High schoolers in California have the right to honor their community and culture by wearing cultural or tribal regalia during graduation ceremonies. 

It’s a right codified by Assembly Bill 1248, which took effect in 2019 — a year before the class of 2020 abruptly found themselves walking the length of their living rooms as graduations moved online. With COVID-19 precautions having largely fallen away, in-person graduations are back in full swing this year. 

Pleasant Grove High School graduate Louie Lopez planned to wear an eagle feather gifted from a family friend, a mortarboard beaded in a goose pattern — geese are an important Maidu creation symbol — and a ceremonial sash at his commencement. 

Lopez’s mother, Jessica Lopez, is the former chairwoman of the Konkow Valley Band of Maidu Indians and said she brought in the American Civil Liberties Union for support in late April, after the school asked her to fill out a form for her son to wear tribal regalia. She said she wasn’t made aware of the process earlier, and that the school told her she had submitted the forms too late once she filled them out. 

The district said information about requests to wear cultural regalia at graduation is provided to students and parents “beginning in late winter and continuing through to graduation.” 

“The school district went through the lengths of trying to determine, you know, whether or not he can only wear one cultural item, or the other, and at that point, they were trying to tell me that their graduation caps were not to have any adjustments made to them … and also that his eagle feather had to be the same length as the graduation cap,” she said. 

The district said the process for adding “personalized adornments” to a student’s cap and gown is designed to avoid promoting any symbols of hate speech, profanity, obscenity, drugs or alcohol. 

“At the conclusion of graduation ceremonies, a review and an analysis are conducted by district administration and principals as part of Elk Grove Unified continuous improvement efforts,” the district told CapRadio in an emailed statement. “A component of this review is addressing the District policy related to appropriate graduation attire.”

While the school eventually stepped back, with Louie Lopez being able to wear all his planned adornments, Jessica Lopez said it’s not the end of the conversation.

“It's not for them to decide what is Native culture or [what] Native [regalia are] acceptable for them … they shouldn't have that choice,” she said.

A task force — greenlit by a 2021 bill — is developing a report for best practices on implementing AB 1248. But Lopez says her son’s story is just one way the public school system has inhibited Native students' ability to celebrate themselves and their culture, following a history of education being used as a tool to force Native people to assimilate. 

For Native students, tribal regalia at graduation is a “symbol of resistance”

At a press conference last week legislators and Native community leaders came together to reaffirm students’ rights to wear tribal regalia during graduation ceremonies. Andrew Alejandre, chairman of the Paskenta Band of Nomlaki Indians, criticized the way Native culture has been viewed in schools: “This is not a decoration, nor is it a costume. It is an identity, a culture … that has meaning and history.”

“Where is the fight against those who use our traditional regalia as a costume?” Alejandre said. “Where is the fight against the schools that are still using our culture as a mascot? Where is the fight against derogatory terms against Native people?”

Native suffering has been inextricable from the American public school system: From 1819 to 1969, Native children were separated from their parents and relocated from their ancestral lands to over 400 federally-funded boarding schools across 37 American states and then-territories. Those schools ran assimilation programs meant to change Native Americans’ beliefs, identities and languages.

Three of the biggest were in California, which today has the largest Native population in the United States.

A 2022 report from the U.S. Department of the Interior found that hundreds of children also died during their time in the boarding schools, with the relocation and assimilation policies having “contributed to the loss of … life, physical and mental health, territories and wealth, Tribal and family relations and use of Tribal languages.” 

Tedde Simon is the Indigenous Justice Advocate for the ACLU and said at the press conference that the phenomenon reflected the United States’ government’s use of “the school setting as a tool of genocide.”

“Their hair was cut, their clothing was taken, their names were changed, they were prevented from wearing [Indigenous clothing], from speaking their indigenous languages,” Simon told CapRadio in a separate call. “And these ‘schools’ were intended to be places where Indigeneity would be removed from students scrubbed as their Indigenous identities.”

While federal boarding schools no longer exist, a variety of factors continue to impact Native students’ experience in public schools: 24% of Native students attend rural schools, which tend to have fewer resources, and over 20% of Native students reported having been suspended at least once in their life. There’s a lack of Native representation among teaching ranks, too.

There has also been a lack of accuracy in representing Native culture: California’s widely-assigned “mission project” — usually taught in fourth grade — emphasized the construction of mission structures over explaining mission experiences, like Native Americans having been pushed to convert to Catholicism, then being forced to work at the missions after conversion. In 2021, California ranked among the states with the most secondary schools using Native mascots.

In light of the violence public schools have enacted against Native students, Simon told CapRadio that for Native students especially, graduation is a “momentous time for an entire community to celebrate.”

“It’s not just about a specific, individual Indigenous student who has made it to high school graduation, but it’s about this family and community that has supported that student to be Indigenous, and celebrate their Indigenity at high school graduation,” she said. 

The Native American Rights Fund notes that every year, graduates across the country have requested legal support to ensure they can wear an eagle feather during their graduation — a protected right under freedom of religious expression. 

