CAIR-CA works alongside lawmakers, coalition partners, and community members to advance legislation that reflects our values and protects our rights. Bills are tiered according to the following levels:
CAIR-CA’s 2026 legislative priorities center on the following core issue areas:
AB 2017 recognizes Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha as state holidays in California and authorizes K–12 schools and community colleges to close for Eid through locally negotiated agreements. The bill also allows state and school employees to observe these holidays using existing personal holiday credit, leave time, or paid holidays established through memoranda of understanding (MOUs)
It affirms the right of California’s Muslim community to fully participate in their religious practices without facing academic or professional penalties.
This bill represents a critical step toward religious equity, inclusion, and equal access to public life.
California is home to one of the largest Muslim populations in the country—surpassing over one million individuals—yet Muslim communities remain systematically underrecognized in state policy. Additionally, California already recognizes other significant cultural observances, such as Lunar New Year and Diwali.
In Islam, both Eid days are some of the most sacred days of the year. Yet many Muslim students are forced to make an impossible choice: Practice their faith fully or meet academic expectations and avoid falling behind.
This results in:
Employees face similar barriers, often having to use limited leave or forgo meaningful religious observance altogether.
At its core, this is a civil rights and equity issue, one that reflects whether California’s policies truly serve all of its communities.
AB 2017 advances equity by:
This bill brings California in line with its values of diversity and inclusion, while also aligning with jurisdictions across the country that already recognize Eid.
AB 2551 is a crucial piece of legislation designed to protect student free speech rights and counter the discriminatory and uneven enforcement of Time, Place, and Manner (TPM) restrictions across the University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU) systems.
As a sponsor of this bill, CAIR-CA strongly supports AB 2551 because it introduces necessary transparency, oversight, and student representation into a system that has increasingly weaponized administrative rules to suppress protected political expression—particularly advocacy for Palestinian rights, human rights issues overall and other social justice issues.
While TPM regulations are legally required to be content-neutral—applying equally regardless of the message—recent events on UC and CSU campuses have shown that these rules are often applied subjectively. Following a wave of student protests, CSU administrators implemented sweeping, systemwide expansions of their TPM policies without consulting student governments or faculty associations. These new restrictions essentially banned encampments, temporary structures, and even the use of face masks, creating a severe chilling effect that makes peaceful protest nearly impossible on campus.
This aggressive enforcement has taken a disproportionate toll on marginalized students. According to our 2024 Campus Climate Report, 49% of Muslim college students in California faced harassment or discrimination, and nearly a quarter were penalized simply for exercising their First Amendment rights to freedom of expression and assembly. Under the guise of “neutrality,” vague TPM codes have given administrators the cover to subject students to doxxing, intense surveillance, and disproportionate disciplinary action, selectively enforcing rules against viewpoints they find inconvenient.
AB 2551 provides a much-needed check on administrative overreach by ensuring that TPM rules are applied fairly and in accordance with legal standards. The bill addresses these urgent concerns through the following key provisions:
Mandating Transparency and Data Collection
The bill requires the UC and CSU systems to include demographic data of students penalized for code of conduct violations in their annual reports. This crucial transparency will illuminate the disparate impact these policies have on students of color and religious minorities.
Ensuring Student Representation and Oversight
AB 2551 requires campuses to establish oversight committees and hold student hearings by 2029. This ensures that the students who are actually subjected to these restrictions have a direct voice in evaluating their fairness and enforcement, rather than policies being dictated solely by administration.
Protecting First Amendment Rights
By combatting discriminatory TPM regulations, the bill protects the right to political expression for all students. It ensures that universities cannot use “neutrality” as a smokescreen for discrimination or to suppress specific political advocacy.
AB 2664 imposes new, expansive restrictions on constitutionally protected speech and peaceful assembly near houses of worship by establishing arbitrary floating buffer zones. Under the bill, approaching someone within eight feet to display a sign, distribute literature, or engage in oral protest or education within 100 feet of an entrance or exit would be criminalized as a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail, a $1,000 fine, or both.
CAIR-CA opposes AB 2664 because it violates fundamental First Amendment rights and serves as a direct political tool to silence protected political expression. Rather than filling any demonstrated gap in California’s existing, robust anti-harassment and anti-violence laws, the bill creates a severe chilling effect on lawful advocacy, inviting discretionary enforcement against civic activists and marginalized communities.
The push for AB 2664 is not an isolated, good-faith effort to safeguard worshippers; rather, it is part of a broader, coordinated national campaign driven by pro-Israel interest groups seeking to restrict pro-Palestinian political speech and suppress peaceful demonstrations. Similar legislative measures have been introduced in Congress and statehouses nationwide in direct reaction to public mobilization.
