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Policy Action

2025 CALIFORNIA LEGISLATIVE SESSION

CNEHJ began tracking California Legislative activity in 2024 to ensure policymakers hear the nursing voice. By signing onto legislation, we make clear which potential laws we support and oppose. In 2025 alone, we’ve signed on to over 45 letters signaling our position on bills and policies related to the following issues: 

  • Maternal and Child Health
  • Fossil fuel, air quality, and transportation
  • Toxic substance exposure reduction
  • California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) preservation
  • Federal pubic health, safety, and environmental protection
  • Farmworker protection
  • Drinking water quality

Bills CNEHJ is Tracking

(Updated 10/4/25)

Governor Newsom must sign bills before OCTOBER 12TH.

PRIORITY TITLE POSITION GOVERNOR OUTCOME
Maternal / Child Health AB 1096: Water: schoolsites: lead testing SUPPORTING SIGNED
AB 1264: Pupil nutrition: particularly harmful ultraprocessed food: prohibition SUPPORTING SIGNED
SB 646: Prenatal vitamins SUPPORTING SIGNED
Fossil Fuel, Air Quality, and Transportation AB 899: Buy California Glass Bottle Procurement and Incentive Program SUPPORTING SIGNED
SB 63: SF Bay area: local revenue measure: transportation funding SUPPORTING SIGNED
SB 79: Housing development: transit-oriented development SUPPORTING SIGNED
SB 279: Solid waste: compostable materials SUPPORTING SIGNED
SB 614: Carbon dioxide transport OPPOSING SIGNED
Toxic Substances AB 823: Solid waste: plastic microbeads SUPPORTING VETOED
SB 682: Environmental health: product safety: PFAS SUPPORTING VETOED

Actions You Can Take to Impact Legislation

Contact your legislators

Contacting your representatives in the California Legislature helps them understand the needs and wants from their constituents. Use this Find Your California Representatives tool to identify your assemblyperson and senator’s contact information. 

  • Calling their office is preferential to submitting a written message on their website. 
  • It helps to prepare a simple script beforehand.
  • Be sure to include your name, zip code, bill number, and whether you support or oppose the bill. 
  • If applicable, add that you are a nurse with California Nurses for Environmental Health and Justice.
Contact the Governor

While the Governor doesn’t author bills, bills that pass the legislature are sent to the Governor to be signed into law or vetoed: Contact Governor Newsom.

Write Letters to Editors

Letters to the Editor (LTEs) are sent to a publication about issues of concern from its readers. They appear in the Opinion section of the paper and are usually in response to previously published news.

Not only is the Opinion page one of the most widely read sections of the paper, but public officials, allies, and community leaders take note of the sentiments expressed there. Check out some sample LTE’s (CNEHJ example LTE) you could pull ideas from for your own letter, or a template to help get you started. Below are some tips to help you on your way.

STEPS
  1. Review the specific submission guidelines and follow the word limit – all will have slightly different instructions.
  2. In your own words, clearly state a timely concern.
  3. Explain how this problem is impacting you and your community.
  4. Conclude with a clear solution and call-to-action.
  5. Ask a friend or family member to review your drafted product.
  6. Follow the publication’s online submission guidelines. If they include both a web form and email address you should submit both ways to increase the chances of it being seen.
TIPS
  1. Tailor your letter to the audience of the newspaper or website. Newspapers want to hear from their readership so consider picking a local paper. Ideally, it might be a paper that you think your legislators read.
  2. Be concise! Keep it short and straightforward, focused and interesting in around 200 words or fewer.
  3. Be honest and make it personal. Pull details from your own lived experience and always tell the truth.
  4. Be direct. Offer a clear solution or call-to-action to a very specific problem.
  5. Make it local, timely, and relevant. Your letter is more likely to be printed if it’s localized and/or it is in response to something that the paper has already covered.
  6. Pick an angle (e.g., the nursing lens). Make one clear point – after you pick your point, stick to it.
  7. Make a call to action. Be bold!

Other Resources for Championing Environmental Health and Justice

CNEHJ Policy Committee Guiding Principles

Mission Statement: Support CNEHJ’s mission by identifying and analyzing legislative, regulatory, and institutional policies through advocacy, collaboration, and education to achieve health equity in California.

