calegislation.lc.ca.gov\/Advocates<\/a><\/p>\nLanguage<\/p>\n
[Date]<\/p>\n
The Honorable Ash Kalra
Chair, Assembly Judiciary Committee
California State Assembly
1021 O Street, Suite 4610
Sacramento, CA 95814<\/p>\n
(Also send a copy to your own Assemblymember.)<\/p>\n
RE: SB 84 (Niello) \u2014 Please vote NO<\/p>\n
Dear Assemblymember Kalra:<\/p>\n
I am writing to ask you to vote no on SB 84. [Say who you are in one line \u2014 for example, \u201cI am a disabled person living in [city],\u201d or \u201cI am a lawyer for disabled clients,\u201d or name your group and who it serves.]<\/p>\n
SB 84 would make disabled people send a business a warning letter and then wait 120 days before they could ask a court for money when a barrier shuts them out. No other civil rights law works this way. Lawmakers have said no to this idea before, and they were right to.<\/p>\n
[SHARE YOUR STORY \u2014 replace this part:\u00a0In a few sentences, tell about a real barrier you or your client ran into. Where did it happen? How did it affect you? What was it like to be shut out? If you know, say how long the business knew about the barrier, or what it did when you asked. A real, specific story is the strongest part of this letter.]<\/p>\n
Businesses have had more than 30 years to follow the disability access law, and California already helps them do it. There are trained state inspectors who tell owners what to fix. There is a state office that helps businesses follow the law. And there are tax breaks worth up to $5,000 and $15,000 a year for access fixes. SB 84 does the opposite. It tells businesses they can wait to see if they get caught. And it puts the work on the very people the law is meant to protect.<\/p>\n
If the worry is a few people who file too many lawsuits, the courts can already handle that. California already makes those filers follow stricter rules and pay more. Judges can already punish bad lawsuits and throw out weak ones. We should use those tools on the few people who misuse the system \u2014 not take away the rights of every disabled person.<\/p>\n
Instead of making it harder to go to court, the state should help businesses learn the rules, tell them about the tax breaks, and give money to fix barriers. Another bill, AB 649, takes a better path. It protects a business only if it gets an inspection and fixes the problems found<\/p>\n
Please vote no on SB 84. You are welcome to contact me with any questions.<\/p>\n
Sincerely,<\/p>\n
[Your Name]
[Your Title, if any]
[Your Group, if any]
[City, California]
[Email or Phone \u2014 optional]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Instructions Fill in the parts in bold and in brackets with your own words. The part marked [SHARE…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":362262,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,147204],"class_list":["post-362261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-disability-discrimination"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}