Sacramento, Calif.- Today, Senator Lena A. Gonzalez (D- Long Beach) will chair the first in a series of Senate oversight hearings by the Special Committee on Pandemic Emergency Response since the end of the California legislative session. The oversight hearing will shed light on workplace health and safety issues during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a focus on sectors with essential workers.

As chair of the Special Committee on Pandemic Emergency Response, I will be hosting several oversight hearings over the next few months on our state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the past we have addressed key issues such as testing and contact tracing efforts, skilled nursing facility concerns and the impact of COVID-19 at the California border region. Moving forward, we will be conducting oversight hearings on the state’s management of workplace health and safety, and the inequities that exist in our education system including distance-learning disparities for our most vulnerable students and lack of internet access. 

Samuel Garrett-Pate, Equality California

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Today, Governor Newsom signed SB 1255 –The Equal Insurance HIV Act by Senator Lena Gonzalez (D- Long Beach) and the Senate Committee on Insurance. The Equal Insurance HIV Act will end the unjust practice of insurance companies discriminating against HIV-positive individuals. For more than thirty years insurers have been allowed to deny life and disability income insurance coverage based solely on a positive HIV test and this bill now signed into law is a significant step forward to reflect the advancements in medical treatments for people living with HIV and to ensure HIV positive individuals and their families have access to life and disability income insurance.