Sacramento did not go after the fraud. It went after the cameras.
On Wednesday, California Democrats finished ramming through AB 2624, the privacy bill Republicans have been calling the Stop Nick Shirley Act. The Senate passed it 30-10 on Tuesday. The Assembly concurred 59-19 the next day. By Wednesday afternoon the enrolled bill was sitting on Gavin Newsom’s desk.
The author is Oakland Democrat Mia Bonta, wife of Attorney General Rob Bonta. That pairing should tell you everything you need to know about whose interests this law is built to serve.
A Fine for Showing What Happened
Democrats say the measure is just an expansion of California’s old Safe at Home address-confidentiality program. Now it covers “immigration support services” providers, their employees, and their volunteers. Legal clinics. Nonprofits. Health and hospice outfits. Case managers. Anyone handing out aid, referrals, or paperwork to immigrants and illegal aliens.
The trap is in the enforcement. The bill treats a photograph or a video as an “image.” A covered person can send a written demand that you stop posting it. Ignore that paper and they can drag you into court for an injunction, attorney fees, and money damages of not less than $4,000, up to three times actual damages.
There is no journalist exemption. Carl DeMaio said that out loud in committee. Bonta did not add one.
California Democrats are trying to intimidate citizen watchdog journalists and protect waste and fraud happening in far-Left-wing NGOs. AB 2624 can only be described as the “Stop Nick Shirley Act” — a bill designed to silence citizen journalists exposing fraud and abuse of taxpayer dollars.
That was DeMaio, the San Diego Republican who gave the bill its honest name. He also said the law would let taxpayer-funded outfits “demand the removal of video evidence — even if it captures misconduct in plain view.” When he rose to debate the final product, Democrats shut him down.
Nick Shirley put the street version even simpler. If an immigration service provider hands you a piece of paper saying you cannot publish your video, you can be fined $4,000 and stuck with their lawyers’ bills.
They Went After the Man Who Found the Empty Buildings
Shirley is the reason this bill exists. His videos of empty, taxpayer-fed daycare operations in Minnesota blew up last year. Then he came to California and filmed hospice and health shops that looked more like storefronts than care. He alleged hundreds of millions in waste. State and federal investigators later started making arrests in massive Medi-Cal hospice schemes. Sacramento’s answer was not a thank-you. It was a statute.
For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.
That is the whole theory of AB 2624. Call it safety. Call it anti-doxxing. The effect is the same. Film a clinic that takes public money, post the faces and the empty rooms, and the people inside the program can try to bury the tape and bill you for the privilege. First Amendment scholars even the Los Angeles Times bothered to call warned about a chilling effect. Democrats voted anyway, on party lines.
Bonta insists this is about workers facing harassment, not about reporters. Fine. Then write a law that punishes true threats and leaves public-interest recording alone. They refused. They copied the same secrecy model they already gave to abortion and “gender-affirming” clinics and draped it over the immigrant-services industry. The people who cut the checks and the people who cash them get a shield. The citizen with a phone gets a lawsuit.
Newsom is expected to sign it. Of course he is. California has spent years importing a client class, funding the NGOs that service it, and then treating any adult who asks where the money went as the problem. The Stop Nick Shirley Act is not a privacy tweak. It is a warning. Keep the lights off, or pay.
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Starting the Day With a Scripture-Inspired Roast Helps Center Your Thoughts on Eternal Truths Amid Temporal Pressures
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