Over the last state legislative term, Equal Rights Advocates tracked and worked on a number of bills in the California legislature relating to affirmative action, family and medical leave, welfare, sexual harassment, race discrimination, sex discrimination in education, and gender-based discrimination. As they say, thereÕs some good news, some so-so news and some bad news on the legislative front. Here are some of the highlights:

• Governor Davis signed AB 1856 (Kuehl), a law that allows targets of sexual harassment to directly sue their harassers under the Fair Employment and Housing Act, creating personal liability for co-worker sexual harassment. Equal Rights Advocates is very interested in this new development in sexual harassment law, and we look forward to developing the caselaw in California courts.

• Workplace rights for survivors of domestic violence were expanded. AB 2357 (Honda), signed by the governor, requires employers to refrain from retaliating against employees who take time off work to go to a domestic violence program, get psychological counseling, obtain medical attention, or to participate in safety planning. This new law adds protections to current law, which already allows employees to take time off to seek judicial remedies to protect their health and safety or the health and safety of their families.

• “Driving While Black/Brown” was one of the biggest issues this term, and it ended up with Davis signing SB 1102 (Murray), a compromise bill that does little to address the fundamental problems of racial profiling. While the law is a step forward against racial profiling, we believe this statute should have been much stronger. The new law makes racial profiling illegal, even though it is already illegal; provides for officer training in racial profiling; and provides that the state will collect racial profiling data from those police departments who have a voluntary data collection program.

• Governor Davis disappointed family and medical leave advocates when he vetoed SB 1149 (Hayden), which would have extended family leave rights to grandparents, siblings and domestic partners. This bill, originally introduced by Senator Speier, contained different provisions, which ERA also supported. The original bill would have required businesses of 20 or more employees, instead of the current 50 or more employees, to allow employees to take family leave. ERAÕs New Voices fellow, Stephanie Bornstein, will continue to advocate for expanded family leave on a state-wide level.

• Governor Davis missed an opportunity to ameliorate the frightening effects of Proposition 209. He vetoed SB 2047 (Polanco), which would have allowed state agencies to do targeted outreach to women and minorities if those groups were underrepresented in entry-level positions or in educational institutions. The bill would also have mandated reporting, by ethnicity and gender, of each state agencyÕs contractors.