In abstract
A brand new California legislation imposes harsher penalties for assaulting emergency room staff. It responds to rising assaults on well being care staff, regardless of considerations from progressives and prison-reform advocates
Those that bodily assault medical doctors, nurses and different emergency division staff in California face harsher penalties in 2025 due to a brand new legislation.
In September, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Meeting Invoice 977which elevated penalties from six months to a 12 months in jail for these convicted of assaulting California’s hospital emergency room staff.
The invoice’s creator was Assemblymember Freddie Rodriguezwho spent 30 years as an emergency medical technician within the San Gabriel Valley.
Rodriguez, a Democrat whose time period resulted in 2024, stated he was compelled to introduce the laws after seeing too a lot of his associates and former colleagues attacked on the job. He felt that there wanted to be harder penalties to discourage future assaults.
As he made his case to lawmakers this 12 months, he testified that his daughter, Desirae, a respiratory technician, was just lately assaulted on the job. Different well being care staff testified that they too had been attacked.
Current polling reveals they’re hardly alone. A ballot from the American Faculty of Emergency Physicians discovered that greater than 90% of ER medical doctors stated they’d been attacked throughout the final 12 months.
Although the invoice ended up passing overwhelmingly, some progressive Democrats both voted in opposition to or didn’t vote for the proposal which counts the identical as a “no” vote. They, together with jail reform advocates and the California Public Defenders Affiliation, argued that rising penalties doesn’t deter crime and that a lot of these assaulting ER staff are mentally ailing. They famous that legal guidelines on the books already prohibited assault.
Former Gov. Jerry Brown, who confronted a U.S. Supreme Court docket order to shrink the state’s jail inhabitants, had vetoed an an identical invoice from Rodriguez in 2015.
The California Medical Affiliation, the lobbying group for California’s physicians, was glad Newsom didn’t do the identical.
“Thank you Governor Newsom, Assemblymember Rodriguez, and the Legislature for having the backs of health care workers across the state,” the affiliation’s president, Dr. Tanya Spirtos, stated in a press release after Newsom signed the invoice.
