A pair of bills that would rewrite California’s 25-year-old voting rights law is sitting on Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk, and he has until September 30 to sign or veto them. Senate Bill 1164 and Senate Bill 1360, both authored by state Senator Sabrina Cervantes, a Riverside Democrat, would give California voters new state-court tools to fight discriminatory election maps and expand language access at the polls — a response, backers say, to a retreating federal Voting Rights Act.
What SB 1164 and SB 1360 Would Do
SB 1164 updates the California Voting Rights Act of 2001 by letting an “aggrieved” voter, organization or the state attorney general sue a city, county, school district or other local government over an electoral map or voting policy that a protected class alleges dilutes its votes. It also directs state courts to interpret election disputes in favor of broader participation and requires jurisdictions with a recent history of discrimination to clear certain voting changes with the state before enacting them. SB 1360 is narrower: it writes the in-language ballot and voter-material protections found in Section 203 of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 directly into California statute, and creates a process to extend language assistance to voters beyond those already covered by the federal standard.
A Response to the Supreme Court’s Callais Ruling
Cervantes and civil rights groups have framed the package explicitly as insurance against federal retrenchment. The bills gained urgency after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, which narrowed the reach of the federal Voting Rights Act’s redistricting protections and, advocates argue, left minority voters more exposed to map manipulation in states without their own statutory backstop. “The CVRA of 2026 is California’s opportunity to fight back and ensure California’s voters are protected despite the changing federal landscape,” said Julia A. Gomez of the ACLU of Southern California, one of the bill’s most vocal supporters.
How the Bills Moved Through Sacramento
SB 1164 advanced out of the Assembly Judiciary Committee with broad support on June 23, cleared the Assembly Appropriations Committee on August 13, and won final floor votes before the Legislature adjourned August 31. Both measures now sit with Newsom, who faces a constitutional deadline of September 30 to act on bills that were in his possession by September 1. If he takes no action by that date, the bills automatically become law; a veto would kill them for this session.
Cities Warn of a New Wave of Lawsuits
The loudest opposition has come not from Republicans but from local governments. The League of California Cities says it opposes SB 1164 unless it is amended, warning that the bill would strip away a legal shield that currently protects cities from repeat lawsuits once they’ve switched from at-large to district-based elections. Redwood City officials, for instance, have asked for language protecting cities that already made that switch, arguing the original 2001 law already triggered a wave of litigation that cost California local governments millions of dollars in legal fees and redistricting costs, and that SB 1164 would reopen those jurisdictions to fresh suits over the same maps.
Two Views of the Same Bill
Supporters counter that the threat of litigation is precisely the point: without a credible enforcement mechanism, they argue, map-drawers face little incentive to avoid vote dilution, especially with federal courts less willing to intervene after Callais. Civil rights attorneys note that the 2001 CVRA’s litigation wave, while costly, also produced hundreds of new district-based election systems that gave Latino, Black and Asian American communities their first realistic path to city council and school board seats. City officials see the same history differently — as a cautionary tale about unpredictable legal exposure for jurisdictions that already did the work of reforming their elections once.
What Happens Next
With the September 30 deadline just weeks away, both sides are lobbying Newsom directly. The League of Women Voters of California and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund have urged constituents to press the governor to sign both bills before the deadline, while municipal associations continue to seek last-minute amendments. Whatever Newsom decides will shape how California’s local elections — and the legal fights over them — look heading into the 2026 midterms and beyond, at a moment when advocates say state-level protections matter more than ever.
Photo: Ken Lund / BY-SA via flickr