She added that Native children having the right to wear their tribal regalia during graduation isn’t just an affirmation of their Indigenous existence.

“Wearing regalia — for many students — is a symbol of resistance,” Simon said, “and one’s right as Indigenous students reclaiming the right to an education that honors their culture and heritage instead of one that is seeking to erase and destroy it.” 

Task force created by California legislation aims to educate the educators 

The task force’s creation follows years of legislative discussion and precedent — even before high school graduates won the right to wear cultural and tribal regalia through AB 1248, there were cases like Titman v. Clovis in 2015, in which a Clovis High School student sued for the right to wear an eagle feather at his graduation. 

And in 2017, AB 1248’s precursor — AB 233 — made it to the governor’s desk before it was vetoed. 

Then-Governor Jerry Brown said, “To the extent that there is a dispute about what a student can wear at school graduation ceremonies, I believe those closest to the problem — principals and democratically elected school boards — are in the best position to make wise judgments.”

The current law passed the following year. In 2022, Assembly member James Ramos, a member of the Serrano/Cahuilla tribe, authored a legislative mechanism meant to ensure Native students wouldn’t have to litigate their rights to wear regalia. 

It created a ten-person task force to create best practices for enforcing AB 1248, with the group mandated to submit a report to the legislature with its recommendations by April 1 of this year. 

Heather Hossler, the executive director of California Indian Legal Services and a member of the Hoopa Valley tribe, said during last week’s press conference that the task force must “identify the abuse of administrative discretion that's being exercised.” 

“Schools should never be in the position to put requirements on what type of tribal regalia is acceptable,” Hossler said. “If schools intend to exercise their discretion, there must be transparent standards with minimal burdens, or restrictions that promote and do not thwart A.B. 1248’s goals.” 

In an emailed statement, the Elk Grove Unified School Board President Nancy Chaires Espinoza said she was “proud of our district for adopting policies far more expansive than what state law requires, in consultation with our Native American Education Program, Native American Parent Advisory Council, and local tribal leaders.”

“Through this collaboration, we will continue to address any issues that Native students and parents bring to us,” her statement reads. 

The district adopted a policy allowing for students to wear cultural or tribal regalia at graduation in 2017 and said it updated that policy to reflect the state’s language once AB 1248 was passed in 2018. 

“Having celebrated several more graduations so far, we are very proud of how our students have honored their culture and their identity by wearing a wide variety of personal and cultural regalia,” the district said. 

But Jessica Lopez says she hopes Elk Grove Unified will remove its regalia permission form entirely — that it’s not about a process, but the ask for permission itself that’s the problem. 

“They’re violating that law, then they’re not protecting our students,” she said. “Even though my son’s already crossed the stage, what about the next kid, or the next kid?”

And she’s looking to see how the task force will hold administrators accountable for learning how best to support Native students in their districts.

“If you are not properly educating your principals, or your school administrators, on laws that affect your students, then you're doing an injustice to your schools that you represent in your district,” she said. 

David Soohoo is, first and foremost, a chef. Over the course of decades, he’s owned and run a variety of Sacramento restaurants, like Bamboo and Ming Palace. One lesson he’s learned: It takes more than skillful cooking to succeed. His work also requires a knack for adaptation. 

“Life is a challenge,” he said. “And the thing about being a chef is it has never been easy, so I welcome that challenge.” 

He learned that first from his dad, a Cantonese master chef who opened Sacramento’s original Tea Cup Cafe in the early 1950s. At the restaurant, they had gas stovetops that burned hot enough to make food in a wok, which traditionally requires flame. But at home, their stove was much less powerful. 

So, they got creative. Soohoo said his dad took their cracked, gas-powered water heater, drained it and sawed it in half. Then, he used its burner as a stovetop. 

“That burner actually was incredibly hot,” said Soohoo. “You put your wok in there and you can do everything a restaurant can do. That's the way we adapted, and it was unknown…outside of the Chinese community.”

Now, Soohoo said home cooks and chefs like himself are readying themselves for a fast-approaching future without gas. As part of its goal to reach carbon neutrality by 2045, California is working to cut emissions in all parts of life, including the kitchen. 

Matt Botill, chief of the Industrial Strategies Division at the California Air Resources Board, said the agency has set a state target for residential appliance sales to be all-electric by 2045. He said this transition helps the state along its journey to cut emissions and with that, improves both indoor and outdoor air quality.

“It's really important that we cut down on our natural gas use and that we don't expand the gas infrastructure so that we're not creating more natural gas demand in the state,” he said. 

On a more local scale, dozens of cities have adopted plans for electrification. Some, like Sacramento, have passed ordinances to ban the installation of gas in new buildings alongside local efforts to electrify existing homes. 

As these efforts gain traction, they’ve sparked nationwide debate over one appliance in particular: stoves. Many advocates of electrification point to research on the negative health impacts associated with their use and concerns that aging gas appliances will only create more problems in the future. Others say they’re not willing to let gas stovetops go, because other options just aren’t as efficient.

