Just In: Gavin Newsom Just Got the Worst News of His Life
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a new privacy law for workers and volunteers who help immigrants, turning a months-long political fight over doxxing, fraud investigations and press freedom into a live legal debate — although the law will not become operative until Oct. 1, 2027.
Assembly Bill 2624, authored by Democratic Assemblymember Mia Bonta of Oakland, was approved by Newsom on Aug. 22 and filed the same day as Chapter 117 of the Statutes of 2026.
Republican opponents, led by Assemblymember Carl DeMaio of San Diego, branded the measure the “Stop Nick Shirley Act,” invoking the conservative online investigator whose viral videos have accused taxpayer-funded child-care and hospice operations of fraud or abuse.
That nickname has helped drive national attention to the legislation. But it also obscures what the final version of the law actually does.
AB 2624 does not create a general ban on filming immigration-related organizations, identifying their employees or investigating entities that receive public money. Nor does it shield an organization’s financial records, licensing history or government contracts from ordinary investigative scrutiny simply because the organization serves immigrants.
Instead, the law creates an address-confidentiality program for qualifying immigration-support workers, employees and volunteers who can document recent threats, harassment or violence connected to their work. It also creates civil and criminal restrictions on publishing certain personal information or images when the publisher acts with a specific intent tied to imminent violence or threats of violence.
That distinction is central to the dispute.
Supporters say the statute is a narrowly drawn anti-doxxing law modeled on protections California already offers to victims of domestic violence, stalking and trafficking, as well as workers in reproductive and gender-affirming health care.
Critics answer that even a law requiring harmful intent can create a chilling effect because journalists, activists and citizen investigators may face litigation over why they published a name, photograph, workplace or other identifying information.
The final text therefore sits at the intersection of two legitimate concerns: protecting people from targeted violence and preserving the ability of reporters and citizens to expose wrongdoing.
Newsom’s signature came after a largely partisan legislative fight. The Senate passed the measure 30-10 on Aug. 18, and the Assembly concurred in Senate amendments 59-19 the following day before the bill was sent to the governor.
The governor’s office announced the signing on Aug. 22 without issuing a lengthy policy explanation, listing AB 2624 among a group of bills approved that day.
Bonta described the measure as a safety law rather than a press restriction. After Newsom signed it, she said the legislation was about allowing immigrant-service providers to work without fear while preserving freedom of the press.
The law’s mechanics are more detailed than the political slogans surrounding it.
Under AB 2624, a person who provides, assists with or volunteers for designated immigration-support services may apply to the California Secretary of State for a substitute address if the person is fearful for personal or family safety because of an affiliation with a qualifying facility.
The statute defines immigration-support services broadly. The category includes legal representation and legal assistance, advocacy, case management, humanitarian relief, immigration resources and referrals, translation services, counseling and health care.
Qualifying facilities can include nonprofit offices, legal clinics, law offices, certain federally recognized immigration-service entities, accredited representative sites and health-care facilities providing covered services.
But participation is not automatic.
An applicant must document employment or volunteer status and provide evidence connected to threats, harassment or violence within the previous year. The law allows several forms of proof, including a certified statement from the facility or worker, or a qualifying restraining order issued after a noticed hearing.
Applicants must also sign a sworn statement explaining their fear for safety. Knowingly submitting false information to qualify for the program can be prosecuted as a misdemeanor.
Once certified, a participant may use a substitute address designated by the Secretary of State in many state and local public records. The Secretary of State may not release the participant’s protected address for public inspection except under specified circumstances, including a law-enforcement request, a court order or certain findings that the program was being misused.
The statute also expressly allows the Secretary of State to terminate participation when the program is used as a subterfuge to avoid detection of illegal activity or apprehension by law enforcement.
That provision is important because some opponents have portrayed AB 2624 as a mechanism that could hide suspected fraudsters from investigators.
The enacted text does not give participants immunity from police, prosecutors, regulators, auditors or court orders. It creates a substitute-address system designed to limit public disclosure of home and other sensitive addresses while preserving official access in defined circumstances.
The more controversial provisions regulate online publication.
One section bars knowingly posting the home address of a program participant, spouse or child while specifically intending to incite a third person to cause imminent great bodily harm that is likely to occur imminently, or while threatening such harm.
Another provision covers personal information or images of designated immigration-support providers, employees, volunteers and people living at the same address. Liability depends on a specific intent to incite imminent great bodily harm or to make a threat that places the targeted person in objectively reasonable fear for personal safety.
