California Lawmakers Just Killed a Bill That Would Have Banned Registered Sex Offenders From Running for Office

California had no law preventing registered sex offenders from running for or holding elected office. A bill to change that was killed Tuesday in the state Senate Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee. In its place, lawmakers advanced a narrower version that explicitly excludes certain sex crimes against children from its list of disqualifying offenses.

The bill that died, AB 2753, was introduced by Assemblywoman Esmeralda Soria (D-Merced) after a registered sex offender, convicted of possessing child sexual abuse material, attempted to run for Fresno City Council earlier this year. He failed to gather enough signatures to qualify for the ballot, but the attempt exposed a gap in California law that nobody had bothered to close: nothing on the books prevented him, or anyone else on the sex offender registry, from running for office. AB 2753 would have closed it entirely, barring anyone ever required to register as a sex offender from becoming a candidate for any state or local elective office.

The committee, chaired by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), killed it. Wiener has a documented legislative history on the sex offender registry. In prior sessions, he authored legislation aimed at narrowing registration requirements for certain offenses, arguing the registry was applied too broadly in cases involving young people and consensual same-sex conduct. He now chairs the committee that just refused to advance a bill that would have kept registered sex offenders off California ballots entirely.

In place of AB 2753, the committee advanced AB 2691, authored by Assemblywoman Dawn Addis (D-Morro Bay) and branded the "Public Trust Protection Act." It adds felony sexual assault and human trafficking convictions to the list of offenses that disqualify someone from running for office. Lawmakers say it protects public trust. But the bill's text explicitly carves out certain Penal Code violations from its definition of "sexual assault," including offenses that involve minors.

The question AB 2691 leaves unanswered is a simple one: why?

California lawmakers found time to kill a bill that would have kept every registered sex offender off the ballot. They replaced it with one that, they say, protects public trust – except, apparently, in certain cases involving children.