Katie Valenzuela is a city councilmember who worked on Sacramento’s electrification ordinance. She said the change is more than a technological one. For many, it’s cultural, and deeply personal. 

“There is a concern about how … you adapt those practices that were passed down from prior generations to this new technology,” she said. 

It’s a tricky issue, Soohoo said. He’s worried about a transition that could unintentionally leave cultural cooking styles like his own behind; after all, he’s not the first chef to share concerns about how electrification could impact the wok. But he’s also deeply invested in shaping the future.

“You adapt,” he said. “That’s the best you can do.” 

The culture of gas

Decades ago, electric stovetops were popular in California households, but that’s changed over the years. A 2020 survey found 70% use gas stoves in the state, a number that’s much higher than the nationwide average of 38%. 

This can be partially blamed on successful campaigns led by gas industry leaders to popularize them. But many chefs have also found that these stovetops are more reliable in achieving high heat – especially in a restaurant setting. 

“You know, for a full service restaurant, you do 200 covers a night,” said Billy Ngo, the owner of a few Sacramento restaurants including Kru, which mainly focuses on sushi. “You can't cook on an electric stove for 200 people in a four and half hour service.”

On top of Soohoo’s concerns, Ngo said he’s worried about what summertime blackouts could mean for an all-electric kitchen. He also said sales for cold dishes like sushi tend to decline in the winter, so his restaurant relies on selling hot food to bridge that financial gap.  

For home cooks, gas and electric stoves pose a different set of problems. In online forums and news pieces about electrification, you can find dozens of questions about the differences between cooking on electric and gas stoves. Soohoo said some of these questions boil down to differences in cultural styles of cooking, which require different kinds of heat. 

“For Western cooking, European cooking, because you're working with butter and you're working with sauces … you don't need that much heat,” he said. 

In other styles of cooking, like in many Asian and Latin American dishes, he said you’re dealing with vegetables and meats that have been cut into smaller pieces. It makes these dishes particularly “energy frugal,” he said, because they’re cooked quickly with the help of high heat. 

“Even the breads are flat,” he said. “This way you have more surface.” 

As the city of Sacramento chips away at local electrification efforts, Valenzuela said she’s become familiar with these conversations.

“There's a lot of pros to it, but it is different,” she said of electrification. “How do we make that accessible to people so that people can get there and understand it? You need to have that ongoing technical assistance available, and that has to be an investment.” 

She said she’s seen some electrification programs that allow people to opt out of replacing their gas stoves if they’re not interested. But she’s worried about what that means for them, especially as the state moves forward with its goal to phase out gas appliances. 

“Particularly in older neighborhoods where those lines are older, there will need to be a lot of improvements made to those lines to keep them safe in general,” she said. “Then what we're doing is we're putting the onus on that household to figure that out in the future, and that's not equitable either.”

Researchers looking at gas stoves have linked them to a vast array of health concerns like respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. One UCLA study found these stoves are a major cause of indoor air pollution and disproportionately impact people of color, who are already more likely to live in polluted areas. 

Yifang Zhu, a UCLA researcher and an author of the study, said it’s often a compounding issue for communities of color. 

“They are already disproportionately experiencing poor housing conditions, including old and unmaintained gas appliances,” she said. “Those devices tend to emit more pollution as compared to the newer ones.”  

If people are going to move away from these devices, Valenzuela said, it’s important to come at them with more than just the science. 

“We want to engage the communities first,” she said. “Not just because you need to understand those barriers and those concerns from the beginning [but] so you can design a program to meet their needs.”  

At home, and at restaurants 

All over California, cities are considering this transition on a local scale. Sacramento passed an ordinance that kicked into gear this year, requiring newly constructed residential and commercial buildings that are up to three-stories tall be all electric. 

But just like similar efforts in other municipalities, Sacramento’s ordinance allows for some exemptions. An exemption can be offered, for example, if a developer proves it’s infeasible for a project to be all-electric, whether due to high costs or the unavailability of certain technologies. 

Valenzuela said these exemptions can also apply to parts of a building where the developer intends to host a restaurant. As a whole, she said the ordinance is limited in its impacts. 

“It's a very narrow interpretation,” she said. “It will mean that most new residential buildings will likely not have gas, but I think in all practicality it means that most mixed development buildings, like what we're seeing in downtown, in Midtown, will probably have gas anyways.” 

Outside of new construction, there are also efforts to electrify already-existing homes, but they’re still operating on a smaller scale. Despite the frenzy of concerns that have accompanied these efforts, Valenzuela said there’s a lot more work to be done before major changes can happen. 

A lot of that, Valenzuela said, will come down to how cities work with their residents and how they “show people what this could look like so that it’s successful,” which could mean anything from group cooking classes to regular meetings. 

In the past few years, Soohoo has played a bigger role in the transition himself. He took part in shaping Sacramento’s electric buildings ordinance as a restaurant industry representative. He’s also led classes teaching residents how to cook effectively with electric woks over the years and is considering bringing them back because of all the questions he’s seen arise in conversations about electrification. 