The law allows a successful plaintiff to seek injunctive or declaratory relief and, in certain circumstances, money damages of at least $4,000 and up to three times actual damages.
A separate section makes it unlawful to post covered information with the specific intent that another person imminently use it to commit a crime involving violence or a threat of violence likely to occur against the protected individual.
Those intent requirements are why it is inaccurate to say the final statute simply criminalizes publication of an immigration worker’s name, image or workplace.
A conventional investigative report identifying the executive director of a nonprofit, showing a publicly accessible office or documenting the organization’s government funding is not automatically unlawful under AB 2624. The statute requires the additional element of specific harmful intent described in the law.
At the same time, First Amendment concerns have not disappeared.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression criticized earlier versions of the bill and warned that anti-doxxing laws can be used against journalists even when the information at issue is newsworthy.
Carolyn Iodice of FIRE pointed to a dispute in New Jersey in which a public official invoked a privacy law against a local news editor who published a police official’s home address in a news report. Her concern was not that every privacy law is unconstitutional, but that litigation itself can burden legitimate reporting.
The First Amendment issue became especially significant because early versions of AB 2624 were broader and generated objections from press-freedom advocates and Republican lawmakers during committee hearings.
Bonta amended the measure several times as it moved through the Legislature. The final text repeatedly uses a specific-intent standard and focuses on imminent physical harm or objectively reasonable fear of a violent threat.
That narrowing gives supporters a stronger argument that the statute targets doxxing designed to facilitate violence rather than ordinary journalism.
Whether the final provisions survive future constitutional challenges will depend on how they are enforced. A law can be written narrowly and still create First Amendment disputes if public officials or private plaintiffs attempt to stretch it beyond its text.
DeMaio has made that possibility the core of his opposition.
He dubbed the bill the “Stop Nick Shirley Act” after Shirley became nationally known for confrontational videos examining alleged fraud at government-funded institutions.
DeMaio argues that independent investigators often rely on photographs, names, workplace information and on-camera confrontations to test whether organizations receiving taxpayer money are functioning as claimed. In his view, the risk of civil damages or criminal accusations could deter those investigations even when the journalist has no intent to facilitate violence.
Shirley has made a similar argument, saying California officials are trying to make it harder to scrutinize people he believes are committing fraud.
The political backdrop includes real fraud problems, but the relationship between those fraud cases and AB 2624 requires careful separation.
California has faced a serious hospice-fraud crisis. State and federal authorities have brought major cases involving sham providers, stolen identities and false billing.
On April 9, California Attorney General Rob Bonta — Mia Bonta’s husband — and the Department of Health Care Services announced charges against 21 suspects in a scheme involving 14 fraudulent hospice providers and approximately $267 million in improper Medi-Cal billing. State officials said the network used stolen identities to enroll people in Medi-Cal and bill for hospice services that were never provided.
The state said more than $70 million had already been recovered in coordination with state and federal law enforcement, and it highlighted a continuing moratorium on new hospice licenses and hundreds of license revocations and investigations.
Federal prosecutors announced separate charges days earlier in another Southern California health-care fraud takedown alleging more than $50 million in intended losses, including schemes involving sham hospice companies.
Those cases establish that major health-care fraud exists in California. They do not establish that AB 2624 was enacted to conceal it.
In fact, the statute covers immigration-support service workers who satisfy its eligibility criteria; it is not a general privacy shield for hospice businesses, child-care centers or organizations suspected of fraud.
Shirley’s California videos nevertheless became part of the legislative politics because he also investigated locations connected to immigrant communities and because some of his reporting focused on publicly funded services.
In April, California agencies conducted compliance reviews at a Van Nuys address featured in viral hospice videos. The Department of Health Care Services said that nearly nine out of 10 entities associated with that address could not bill Medi-Cal for hospice care because they were not licensed to do so.
That finding undercut some sweeping online claims about the specific address while not resolving the much broader problem of hospice fraud across Southern California.
The state’s own enforcement actions the following day demonstrated why both statements can be true at once: some viral allegations can overstate what the evidence shows at a particular location, while a genuine and large-scale fraud problem exists elsewhere in the same industry.
The same caution applies to Shirley’s Minnesota child-care investigation, which helped make his name central to the California bill debate.
In December 2025, Shirley published a viral video questioning whether several Somali-owned child-care centers in Minnesota were actually providing services commensurate with the public money they received through the state’s Child Care Assistance Program.
