Despite vetoing two LGBTQ bills this legislative session, California Governor Gavin Newsom is garnering praise from LGBTQ groups for signing into law 17 other pieces of legislation expanding rights for LGBTQ individuals.

Newsom’s sign[ed] SB 107 authored by gay state Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) that protects transgender youth and their families who may face prosecution from their home states for seeking gender-affirming health care in California. A number of states, such as Texas, Alabama, and Idaho, have banned such procedures and plan to prosecute parents who allow their children to undergo them, though LGBTQ advocates are challenging the transphobic laws in the courts.

Newsom signed [three bills] September 30, the last day for him to do so. AB 2436 co-authored by Assemblymembers Rebecca Bauer-Kahan (D-Orinda) and Sabrina Cervantes (D-Corona), a lesbian mother of triplets, requires death certificates to list a decedents’ parents without referring to the parents’ gender. The change will benefit LGBTQ+ parents as they navigate estate proceedings and other matters following the death of a child.

The state’s pharmacists and pharmacy technicians will need to undergo at least one hour of culturally competent training about the concerns of LGBTQ+ patients before receiving a license under AB 2194 authored by gay Assemblymember Chris Ward (D-San Diego).

And AB 2315 by Assemblymember Dr. Joaquin Arambula (D-Fresno) requires the governing board of each community college district in California to implement a process by which students, staff, and faculty can declare an affirmed name, gender, or both name and gender identification to be used in records where legal names are not required by law. The community colleges need to be in compliance with AB 2315 commencing with the 2023-24 academic year.

Based on a tally kept by the B.A.R., Newsom signed into law 16 bills related to LGBTQ rights that lawmakers passed this year and one bill passed during the 2021 legislative session that wasn’t sent to the governor until June. That bill, SB 357 by Wiener, repealed California’s “walking while trans” loitering law.

Newsom signed two LGBTQ bills last Friday not included in EQCA’s list. Cervantes’ AB 2466 explicitly prohibits an agency that places foster children from declining to place a child with a resource family because a resource family parent identifies as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer.

The other bill was Evan Low’s AB 1432, which updates the annual proclamation California governors have issued declaring June as LGBT Pride Month to now refer to it as LGBTQ+ Pride Month.

The above comes from an Oct. 5 posting in the Bay Area Reporter, serving San Francisco’s LGBTQ community.