Long before these issues became popular, he said he had to figure this out on his own. He remembers buying an electric wok back in the eighties, when he first noticed the pan gaining mainstream popularity among Western consumers in the United States. 

But there was a problem: The wok still didn’t get hot enough. He’s kept the electric wok that he bought decades ago at home. It’s a good example of the problems he’s faced in the quest to find a way to do electric wok cooking well. 

“Since they don't really ask Chinese chefs, they make this thing shut down at 400 degrees, 425 maybe,” he said. “And what happens is just when I need the energy, it turns off on me.” 

So, Soohoo took after his dad. He tampered with the electric wok, allowing it to heat up to a higher temperature than it had been manufactured to reach. He told students in his cooking classes about his adaptations, too. 

“What I always do is I take this thermostat and I short it out, simple as that,” he said. “I open it up and I short it so it never shuts off, so it generates enough [heat] for home.”

Soohoo said he still has a lot of questions and doubts that a majority of restaurants can successfully make the transition anytime soon. But he sees the move away from gas cooking at home as a little more straightforward. 

For now, at least, he said it’s important to learn from the ways in which communities like his own have adapted — and with that, take those lessons into California’s energy future. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom claimed during his State of the State address on Tuesday that his administration has confronted California’s homelessness crisis and made significant progress.  

Local government officials and community advocates have praised Newsom for making homelessness a top state priority. But they also say more progress is needed to help the tens of thousands of Californians living without a permanent home. 

PolitiFact California examined Newsom’s claims and added important context.

Newsom’s claim: The homelessnesss crisis “has worsened over the last decade, not only here in California, but across the nation.”

There’s no argument about California’s worsening problem, but the second part of Newsom’s statement about the rest of the nation needs some explaining. The most recent federal count from January 2020 found California had 161,000 homeless people. That was a 7% increase from the year before and was by far the largest total in the nation. 

Results of this year’s homelessness count will be released this spring. They are widely expected to show the state’s unhoused population has again increased. Researchers say the pandemic and California’s continued lack of affordable housing are likely driving those numbers up. 

Looking at data from 2007 through 2020, the state’s homeless population increased 16%, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Newsom is correct that homelessness has gotten worse in other parts of the country, as well, during that time. Massachusetts, Washington D.C. and New York have also struggled with rising numbers.

But that’s not the story in all states. Florida, Texas, Georgia, New Jersey and Illinois all reduced their homeless populations by one-third or more over the past decade, according to the federal data. 

Newsom’s claim: “And while we moved a record 58,000 people off the streets since the beginning of the pandemic, we recognize we have more to do.”

The governor was referring to projects Roomkey and Homekey, both initiated by his administration during the pandemic. Roomkey has sheltered approximately 50,000 of California’s older and medically-vulnerable homeless residents in hotels and motels during the worst of the pandemic, according to the state Department of Social Services. 

Homekey, a longer-term homeless housing initiative, has housed about 8,000 people in hotels and motels that were purchased by cities and counties and refurbished to add kitchenettes.

So while Newsom claimed 58,000 people were moved off the streets, that doesn’t mean everyone went to long-term housing. In fact, tens of thousands of those unhouse people still don’t have permanent homes.

State data show a majority of Roomkey participants have gone on to either housing or shelter. That includes 22% who were connected with permanent housing and 35% who went on to temporary housing or congregate shelter. 

Another 18% went to unknown destinations and 10% to institutions including jails or medical centers. The remaining 15% went back to unsheltered homelessness, the figures show.

“Our goal is to always connect people with permanent housing. We’re not always successful,” Jason Elliott, Newsom’s top advisor on homelessness, told CapRadio after the speech. “Sometimes people return to the streets, sometimes they return to congregate shelters. But we’re very proud of the rehousing rates.” 

An estimated 7,500 people still live at Roomkey motel and hotel rooms across the state. Counties from San Diego to Sacramento have begun phasing out the program this winter, citing its high cost and the end of state and federal funds to pay for it. 

Newsom’s claim: “We recognize we have more to do — particularly to address what’s happening on our sidewalks reaching people who need help the most. Those with schizophrenia spectrum, and psychosis disorders many self-medicating with drugs or alcohol addictions. That’s precisely what our encampment resolution grants, and our new CARE Court, seek to address.”

The governor’s plan would authorize civil court judges to order people with severe mental illness or a substance use disorder into treatment programs for up to a year. Family members, first responders or homeless service providers could refer people to be considered for treatment. 

Newsom’s proposal has already provoked debate. Some community advocates say it could violate civil rights and criminalize homelessnesss. Meanwhile, the plan has the support of a group of big city mayors from Sacramento to San Diego. 

In a roundtable meeting last week, the mayors said the CARE Courts have the potential to repair what they called California’s broken mental health system. Several said the system currently sends homeless people with mental illnesses to psychiatric centers and then back out onto the streets within days, noting no government agency is required to address their long-term needs.  

Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said the status quo needs to change. 

“Why when it comes to providing treatment for people living in squalor on our streets is it a voluntary and optional act of government? I don’t get it,” he said. 

Newsom’s advisors say while it would affect many people living on the streets, those with shelter could also be referred for treatment.

The CARE Court program would have to be approved by the Legislature. Newsom is asking lawmakers to include it in the state budget, which would allow it to take effect as soon as July.

For at least the next two weeks, California schoolchildren will remain masked in classrooms — but officials say changes are likely on the horizon.

Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said Monday that he “anticipates” changes to the state’s longstanding school mask requirements on Feb. 28.

“Parents should not hear that we aren’t making a move,” Ghaly said. “We are taking a little bit more time to consider the information, work with our partners across the state to make sure that when the move is made, we are doing it successfully and with communities empowered to continue to be safe.”

Ghaly touted the continued use of masks in California schools as part of the state’s “science-driven approach” to combating the pandemic and keeping classrooms safe. 

Meanwhile, several states — Oregon, New Jersey, Connecticut and Delaware — recently announced plans to lift their indoor mask mandates in March, which will also include schools. 

And in recent weeks, school districts have announced different plans for when to unmask students as health experts have been divided over whether the school mask mandate should continue.

Here’s what we know.

Why not unmask now?

Ghaly’s announcement follows a 72% decline in California’s test positivity rate from the peak of the surge caused by the omicron variant in mid-January.

Dr. John Swartzberg, a clinical professor emeritus of infectious diseases and vaccinology at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health, said that rapid drop is expected to continue.

“Predicting the future of COVID is really dangerous because it's impossible to do that,” he said. “That said, I will predict the short term future looks very positive, and that is not only will we drive the cases way down, but I think they're going to stay down for a little while until there's some new perturbation of the pandemic — for example, a new variant.”

The omicron peak was immense, with well over 100,000 cases in California each day several times in January. Despite the dramatic drop in test positivity, Swartzberg says California is a few weeks away from the end of the omicron surge. Right now, case numbers are still above where they were during last summer’s peak.

“We still have an awful lot of virus in our community,” Swartzberg said.

Dr. Glenn Rosenbluth, a professor of pediatrics at UCSF, said the omicron surge means many Californians are now immune “as a result of vaccination, infection or both.” Still, vaccination rates among children are low. Currently, 70% of the state’s total population is fully vaccinated, but the vaccination rate for kids between 5 and 11 years old is just 28%.

“I’m concerned about the overall lower rates of completed vaccination series in children, including the unvaccinated youngest children,” Rosenbluth said. “Some of these children have immunity from infection. However, many are still at-risk of infection, including bringing infections home to at-risk adults.”

Ghaly indicated that case numbers and low vaccination rates for kids are one reason why public health officials are hesitant to unmask now. He also said schools and local communities need time to prepare for a change to the state’s masking rules for students.

“This is not a decision that we take lightly,” Ghaly said. “It is not a hasty one.”

What will schools do?

While state officials keep the school mask mandate in place, districts can add additional requirements, like asking students to wear KN95 or N95 masks instead of cloth coverings. But they cannot impose lighter restrictions without running the risk of ending up in court. 

Nevertheless, some schools have announced that they plan to stop enforcing the mask mandate within their hallways this week. Some students and parents have also protested mandates. For instance, in the Inland Empire, several schools have seen students refusing to don face coverings in the past week.

The Roseville Joint Union High School District in Placer County last week passed a “mask optional” policy that takes effect on Tuesday.

On Monday, Ghaly shot that idea down.

“A district like Roseville, they’re in the state of California, so the state requirements apply,” Ghaly said. “I think that will be an important point to make not just here, but for other efforts that we’ve used throughout this pandemic and may need to use down the road as well."

Other districts may continue to require students to be masked, even if the state changes its rules in coming weeks. Dr. Lisa Santora, one of Marin County’s top health officials, said last week that she expects indoor masking to stay until at least March.

“We know that in some pockets of California there will be a decision to maintain something even beyond when the state makes a decision to change,” Ghaly said. “And in other parts it will be an immediate change. We’ve always let local conditions be an important driver in determinations.”

How cautious is too cautious?

Swartzberg with UC Berkeley says he is nervous about relaxing mask mandates too quickly. He points to what happened in October, when officials loosened restrictions on masks for indoor gatherings and capacity limits at large events. Cases never fully died down, which Swartzberg said gave the omicron variant a “higher baseline level” for the most recent surge.

“I think if the goal of these mandates is to keep people safe, to keep significant morbidity and mortality as low as possible, then the prudent public health policy would be to continue these mandates until the numbers are way, way down,” he said.

On Monday, Ghaly said numbers are trending in the right direction. Since Jan. 14, the state’s test positivity rate is down from 22.9% to 6.2%, hospitalizations have decreased by nearly 41% and cases have dropped more than 75%.

