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State of California Department of Justice
Rob Bonta
Attorney General
Attorney General
Below is a list of key legislation enacted in recent years in California to protect and assist human trafficking survivors:
This bill authorizes the Victim Compensation Board to provide compensation equal to loss of income or support that a victim incurs as a direct result of human trafficking, in an amount not exceeding the value of the victim’s labor as guaranteed under California law for up to 40 hours per week, as specified.
View the full text of the Assembly Bill 629
This bill expands the privacy rights of human trafficking victims to include disclosures made to a victim’s current caseworker, even if that person was not the victim’s caseworker at the time the confidential communication was made.
View the full text of the Assembly Bill 1735
This bill amends the Fair Employment and Housing Act to require hotels and motels to provide at least 20 minutes of prescribed training and education regarding human trafficking awareness to employees who are likely to interact or come into contact with victims of human trafficking.
View the full text of the Senate Bill 970
This bill increases access to human trafficking resources by allowing local agencies and school districts to seek reimbursement for certain costs mandated by the human trafficking model notice posting requirement. The model notices are available from the California Department of Justice for free.
View the full text of the Assembly Bill 2034
Requires state and local law enforcement agencies to provide, without a fee, one copy of all human trafficking incident reports to the trafficking victim, or the victim's representative, upon request.
View the full text of Assembly Bill 1678
Requires that, upon request, an official from a state or local entity certify "victim cooperation" on the Form I-914 Supplement B declaration, when the requester was a victim of human trafficking and has been cooperative, is being cooperative, or is likely to be cooperative regarding the investigation or prosecution of human trafficking.
View the full text of Assembly Bill 2027
Requires a person convicted of a felony for which sex offender registration, and to whom one or more specified circumstances apply – e.g., the person used the Internet to identify a victim of the crime and further its commission – is required to register his or her Internet identifiers and send written notice to the law enforcement agency with which he or she is registered within 30 days of changing any identifier.
View the full text of Senate Bill 448
Indefinitely extended a pilot program in Alameda County to develop a comprehensive, replicative, multidisciplinary model to address the needs and effective treatment of commercially sexually exploited minors.
View the full text of Senate Bill 1064
Eliminated the application of prostitution and loitering for prostitution charges to minors and authorizes law enforcement officers to take temporary custody of juvenile human trafficking victims under specified circumstances pursuant to Welfare and Institutions Code section 305, subdivision (a).
View the full text of Senate Bill 1322
Authorizes, under specified conditions, a minor 15 years of age or younger to testify by contemporaneous examination and cross-examination in another place and out of the presence of the judge, jury, defendant or defendants, and attorneys if the testimony will involve the recitation of the facts of an alleged offense of human trafficking.
View the full text of Assembly Bill 1276
Authorizes the withholding of names and images of a human trafficking victim, and the victim's family, from disclosure by a local or state police agency pursuant to the California Public Records Act until the trafficking investigation or any subsequent prosecution is complete.
View the full text of Assembly Bill 2498
Established a separate petition process for a person who has been arrested for, convicted of, or adjudicated a ward of the juvenile court for, committing a nonviolent offense, as defined, while he or she was a victim of human trafficking.
View the full text of Senate Bill 823
Created an affirmative defense against a charge of a crime that the person was coerced to commit the offense as a direct result of being a human trafficking victim at the time of the offense and had reasonable fear of harm.
View full text of the Assembly Bill 1761
Requires, in a case involving a charge of human trafficking, that a minor who is a victim of the human trafficking be provided with assistance from the local county Victim Witness Assistance Center if the minor so desires that assistance.
View full text of the Assembly Bill 2221
Authorized the Department of Fair Employment and Housing to receive, investigate, conciliate, mediate, and prosecute complaints alleging, and bring civil actions for, a victim of human trafficking.
View the full text of the Assembly Bill 1684
Requires a civil action for human trafficking to be commenced with seven years of the date that the trafficking victim was freed or, if the victim was a minor when the trafficking occurred, within ten years after the victim attains the age of majority.
View the full text of the Assembly Bill 15
Extended an existing law that authorizes a tenant who is, or lives with, a victim of human trafficking to terminate the tenancy, and reduces the time limit for the tenant to give the landlord notice of intent to vacate from 30 days to 14 days.
View the full text of the Assembly Bill 418
Created the Human Trafficking Victims Assistance Fund and requires that the money in the fund be used by the Office of Emergency Services for the distribution of grants to qualified nonprofit organizations providing services to human trafficking victims, and for reimbursement of costs incurred by the office in distributing these grants.
View the full text of the Senate Bill 84