Legislative Scorecard 2025 - Initiate Justice Action

2025

Legislative Scorecard

Introduction

Initiate Justice Action (IJ Action) is a 501c4 non-profit organization founded and led by people directly harmed by the prison system. We champion progressive policy solutions to end incarceration and build the political power of people directly impacted by it in California.

In 2023, IJ Action released its first-ever Legislative Scorecard analyzing and publicizing the votes of California State Senators and Assemblymembers on critical justice reform legislation. In addition to IJ Action’s Voter Guide, candidate endorsements, and policy advocacy, the Scorecard serves as a critical tool to hold our electeds accountable to impacted voters and community members.

Summary of Bills

Below are descriptions of all the bills included in our 2025 Scorecard:

Summary of Bills

SB 627 (Senator Scott Wiener)

A gut and amend bill introduced in the wake of the brutal immigration raids in Los Angeles, SB 627 would ban all California law enforcement from donning face masks outside of limited circumstances, and would impose fines and misdemeanor charges on law enforcement that violate this provision.

SB 634 (Senator Sasha Renée Pérez)

This bill would bar local governments from enacting policies that criminalize mutual aid providers who deliver life-saving services to unhoused individuals.

AB 468 (Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel)

Strongly opposed by IJ Action and many criminal justice organizations, this bill would significantly increase penalties for looting during and after an emergency, including in an area only under an emergency warning. The stiffer penalties would remain in place for 1 year after the evacuation warning was issued.

AB 572 (Assemblymember Ash Kalra)

This legislation would protect the family members of people killed by police violence by requiring law enforcement to, before any initial formal interview, to share the status of their loved one, clearly identify themselves, to inform the person that an interview is taking place and give them the option to go to the station and bring a trusted individual with them.

AB 1071 (Assemblymember Ash Kalra)

Following up from the Racial Justice Act, this bill would allow defendants to file a motion for disclosure of all relevant evidence related to a potential violation of the Racial Justice Act by the prosecution.

AB 1231 (Assemblymember Sade Elhawary)

This bill would strengthen public safety and judicial discretion by allowing judges to consider granting diversion in most felony cases, with several exceptions for cases that involve great bodily injury or any offense that requires sex offender registry.

AB 1376 (Assemblymember Mia Bonta)

This legislation would impose the first-ever statutory limitation on the length of court-ordered youth probation, and require that probation conditions be individually tailored, reasonable, rehabilitative, and developmentally appropriate.

Grading Rubric

In this Scorecard, the California State Legislators were graded based on how their voting record aligned with our position on the selected public safety bills.

Grading Rubric

If they voted “Yes” on bill we supported, they earned a point; if they voted “No”” or “No Vote Record” (NVR), they did not recieve a point.

Conversely, If Legislators voted “Yes” on the bill that we opposed, they did not recieve a point, and if they voted “No” or “No Vite Recorded” (NVR) they earned a point.

Find Your State Senator and Assemblymember

IJ Action’s 2025 Legislative Package

In 2025, IJ Action co-sponsored a total of 7 bills. We are proud that 4 of these 7 bills passed the Legislature, were signed by the Governor, and are now law. These bills were all part of a larger legislative package introduced to empower and support incarcerated firefighters: SB 245 (Reyes) to automate the expungement process for formerly incarcerated firefighters; AB 247 (Bryan) that increases their pay during deployment; AB 799 (Rodriguez) which enacts a death benefit in the event of loss of life during deployment; AB 952 (Elhawary) which permanently authorizes a CDCR youth fire camp program.

Unfortunately, 3 of these bills failed to pass: AB 622 (Kalra) would have reaffirmed the authority of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to issue sentence credits under Prop 57; AB 868 would have strengthened democracy by requiring county-wide races for positions like District Attorney and Sheriff to advance to the general election; and and AB 1380 (Elhawary) would have guaranteed pathways to employment at CALFIRE for formerly incarcerated firefighters.

While normally co-sponsored bills would be included in our scorecard, given the large (and in some cases unanimous) bipartisan majorities they all received, we chose to instead highlight bills that shed a more discerning light on how state lawmakers feel about criminal justice issues.

Notes

Use of Assembly Concurrence Vote on AB 1231

Normally, IJ Action uses the third reading vote on the floor of each chamber as the final, decisive vote on a bill for inclusion in our scorecard. In the case of AB 1231 (Elhawary), we believed it more appropriate to use the final concurrence vote in the Assembly as that chamber’s final say on the bill.

Concurrence votes are usually quick formalities, wherein the chamber the bill was introduced in agrees to the amendments made to the bill (i.e. “concurs in”) by the other chamber. With AB 1231, the bill was actually narrowed in scope by the Senate**, yet six Assemblymembers who had voted for its passage on third reading in June stayed off the bill when it came back on concurrence in September. As a result, the bill failed. The floor debate during the concurrence vote was contentious, as several members made false comments about the impact of the legislation. For all these reasons, we believed the September 13, 2025 concurrence vote on AB 1231 to provide the most honest representation of where members stand on criminal justice issues overall, and the issue of diversion in particular.

The members who voted for AB 1231 in June and stayed off the bill in September where Assemblymembers Patrick Ahrens (AD-26), David Alvarez (AD-80), Tasha Boerner (AD-77), Juan Carrillo (AD-39), Al Muratsuchi (AD-66), and Rhodesia Ransom (AD-13).

**Senate amendments narrowed eligibility by excluding anyone with aggravating factors such as “planning, sophistication, and professionalism”, required progress reports sent to the courts and prosecutor at least every three months, and ensured victims were included in the process.

Senator Reyes’ Absence from 2025 IJ Action Scorecard

Senator Eloise Gomez Reyes was absent for most of 2025 due to medical reasons, and thus did not vote on several of the bills highlighted in this year’s Scorecard. Nevertheless, because of her long-standing support for criminal justice issues, including authoring SB 245 this year, IJ Action elected to award the Senator an honorary A+.

2025