Still, other experts have advocated for the school mask mandate to lift entirely. Several doctors signed an open letter published last month calling on Gov. Gavin Newsom and other state officials to make masking optional in schools. An associated petition had received more than 50,000 signatures as of Monday.

Doctors in favor of loosening the mandate for children note that children are at the lowest risk of serious illness from the omicron variant and argue that the costs of masking outweigh the public health benefits.

Dr. Jeanne Noble, an associate professor of emergency medicine and director of COVID-19 response for the UCSF Emergency Department, applauded California’s public health response in 2020, when little was known about the virus. But Noble, one of the doctors who signed the open letter, said in an interview with KCBS on Feb. 5 that the state needs to reevaluate interventions like masking for kids.

“They are trying to learn,” Noble said. “They are trying to learn language, they are trying to learn to interpret complex facial expressions. They have the most harm from the masks and the least benefit, so we want them first in line.”

A recent study from the CDC showed that mask usage greatly reduces the risk of getting and transmitting COVID-19. Wearing a cloth mask in the study lowered the risk of testing positive by 56%, and wearing a KN95 or N95, the most protective masks, lowered the risk by 83%.

Swartzberg and Rosenbluth both said that there’s weak evidence that masking significantly impacts child development and learning, noting that kids growing up in societies where it is common for adults to cover their faces still learn language and social cues.

“Kids adapt much better than we give them credit for,” Rosenbluth said. “I’m much more concerned about illness, whether of child or their caregiver, impacting children’s development.”

But Swartzberg also acknowledged that masks cannot stay on forever. He said his recommendation is to keep masks on kids only until the omicron surge has fully died down.

“We're talking about weeks,” he said. “If the trajectory of the descent continues where it is in California and in the Bay Area, we may be two weeks away from that, we may be three weeks away from that. So I think we're right about there anyway.”

What’s next?

State officials will take the next two weeks to see if case numbers continue to fall and watch vaccination rates among school-age children. Then, they will give parents, students and schools another update on Feb. 28.

Ghaly anticipates that the state will lay out a timetable for changes to school masking rules during that update. He hinted at moving toward a more localized strategy of masking requirements, allowing counties and school districts to determine their own guidelines.

Until then, masks are still required at California schools.

Sources

• California Department of Public Health YouTube, CalHHS Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly Provides Update on COVID-19 in California, Feb. 14, 2022
• NPR, Four states announce they’re dropping mask mandates for schools, Feb. 7, 2022
• Interview with John Swartzberg, clinical professor emeritus of infectious diseases and vaccinology at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health, Feb. 13, 2022
• Email interview with Glenn Rosenbluth, professor of pediatrics at UCSF, Feb. 14, 2022
• California Department of Public Health, Tracking COVID-19 in California, Feb. 14, 2022
• California Department of Public Health, Vaccination data, Feb. 14, 2022
• The Press Enterprise, Students defy school mask mandate in Inland Empire, Feb. 10, 2022
• ABC 10, ‘Mask choice’: Roseville school district going mask optional Feb. 15 despite K-12 mandate, Feb. 10, 2022
• CalMatters, California to loosen some mandates – and rethink school mask rules, Feb. 8, 2022
• Marin Independent Journal, Marin schools’ COVID masking rules to persist, Feb. 9, 2022
• Change.org, Post-Omicron Pivot for California Public Schools
• Centers for Disease Control, Effectiveness of Face Mask or Respirator Use in Indoor Public Settings for Prevention of SARS-CoV-2 Infection, Feb. 11, 2022
• KCBS, In Bay Area's COVID response, how cautious is too cautious?, Feb. 5, 2022

Moments after Gov. Gavin Newsom announced plans last month to mandate COVID-19 vaccination for all California schoolchildren, a graph often used to share misleading narratives on vaccinations started spreading across social media. 

“This is the chart [for] 6-17 year olds for ALL VACCINES for all reactions over 30 years ... and @GavinNewsom says the covid vaccine is the same as all the others,” the tweet in early October, from a poster who does not appear to live in California, read.

The tweet was shared more than 250 times. Screenshots quickly made their way to Facebook, where one poster urged parents to “follow the science” and “ask the questions.”

“They don't want people to know they are using our kids as science experiments,” one commenter wrote on the post.

Reacting to the post on Twitter, one commenter falsely described the vaccine as “a bioweapon.” In fact, the COVID-19 vaccines have undergone rigorous safety testing and federal health officials say they are safe and effective. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention graph includes unverified reports submitted by the general public to the federal government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System database, dating back to 1990 for children ages six to 17. The chart spikes in 2021, with more than 22,000 reports logged at the time screenshots of the CDC graph were shared on social media in early October.

It’s a real graph produced by the CDC. But does it prove COVID-19 vaccinations are unsafe for children, as the social media posts suggest?

With the CDC recommending this week that all children ages 5 through 11 get a low-dose COVID-19 vaccine, PolitiFact California decided to find out.

What Is VAERS?