In California, this legislation functions as a political reaction to lawful protests outside religious institutions that have crossed into secular, political, and commercial arenas. These include venues hosting controversial political figures, mobilizing support for the genocide in Gaza, or facilitating real estate events selling stolen land in the illegally occupied West Bank.
Although recent amendments narrowed the eight-foot buffer zone to individuals “seeking to enter or exit” a place of worship, the bill remains fundamentally overbroad and constitutionally deficient. By criminalizing standard expressive activity and relying on subjective standards like “intentionally approach,” the bill goes far beyond existing protections against genuine threats, harassment, or obstruction, providing a legal mechanism to insulate political and commercial activities from public accountability.
AB 2664 fails to resolve core constitutional defects and establishes dangerous precedents for public advocacy across California. The bill presents several urgent concerns:
Infringement on Core First Amendment Public Forums
Sidewalks and public rights-of-way outside places of worship are traditional public forums where expressive rights receive the highest constitutional protection. AB 2664 impermissibly restricts core protected speech—including leafletting, holding signs, and oral advocacy—within a 100-foot zone.
Disproportionate Criminal Penalties for Expressive Conduct
The bill establishes harsh misdemeanor penalties—including up to six months in county jail and fines up to $1,000—for non-threatening, peaceful interactions such as handing out educational flyers or speaking to individuals without prior consent.
Shielding Political and Commercial Activity from Public Scrutiny
Houses of worship frequently host partisan political rallies, controversial guest speakers, and commercial land sales. AB 2664 creates an unjustifiable special exemption, effectively shielding non-religious, political, and commercial activities from lawful public dissent and civic accountability.
Subjective Standards and Risk of Selective Enforcement
The legislation relies on subjective terminology, such as “intentionally approach,” granting broad discretion to law enforcement. This ambiguity creates a high risk of selective and discriminatory enforcement targeting pro-Palestinian advocates and marginalized communities.
Redundancy with Comprehensive Existing Protections
California law already strictly prohibits threats, physical harassment, obstruction of entryways, vandalism, and hate crimes. Existing statutes provide comprehensive tools to protect worshippers without infringing upon constitutionally protected speech.
AB 2615 is intended as clean-up legislation for AB 715, which was enacted in 2025 and made changes related to educational equity, discrimination, and antisemitism in public education. However, as currently written, AB 2615 does not address key concerns raised by civil rights, education, and community organizations about the risk of politically motivated attacks against teachers, schools, and public education.
CAIR-CA opposes AB 2615 because it does not provide the safeguards needed to protect educators, students, and school districts from vague legal standards, weaponized complaints, and politically influenced enforcement. Rather than meaningfully correcting the harms created by AB 715, AB 2615 risks reinforcing the same flawed framework.
AB 715 created new legal and administrative structures related to discrimination prevention in public education. While protecting students from discrimination is a shared goal, the law also introduced language and processes that could be used to target classroom instruction, suppress protected political speech, and invite bad-faith complaints against teachers and school districts.
A central concern is that the law allows the United States National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism to guide state efforts to identify, prevent, respond to, and counter antisemitism. That strategy incorporates the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which has repeatedly been used to conflate criticism of Israel and advocacy for Palestinian rights with antisemitism.
The law also creates Discrimination Prevention Coordinator positions that are appointed by the Governor rather than selected through a merit-based civil service process. This raises concerns that these roles could be influenced by political pressure rather than professional qualifications and the needs of students and educators.
In addition, vague terms such as “factually accurate,” “advocacy,” “personal opinion,” “bias,” “partisanship,” and “consistent with accepted standards of professional responsibility” create uncertainty for teachers and school districts. These broad and subjective standards could chill classroom instruction and expose schools to politically motivated complaints or litigation—not only on issues related to Palestine, but also on topics such as vaccine education, reproductive health, LGBTQ inclusion, and support for transgender and nonbinary students.
AB 2615 does not make the changes necessary to prevent AB 715 from being weaponized against educators, students, and schools. The bill fails to adequately address three urgent concerns:
Continued reliance on the United States National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism
AB 2615 does not resolve concerns about Education Code §33803.1(c), which allows the United States National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism to guide state efforts to identify, prevent, respond to, and counter antisemitism. Because the strategy incorporates the IHRA definition, it risks conflating protected political speech with prohibited discrimination.
Politically appointed Discrimination Prevention Coordinators
AB 2615 does not require Discrimination Prevention Coordinators to be hired through a merit-based civil service process. These roles should be filled based on minimum qualifications and professional experience—not political appointment—to ensure they function like other qualified program manager positions within state service.
Vague and subjective classroom instruction standards
AB 2615 does not remove vague and subjective classroom instruction standards in Education Code §§5100(b) and 51501(b), including “factually accurate,” “advocacy,” “personal opinion,” “bias,” “partisanship,” and “consistent with accepted standards of professional responsibility.” These terms create uncertainty for educators and increase the risk of chilling instruction, bad-faith complaints, and litigation.