Objectives:

  • Identify and prioritize CA state legislation annually that is most applicable to the CNEHJ mission and support the work of CNEHJ Committees.
  • Collaborate with state EHJ partners and nursing organizations who work directly with state legislators and policy advocates to provide the nursing voice and perspectives on proposed legislation.
  • Advocate for legislation prioritized by CNEHJ through media, sign-ons, op-eds, testimony, and organized visits to the capitol.
  • Follow the legislative cycle annually and provide updates to the CNEHJ Leadership Council and through  the  policy tracker, committee meetings, and/or email updates.
  • Monitor state regulatory bodies and institutional policies that impact environmental health.

Non-Profit Limitations: CNEHJ is a 501(c)3 that allows organizations to prioritize and advocate for legislation, but CNEHJ cannot support a particular candidate or political party. Our focus is on educating, informing, and working collaboratively with other EHJ organizations.

ACTION

WATER

“The petrochemical industry and the pollution it creates disproportionately harms people of color and low-income communities. Every year, the United States alone burns or buries in landfill 32 million tons of plastic, impacting the health, wealth, and well-being of frontline and fenceline communities.

In fact, the U.S. produces the most plastic waste per capita of any country, and exports much of this waste to the Global South. An astounding 91% of plastic is never recycled.
350 million metric tons of plastic are produced globally each year, and 15 million metric tons wind up as plastic waste in the world’s oceans.”

TAKE ACTION

ACTION

CLIMATE CHANGE

    1. Tell Governor Newsom the time is now for real and accelerated climate policies.   The Climate Center provides a direct link to send your message to the Governor.

 

  1. Nurses are partnering with The Climate Center and endorsing the Rapid Decarbonization strategies in the Climate Safe California Campaign.  To endorse, go to The Climate Center’s Climate-Safe California Endorsement.

ACTION

FARMWORKERS

FARM
WORKERS

Nurses and others in the Western States (CA, OR, and WA) are working on standardizing a heat and smoke exposure occupational health policy.   We will keep you apprised when we need you to sign onto a letter or call your elected official.  In the meantime, you can read more about this issue in a series created by the Union of Concerned Scientists, Too Hot to Work.

ACTION

Air Quality & Wildfires

    1. Tell Governor Newsom the time is now for real and accelerated climate policies.   The Climate Center provides a direct link to send your message to the Governor.


    2. Nurses are partnering with The Climate Center and endorsing the Rapid Decarbonization strategies in the Climate Safe California Campaign.  To endorse, go here.

ACTION

exposures

PESTICIDES:  Californians want the “right to know” when hazardous pesticides are being sprayed in their neighborhoods, including near their children’s schools. Sign a petition sponsored by our partners from Californians for Pesticide Reform that will go to the California Department of Pesticide Regulations demanding our right to know when dangerous pesticides are going to be sprayed in our neighborhoods.

ACTION

FOOD & AGRICULTURE

Support local and sustainable agriculture by purchasing food at your local Farmers’ Market. Many California Farmers’ Markets are now open year-round. To find a Certified Farmers’ Market near you, go to this Certified Farmer’ Market List.

As part of the School Meals for All Coalition, we are grateful that beginning during the school year 2022/2023, California became the first state in the nation to provide free breakfast and lunch to all K–12 students, regardless of income level. Now we’re building on that historic achievement by supporting the AB-408 bond bill that will provide vital investments for school food infrastructure, staff training, and more freshly prepared California-grown school meals. Learn how to support this bill by visiting the California Climate and Agriculture Network.

CNEHJ is also a member of the Food & Farming Resilience Coalition which is advocating for state and policy funding to support a resilient and equitable food and farming system in California. This past June, AB 408 was passed by the CA Assembly and will help to reduce climate emissions, protect farmworkers, stimulate economic growth, and increase equity across the food and farming system.

 

ACTION

GREENING YOUR HOSPITAL

Call your environmental services or sustainability director and ask if your workplace has a GREEN TEAM and join it! And join the monthly CNEHJ Greening Hospital Team meetings. Find the next meeting on our calendar.

Sign the Healthy Foods in Health Care Pledge.

ACTION

FOSSIL FUELS

      1. Sign the petition telling Governor Newsom to stand up to big oil in California and to stop issuing new permits to drill oil.

 

    1. Take Action to support the “Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act.”