The VAERS database was established in 1990 and is run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the agency that conducts public health research and issues guidance, and the Food and Drug Administration, which is tasked with monitoring new medications.

Researchers use it to collect data and assess vaccine safety. They analyze  database reports to identify after-effects in new vaccines, find patient risk factors and monitor existing vaccinations. When dealing with severe adverse events, staff members may follow-up with reporting parties and ask for the patient’s medical records to learn more about what happened. 

Healthcare providers and vaccine manufacturers are mandated to report adverse events to the database. But VAERS is open to everyone, so many reports also come from the public. The CDC encourages people to report adverse events after vaccination to the database, “even if it is not clear that the vaccine caused the adverse event.”

Because of this, the database website cautions that VAERS data should be interpreted with these limitations in mind.

“The number of reports alone cannot be interpreted or used to reach conclusions about the existence, severity, frequency, or rates of problems associated with vaccines,” the VAERS website states.

The Graph

There have been approximately 24,000 reports to the database so far this year. But those reports are not just for children who received a COVID-19 vaccination. 

The graph shows reports tied to all childhood vaccines, so some are not related to COVID-19 vaccinations. Still, most of the reports — about 22,000 — cite a COVID-19 shot.

Experts say there are a variety of reasons why that number might be so high. Dean Blumberg, chief of pediatric infectious diseases at UC Davis Children’s Hospital in Sacramento, said as vaccine hesitancy has risen in recent years, reports to the database have gone up.

“When a new vaccine comes out and the anti-vaccine lobby starts to attack it, then there is a spike in VAERS reports,” Blumberg said. “We saw this most dramatically with HPV vaccine approval and all the pushback against the manufacturer trying to push through school mandates in many states. And it seems reasonable to expect the same with COVID vaccines, especially considering how everything related to COVID has become politicized.”

Blumberg also said publicity and media coverage drive reports to the database.

“There is more awareness to report any possible vaccine reactions,” he said. “Anyone can make a report, medical professionals or parents.”

David Lo, a professor of biomedical sciences and senior associate dean of research at UC Riverside’s School of Medicine, stressed that the large number of reports does not mean COVID-19 vaccines are harmful.

“Any drug or vaccine is continually monitored for safety,” Lo said. “The safety profile of vaccines continues to be very strong, and testing and monitoring are especially rigorous.”

Vaccine Testing

To be approved for children, COVID-19 vaccines have to go through a lengthy process. After initial research and development, vaccinations are tested in humans in three phases, each with an increasing number of people.

Currently, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is the only COVID-19 vaccination approved for children under the age of 16. In October, the FDA granted it emergency use authorization. That means it followed an expedited process to approval because of the public health emergency the pandemic triggered. But it doesn’t mean the process skipped important steps or ignored safety measures. For emergency use authorization, vaccines must  meet the FDA’s standards for safety, effectiveness and manufacturing quality.

Pfizer-BioNTech submitted a study of 2,264 subjects to the FDA before receiving approval for its vaccine to be used in 12 to 15-year-olds. About half of the study participants received the vaccine and half received a placebo.

Among study participants that received the vaccine, the immune response against COVID-19 was at least as high as that of young adults, and adverse effects were also comparable to older age groups. The most common symptoms were fatigue, fever, headache, chills and injection-site pain, which usually occurred after participants received the second dose of the vaccine. 

Out of the roughly 1,100 people who received the vaccine in the study, five serious adverse events were reported, but all were determined to be unrelated to the vaccination.

“These serious adverse events encompassed medical events occurring at a frequency similar to that in the general population aged 12–15 years, with none considered to be related to vaccination,” the study reads. “No specific safety concerns were identified among adolescent vaccine recipients.”

Two months after the study, none of the vaccinated participants had gotten ill with COVID-19. Eighteen of the people in the placebo group had contracted the virus.

Pfizer recently completed a similar study of 5 to 11-year-old children, and received emergency use authorization in young children from the FDA earlier this week. That decision was affirmed by the CDC on Tuesday evening, clearing the way for children to begin receiving shots.

The study of more than 4,600 children worldwide showed more than 90% protection against symptomatic COVID-19 among young children, who will receive one-third the dose of adults. In the trial, young children were less likely to experience side effects like fever than older children, teenagers and adults. Lo said the “hard facts” of the Pfizer studies, particularly the results that show the vaccine’s effectiveness, should assure parents that the shot is safe for children and motivate them to get their kids vaccinated.

Concerns have been raised about the COVID-19 vaccine’s connection to young people developing myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle.

NPR reported the CDC has confirmed 877 cases of myocarditis after administration of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine in people age 30 or younger, but there have been no deaths, said Dr. Matthew Oster, who studies myocarditis for the CDC and is a pediatric cardiologist at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. He explained that COVID-19 itself can cause MIS-C, a type of myocarditis, and other heart-related issues.

"The bottom line is getting COVID, I think, is much riskier to the heart than getting this vaccine," Oster said.

Our Ruling

The initial tweet and subsequent Facebook posts suggested that COVID-19 vaccines are not safe for children and displayed a graph of data from the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.

