.
Successful applicants will be able to use a substitute address provided by the California Secretary of State in place of their home address in public records. Applicants must produce documentation showing that they or their organization have experienced threats, harassment or violence within the previous year, together with a sworn statement that they fear for their safety or that of their families.
The real controversy concerns the additional restrictions imposed on what other people may publish online, which is still likely to impact journalists following legitimate stories. The law defines an “image” to include photographs, video footage, sketches and computer-generated images capable of identifying somebody. “Personal information” is defined even more expansively, encompassing names, physical descriptions, employment and employment history as well as addresses, phone numbers, identification numbers and financial information.
Those definitions go far beyond information normally associated with doxing. A name, job title, employment history or video recorded outside a publicly funded organization could all constitute protected information under the statute.
The law allows a protected participant, or an organization authorized to act for them, to send a written demand instructing another person, business or association not to publish their personal information or image. The demand must describe a “reasonable fear” for the participant’s safety and remains effective for four years, even if the participant stops working for the immigration-services organization.
Under the original bill, once somebody received such a demand, they would have been broadly prohibited from continuing to post the participant’s information or image. The state would not have needed to prove that the publication constituted a threat, intentionally incited violence or was connected to any unlawful conduct.
The implications for investigative reporting were obvious. A journalist investigating an organization receiving taxpayer money might publish the names, employment histories or footage of the people operating it. One of those people could then issue a demand attempting to prevent further publication for four years.
Yet Bonta and the legislation’s supporters attempted to push that language through while presenting the proposal simply as protection against harassment and doxing. It was only after opponents publicized what the bill actually said that lawmakers added the protections they should have included from the beginning.
Following objections from free-speech groups, California amended AB 2624 so that continued publication after a demand is prohibited only where the publisher has the specific intent to incite imminent great bodily harm that is likely to occur, or to threaten somebody in a manner that places them in objectively reasonable fear for their safety.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression said those amendments were important and prevented the provision from being unconstitutional on its face. Had Shirley, Republican lawmakers and civil-liberties groups remained silent, California’s original four-year publication ban might have become law.
The final statute thankfully does not give immigration organizations an unconditional power to order images deleted merely by asserting that they are afraid. Nor does its enacted text impose a $10,000 penalty simply for refusing such a demand. Those descriptions reflect the earlier controversy and related Californian statutory penalties rather than the precise text Newsom signed.
It does, however, create private causes of action. Certain violations can produce damages of up to three times the actual loss, subject to a minimum award of $4,000, while successful plaintiffs seeking injunctions are entitled to court costs and reasonable attorney fees. There is no explicit exemption for journalism.
FIRE therefore warned that the amended law could still chill constitutionally protected speech. Most people receiving an official-looking four-year demand will not understand the narrow legal distinction between threatening speech and ordinary critical reporting. Faced with the possibility of an injunction, legal fees and litigation, many independent journalists or ordinary social-media users may remove material rather than risk defending it in court.
That may be particularly tempting for organizations unable to suppress reporting on its merits. A demand need not ultimately succeed in court to have its intended effect. The threat of expensive proceedings can be enough to frighten a small publisher, freelance reporter or individual internet user into silence.
FIRE also observed that the part of the law authorizing private lawsuits does not clearly incorporate all the limitations added elsewhere to protect lawful speech. How courts interpret those sections may therefore determine whether the legislation remains confined to genuine threats or becomes a tool for suppressing unwanted scrutiny.
This is especially concerning because the law protects a politically selected category of organizations, including nonprofits, legal clinics, advocacy groups and healthcare facilities. Many may conduct entirely legitimate and valuable work. But affiliation with a politically favored sector should not provide greater protection from public-interest reporting than is enjoyed by other organizations receiving public money.
The conduct of the bill’s supporters also exposed a revealing distinction in how California’s political establishment understands “misinformation.”
California’s Censorship Track Record
In 2023, Newsom signed AB 873, requiring “media literacy” material to be incorporated throughout California’s K-12 curriculum frameworks for English, mathematics, science and history-social science. The law was promoted as teaching children to identify “fake news,” with its author citing misinformation about elections and the supposed attempt to “overthrow our democracy.”
‘Media Literacy’ and ‘Digital Citizenship’: Smuggling Censorship and Indoctrination Into Schools
As FFO previously documented, resources promoted by the California Department of Education have included material from organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, both of which have supported wider restrictions on lawful political speech. Other “media literacy” initiatives train children to defer to approved fact-checkers and establishment-designated sources rather than simply teaching them to examine evidence critically.
Contemporary reporting on California’s mandate emphasized concern that young people were almost as likely to trust information encountered on social media as information produced by national news organizations. Independent online reporting was therefore presented not as competition that established institutions needed to answer, but as a problem for the state education system to manage.
AB 2624 applied the same instinct through a more direct mechanism. When independent online reporting threatened organizations aligned with the state’s political priorities, lawmakers initially proposed giving their workers an extraordinary power to demand that images and information about them disappear from the internet.
California has also attempted to regulate the architecture through which people access information. Its Age Appropriate Design Code, AB 2273, was designed and sponsored with the assistance of the British 5Rights Foundation. As FFO recently revealed, the model places pressure on websites either to restrict every user as though they were a child or to deploy age-assurance systems capable of sorting children from adults.
These laws operate through different mechanisms. One influences what children are taught to trust; another pressures platforms to categorize their users; AB 2624 creates new liabilities surrounding what people may publish about a protected class of organizations and workers. Together, they demonstrate California’s willingness to place the state between citizens and the online information they produce, encounter and evaluate.
The remaining test will be whether AB 2624’s demand process is genuinely reserved for threats of violence, or whether organizations use it to frighten independent reporters away from lawful investigations. Either way, the original bill has already revealed how far its backers were prepared to go before public pressure forced them back.
