Right-wing content creator Nick Shirley announced Friday that he is suing California officials over the so-called \u201cStop Nick Shirley Act,\u201d a bill aiming to protect immigration support service providers from doxxing and harassment.<\/p>\n
Assembly Bill 2624, named the \u201cSafe at Work Act\u201d by author Mia Bonta, D-Oakland, would allow immigration service providers to remove their names and addresses from the public record. Shirley, who gained online notoriety for his videos claiming to uncover fraud in immigrant-run hospice and daycare centers, has argued it will prevent independent journalists from conducting and publishing similar investigations. Republican lawmakers opposed to the bill have rallied behind Shirley, terming the bill the \u201cStop Nick Shirley Act.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c(The legislation) makes it harder for investigative reporters like Nick Shirley to do what they\u2019ve done and, quite frankly, I think we need more people looking at how we\u2019re spending our money and more transparency and accountability,\u201d said Sen. Tony Strickland, R-Huntington Beach, in an interview with The Sacramento Bee.<\/p>\n
Conservative legal organization America First Legal filed the complaint<\/a> on Shirley\u2019s behalf, seeking relief on claims that the bill violates Shirley\u2019s right to free speech under the First Amendment. The suit, which names California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Secretary of State Shirley Weber as defendants, alleges that the bill \u201cimposes content-based and viewpoint-discriminatory restrictions on speech and is unconstitutionally overbroad and vague.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn a world where we all want more transparency and not less, it is more critical than ever that we do not just sit back and do nothing,\u201d Shirley said in a video posted to his X account<\/a> Friday morning. \u201cThat is why I am filing this lawsuit against the state of California.\u201d<\/p>\n America First Legal President Gene Hamilton, President Donald Trump\u2019s former deputy White House counsel, founded the organization in 2018 with Stephen Miller, Trump\u2019s current deputy chief of staff for policy. The group aims to \u201coppose lawless government overreach and fight to restore the rule of law in the United States,\u201d according to its website<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cNick Shirley is an American patriot. He has been exposing fraud that too many people have tolerated or facilitated for decades,\u201d Hamilton said in a statement<\/a>. \u201cAmerica First Legal is proud to stand with Nick.\u201d<\/p>\n Shirley first gained internet fame through a viral video last year, in which he claimed to discover over $100 million in fraud at Somali-run daycare centers in Minnesota. While the allegations were disproven by local journalists<\/a> in some cases, they drew national attention and led to federal immigration crackdowns<\/a> in Minnesota. A later video posted to Shirley\u2019s YouTube account made similar accusations of widespread fraud at Somali-run hospice centers in San Diego.<\/p>\n After Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bill into law<\/a>, Shirley and his supporters gathered on the Capitol steps<\/a> Aug. 25 to rally against the legislation. In a speech at the event, Shirley said that the \u201cbattle\u201d against fraud in California is \u201cjust starting.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPoliticians have learned that they can use immigrant communities and use nonprofits and NGOs and funnel millions upon millions of your tax dollars into these (organizations),\u201d Shirley said. \u201cFor so long nobody ever looked into them. Then I did. And now they want to prohibit people from being able to go and film these locations to expose it.\u201d<\/p>\n Mia Bonta and other proponents of the measure have maintained that it would only restrict publishing information online with the explicit intent to dox or harass a specific individual.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is very clear in the legislation,\u201d Bonta said in an April 21 Assembly committee hearing. \u201cConstitutional free speech protections still fully apply. It does not prevent lawful reporting of matters of public concern, and the bill is narrowly focused on preventing misuse of personal information, not restricting lawful speech.\u201d<\/p>\n This story was originally published September 4, 2026 at 2:23 PM.<\/p>\n Related Stories from Sacramento Bee<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Right-wing content creator Nick Shirley announced Friday that he is suing California officials over the so-called \u201cStop Nick…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":454590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[121,123,122],"class_list":["post-454589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454589","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=454589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}