Gun controls, more immigrant rights among new laws for 2014
Source: Los Angeles Times
Tighter gun controls, new rights for immigrants and a measure increasing access to abortion are among many hundreds of California laws that take effect with the new year.
Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature also restricted the controversial oil-drilling technique known as fracking and allowed transgender students to choose which school restrooms to use and sports teams to join, based on their gender identity.
California's willingness to address contentious policy issues, many of which have remained suspended in Washington's partisan divide, comes in the state's new era of one-party rule. Democrats hold the governor's office, every other statewide post and supermajorities in both houses of the Legislature – political dominance not seen here in more than a century.
While Congress was gridlocked on immigration issues last year, for example, Brown and state lawmakers approved more than a dozen bills on the subject.
Read more: http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-new-laws-20140101,0,7444385.story
