{"id":392422,"date":"2026-07-09T19:41:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T19:41:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/392422\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T19:41:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T19:41:11","slug":"most-california-senators-supported-this-ada-lawsuit-bill-it-died-anyway-long-beach-post-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/392422\/","title":{"rendered":"Most California senators supported this ADA lawsuit bill. It died anyway \u2022 Long Beach Post News"},"content":{"rendered":"

For years, state Sen.\u00a0Roger Niello<\/a>\u00a0has attempted to address what he sees as a persistent issue: predatory law firms and their disabled clients suing swaths of small businesses for disability access violations.<\/p>\n

It started when he heard about Scott Johnson, a quadriplegic man in his district who\u00a0filed thousands of lawsuits<\/a>\u00a0against small businesses in Northern California, enriching himself in the process. Since then, Niello, a Republican from Fair Oaks who also helps run his family\u2019s group of auto dealerships, has been pushing for change. His latest proposal,\u00a0Senate Bill 84<\/a>, would have given small businesses 120 days to correct violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act before they could get sued.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t die by a vote of legislators. Senators overwhelmingly approved it last year, and a bipartisan majority signed on as authors or co-authors. It died by procedure in the Assembly, where a committee chair declined to take it up for a hearing, a rare occurrence in the California Legislature.<\/p>\n

Instead, the Assembly Judiciary Committee molded and endorsed a separate bill with a different approach to addressing serial ADA lawsuits, which would require businesses to be more proactive and spend more money up front to get indemnity against lawsuits. That bill squeaked through its last policy committee in the Senate last week, and is headed to the appropriations committee.<\/p>\n

Why wasn\u2019t the bill heard?<\/p>\n

The committee chair is Assemblymember\u00a0Ash Kalra<\/a>, a Democrat representing South San Jose. The former defense attorney is a former chair of the Legislative Progressive Caucus and was appointed chair of the judiciary committee in 2023.<\/p>\n

Kalra said in an interview with CalMatters that he didn\u2019t schedule the bill for a hearing because Niello didn\u2019t agree to the amendments his committee suggested in conversations outside of the public process.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving a piece of legislation that completely undermines the ADA without taking any amendments is a slap in the face to the disability rights community,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

It was the second time a \u201cRight to Cure\u201d proposal from Niello was ignored to death by Kalra. In 2023, Niello\u2019s Senate Bill 585 encountered the same fate.<\/p>\n

Again this year, disability rights groups vehemently opposed Niello\u2019s bill, which they contended would discourage proactive compliance with the law and make it harder for disabled people to hold businesses accountable.<\/p>\n

Business groups, including the California Chamber of Commerce, the California Restaurant Association and roughly 50 local chambers of commerce, supported the bill. In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, a coalition of supporters said small businesses have been targeted by a limited group of attorneys seeking settlements for technical violations \u201cregardless of whether the alleged violation actually impedes physical access to the facility for patrons with disabilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lawmakers often discuss how they want bills to change\u00a0before public hearings<\/a>, and secret negotiations can cause lawmakers to pull their bills. But longtime lobbyist Chris Micheli said it\u2019s rare for a bill to be killed in this way outside of its house of origin.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Assembly will sometimes decline to hear a bill of their own house, and maybe the Senate might do the same to a (Senate bill), but it is rare that it would occur for a second house bill,\u201d he said. Micheli represents the Civil Justice Association of California, which supported Niello\u2019s legislation.<\/p>\n

But Kalra\u2019s committee had just finished shaping\u00a0Assembly Bill 649<\/a>\u00a0on the very same subject. Long Beach Democratic Assemblymember\u00a0Josh Lowenthal<\/a>\u00a0had worked with the committee to create a proposal building on the existing Certified Access Specialist program. Businesses that get inspected for existing ADA violations and correct them, a process that can cost thousands of dollars, currently have 120 days to correct additional issues before they can be sued. Lowenthal\u2019s bill would extend the buffer to six years.<\/p>\n

Niello said the problem was philosophical. The committee wanted his bill to be exactly like Lowenthal\u2019s, which he didn\u2019t feel was workable, given what he says is a shortage of Certified Access Specialist inspectors in the state. His Senate colleagues had approved of his approach, and he didn\u2019t understand why Kalra wouldn\u2019t hear it out.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said to (Kalra), let both bills move forward and let the bill with the best merit win, and if they both pass the Legislature, then let the governor decide, and I\u2019m perfectly happy to cast my fate to that particular whim, but he\u2019s not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kalra described Niello\u2019s continued advocacy for the bill as \u201cbullying.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJust trying to push a chair into having a hearing without any consideration about other opinions is not how business is done,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Niello said it was \u201cfrankly offensive\u201d that Kalra would describe the situation as bullying, and said he did speak with the disability rights community about the bill. Disability rights groups remain opposed.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo civil rights law requires an aggrieved person to first send a warning letter to the violator and wait months to see if the violator changes its ways before the aggrieved person is allowed to file a lawsuit in court to enforce their rights,\u201d Disability Rights California and its coalition partners wrote in a letter to the Legislature. After initial opposition, the groups now support Lowenthal\u2019s bill, which they say strikes a better balance between business interests and those of disabled people.<\/p>\n

Kalra is closely aligned with the Consumer Attorneys of California, which also opposes Niello\u2019s bill. He has voted with the group on 97% of the 281 bills it took a position on since he was elected to the Legislature in 2016, and has received over $62,000 in campaign donations from the group in that time, according to the\u00a0Digital Democracy database<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When asked whether those campaign donations affected his decision, Kalra said he \u201chad almost zero conversation\u201d with the consumer attorneys about Niello\u2019s bill, but had held several conversations with members of the disability rights community.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo suggest that somehow I\u2019m being influenced by a group that I\u2019ve hardly ever talked to about this bill at all is just flatly not true.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other legislation in the pipeline<\/p>\n

Lowenthal\u2019s competing bill is moving forward and will be heard again later this summer. It barely passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, with several of Niello\u2019s Democratic co-authors voting against it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI appreciate the Senate, you know, as last minute as things can get, I appreciate that we\u2019re having this hearing and then we\u2019re taking a vote on your bill,\u201d state Sen.\u00a0Henry Stern<\/a>\u00a0told Lowenthal during a hearing.<\/p>\n

He added he felt that with the amount of support Niello\u2019s measure received, he\u2019d have expected \u201cat least a vote on that concept too.\u201d<\/p>\n

For his part, Niello said he\u2019s thinking about reintroducing the issue if he\u2019s reelected in November.<\/p>\n

\u201cSB 84 is dead, but the idea is not dead.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For years, state Sen.\u00a0Roger Niello\u00a0has attempted to address what he sees as a persistent issue: predatory law firms…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":392423,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8],"class_list":["post-392422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392422","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=392422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}