CAIR-CA urges legislators to vote no on AB 2615.
SB 1095 would protect the privacy and constitutional rights of Californians by prohibiting California’s Fusion Centers from participating, cooperating, and sharing sensitive personal information for purposes of unlawful immigration enforcement and racial or identity profiling and would ensure oversight and accountability by requiring an annual audit.
Background:
Created in the wake of 9/11, Fusion Centers are state-owned and operated data-sharing hubs between local, state and federal law enforcement and private entities that surveil, collect, analyze, and distribute information about the activities of ordinary individuals—operating largely in secret without oversight, transparency, or accountability.
California is home to six Fusion Centers, which release massive amounts of highly personal information outside the state—records that reveal who we are, where we go, what we do, and who we know. This personal information is collected and shared from a range of sources including Automated Licensed Plate Readers (ALPRs), facial recognition technology scans, driver’s license records, suspicious activity reports, utility records, and social media activity.
Problem:
Fusion Centers threaten the privacy and civil rights of Californians by giving federal and out-of-state agencies our personal information, including our location, identity, biometrics, and social media activity, without our consent and without regard to local and state laws.
Fusion centers have a long history of surveillance’s worst abuses—targeting Muslim and Black Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) communities, tracking protestors, and casting peaceful and constitutionally protected activities as potential threats. At least two California Fusion Centers have engaged in clear racial profiling by issuing reports labeling the innocent, everyday activities of Middle Eastern individuals as “suspicious.” In Orange County, ICE informally tapped the Fusion Center for help locating immigrants’ vehicles.
These Fusion Center practices threaten constitutional rights, privacy, and public trust, and provide a loophole to get around local and state laws restricting collusion with federal immigration enforcement and prohibiting racial or identity profiling by law enforcement.
This bill would protect the privacy and rights of Californians by:
All bills that have passed the Legislature are now heading to Gov. Newsom’s desk. Urge him to sign AB 2017 and AB 2551 and veto AB 2664.
On June 29, the Governor officially signed the 2026-2027 state budget (SB 111) into law. Just a month ago, we were staring down a May Revision that proposed balancing the state’s checkbook by cutting essential safety nets for working-class immigrants.
Because our community organized, spoke up, and fought back, the final budget looks vastly different. The Legislature acted as a firewall, and the Governor ultimately signed a budget that rejects extreme austerity. We secured historic investments in immigration legal services, protected our mosques, and held the line on healthcare. Here is how your advocacy directly shaped the final laws of California.
The Threat: The state originally planned to impose a punitive $50 monthly premium on certain immigrant adults to access healthcare and was preparing to immediately drop full-scope coverage and dental care for many families due to federal funding cuts.
The Victory: We successfully pushed back the clock. The signed budget officially maintains full-scope Health4All coverage through July 2027, delaying any shift to restricted-scope care and rejecting immediate cuts to dental coverage. While the unfair $50 premium is still written into the law, it has been delayed until July 2027 and will only take effect if the Governor explicitly authorizes it early next year. This buys us a crucial window to mobilize and stop the premium from ever being triggered.
The Challenge: With the threat of aggressive federal deportations looming, our rural and inland communities lacked the legal pipelines and rapid-response infrastructure to defend themselves.
The Victory: The Governor’s signature locks in a phenomenal $100 million increase for Immigration Legal Services on top of the state’s baseline funding. Even better, these funds are secured through 2029, giving our communities long-term stability. This includes exactly what we fought for:
The Threat: Funding for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP) was set to expire, leaving our community centers vulnerable amid a terrifying rise in anti-Muslim hate.
The Victory: We didn’t just get a temporary extension—the enacted budget cements $80 million in ongoing, permanent funding for the NSGP. This guarantees sustained support for physical security upgrades at our mosques, allowing our community to pray and gather safely without relying solely on traditional policing.
The Threat: Despite closing prisons, the state’s corrections budget was actually increasing to over $18.5 billion.
The Victory: The state is now legally mandated to shrink its carceral footprint. The budget requires the announcement of another prison closure by November 2026, which will save taxpayers $150 million every year. Furthermore, the state redirected $20 million into the RIGHT 4.0 Grant to fund community-based, non-profit rehabilitative programming inside prisons. This is a vital step toward genuinely reinvesting in restorative justice.
The final budget maintains a $10 million allocation for the Holocaust and Genocide Education Grant Program. CAIR-CA strongly supports learning from history, but we will be actively monitoring how these funds are distributed across the state. We will fight to ensure that all funded curriculum is honest, recognizes all genocides—including the ongoing genocide in Gaza—and is never weaponized to silence diverse student viewpoints or protected political speech in our classrooms.
Send a message to the Governor today to thank him for supporting our community priorities, urge him to stop the unjust healthcare premium, and ensure the funding for genocide education doesn’t go unchecked.