One of the most prominent locations was Quality Learning Center in Minneapolis, whose exterior sign contained the misspelling “Learing.” Shirley emphasized locked doors, limited visible activity and the large amount of public funding associated with the facility.
Minnesota’s Department of Children, Youth and Families later reported that Quality Learning Center received about $1.9 million in CCAP funds in fiscal 2025.
But later inspections complicated the fraud narrative.
State officials conducted compliance checks at nine active centers discussed in the viral video. Children were present at eight, and the ninth had not opened for the day when investigators arrived. The department said the facilities were operating as expected during those checks, although four of the centers remained under separate investigation.
CBS Minnesota similarly reported that state investigators found children at eight of the nine centers they checked. Independent news organizations also reviewed licensing records and found numerous regulatory violations at some facilities, but those violations were not themselves proof of fraud.
Quality Learning Center later closed its license effective Jan. 6, 2026. Its operators had disputed Shirley’s portrayal, saying he came when the center was not operating during its regular hours.
The Minnesota episode is relevant because it illustrates the central tension behind AB 2624.
Independent reporting and citizen investigation can expose genuine problems and trigger official scrutiny. But a viral accusation can also move faster than the evidence, producing threats and harassment before regulators or courts determine what actually happened.
California lawmakers heard testimony from immigration-support workers who said that line had already been crossed in their field.
Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, told lawmakers that her organization had received threats and that staff members had been confronted outside their workplace. Supporters argued that workers providing legal and humanitarian services should not have to expose their families’ home addresses as the price of doing that work.
Bonta said she and her own staff had also received threats during the controversy over the bill.
Those accounts help explain why the Legislature chose to extend an existing confidentiality model rather than create an entirely new system.
California’s Safe at Home program has existed for decades. It was designed to let people at risk of violence receive mail through a substitute address and keep their residence information out of many public records.
Over time, the state expanded eligibility beyond its original categories to include other people facing targeted threats, including certain health-care workers.
AB 2624 adds immigration-support personnel to that framework but does not begin accepting applications until Oct. 1, 2027.
The delayed start gives the Secretary of State time to build the new program, establish administrative procedures and prepare reporting requirements.
The law also requires annual reporting to the Legislature, including the number of applications and participants by county and allegations of misuse related to elections. A separate report due by 2030 must address program participation, mail forwarding and possible statutory improvements.
Those oversight requirements are notable because opponents have raised concerns that confidential addresses could be abused for election or legal purposes.
The statute attempts to answer that concern by allowing termination for false applications, illegal concealment or other misuse and by preserving access for law enforcement and courts.
The debate therefore should not be reduced to a choice between stopping fraud and protecting immigrants.
California can prosecute health-care fraud while also protecting threatened immigration-service workers. Journalists can investigate organizations receiving public funds while still being prohibited from intentionally publishing personal data as a tool to facilitate imminent violence.
The harder question is whether AB 2624 will remain inside those boundaries once litigation begins.
Supporters believe the final language is sufficiently precise because liability turns on specific intent and imminent harm.
Opponents believe the cost of defending against a lawsuit, combined with the difficulty of proving or disproving a publisher’s intent, could chill aggressive reporting even if the reporter ultimately wins.
That is a real constitutional issue, but it is different from saying Newsom signed a law that simply makes fraud investigations illegal.
As enacted, AB 2624 does not prohibit Shirley or another journalist from visiting a publicly accessible location, asking questions, reviewing licensing records, examining government payments or publishing evidence of suspected wrongdoing.
It does prohibit using protected personal information in ways that satisfy the law’s specific violence-related intent requirements, and it gives qualifying workers a mechanism to keep their home addresses out of many public records.
The distinction will likely determine how courts view the law if it is challenged.
For now, the verified facts are narrower than the most partisan descriptions on either side.
California does have documented fraud problems, including major hospice schemes that have produced arrests and criminal charges.
Republicans genuinely did nickname AB 2624 the “Stop Nick Shirley Act,” and free-speech advocates have raised legitimate concerns about anti-doxxing statutes being used against journalists.
But the final law is not written as a ban on investigative journalism, and Nick Shirley is not named in its text.
Its operative provisions focus on address confidentiality for workers who document threats and on publication carried out with a specific intent connected to imminent violence or threats.
That means the real test will not come from the rhetoric surrounding Newsom’s signature.
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It will come after Oct. 1, 2027, when the program begins and courts, journalists, activists and protected workers start determining where California’s new line between privacy and press freedom actually falls.