The VAERS database is intended to collect data on adverse events after vaccination that may or may not be linked to the vaccine a person received. Experts analyze and verify those reports to identify trends in after-effects and patient risk factors, as well as monitor vaccines that have been available for decades. The database includes a disclaimer that says the number of reports about a specific vaccine should not be used to draw conclusions about vaccine safety.

Experts say that as the anti-vaccination movement has grown in recent years, the database has seen increasing numbers of misleading reports. More publicity of the database has also contributed to more people reporting adverse events.

Experts say COVID-19 vaccinations are tested rigorously and monitored as they are released to the public. Furthermore, scientific studies of thousands of children have determined that serious adverse events after vaccination are rare and that vaccinations are effective against COVID-19.

While the graph is a real representation of reports submitted to VAERS, the social media posts have greatly distorted its meaning and falsely suggested that the COVID-19 vaccines are harmful for children. Therefore, we rate the posts Mostly False.

MOSTLY FALSE – The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.

Sources:

Facebook post, Oct. 10, 2021

Twitter post, Oct. 1, 2021

PolitiFact, Federal VAERS database is a critical tool for researchers, but a breeding ground for misinformation, May 3, 2021

Office of the Governor, California Becomes First State in Nation to Announce COVID-19 Vaccine Requirements for Schools, Oct. 1, 2021

CNN, 5- to 11-year-olds can now get a Covid-19 vaccine in the US, Nov. 2, 2021

Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, About VAERS

Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, VAERS Data

Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Emergency Use Authorization for Vaccines Explained

U.S. Food and Drug Administration, FDA Vaccine Facts: The Path for Vaccines from Research to FDA Approval

Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices’ Interim Recommendation for Use of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine in Adolescents Aged 12–15 Years — United States, May 2021, May 21, 2021

Pfizer, Pfizer and BioNTech submit initial data to the U.S. FDA from pivotal trial of COVID-19 vaccine in children 5 to <12 years of age, Sept. 28, 2021

Email interview with Dean Blumberg, chief of pediatric infectious diseases at UC Davis Children’s Hospital, Oct. 19, 2021

Email interview with David Lo, professor of biomedical sciences and senior associate dean of research at UC Riverside’s School of Medicine, Oct. 18, 2021

When the Culver City Unified School District announced in August it would require all eligible students to be vaccinated against COVID-19, the announcement was met with overwhelming support from the surrounding Los Angeles County community.

But as other schools across California have announced similar mandates in recent weeks, questions have emerged about whether individual districts can legally require public schoolchildren to receive COVID-19 shots, spurring opposition.

The Los Angeles Unified School District saw protesters when its board voted to mandate COVID-19 shots for students over 12 years of age on Sept. 9. The vote led to claims online that the district did not have the legal authority to require vaccinations. Last week, a crowd of parents holding signs with slogans like “My child, my choice” gathered outside a high school in Glendale, even though the school currently has no COVID-19 vaccination mandate in place for pupils.

Experts say previous legal rulings indicate that schools can generally mandate vaccinations for students and employees. But in California, where the state Legislature has already passed laws on student vaccination mandates, it’s unclear how much latitude districts might have to require schoolchildren to get the shot.

Legal scholars expect that the courts will have to work out the details. In the meantime, here’s what we know.

Constitutional Challenges

Leslie Jacobs, a professor of constitutional law at McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento and director of the Capital Center for Law & Policy, said legal scholars “always” expect to see constitutional challenges to vaccine mandates.

But in the case of school vaccination mandates, she said those challenges “should not be strong” and are unlikely to succeed in court given past rulings.

“Religious liberty shouldn't be a winner constitutionally and bodily integrity — ‘I can't have a shot in my body’ — should also not be a winner constitutionally,” Jacobs said.

Government entities like schools and the U.S. Army have historically been able to require vaccinations based on legal precedent set by Jacobson v. Massachusetts in 1905.

At the time, Massachusetts law empowered local health boards to enforce mandatory, free vaccinations for adults if it was deemed crucial to the health and safety of the surrounding community. Adults who refused to get vaccinated faced a $5 fine.

During a smallpox outbreak in 1902, the city of Cambridge mandated the vaccination of all of its residents. One resident, Henning Jacobson, refused, sparking a case that eventually went before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The court upheld the vaccination requirement. That decision firmly established the power of states and other government entities to enforce compulsory vaccinations in the interest of public health, according to legal scholars.

"A community has the right to protect itself against an epidemic of disease which threatens the safety of its members," Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote in the majority opinion in the case.

California’s Current Vaccination Laws

Vaccinations for California schoolchildren are currently regulated by Senate Bill 277, which passed in June 2015. The legislation was prompted by an outbreak of measles at Disneyland in 2014 that ultimately infected more than 150 people from eight different states, Mexico and Canada.

For decades, California has mandated vaccinations against measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, hepatitis B, influenza type B, polio, whooping cough, tetanus and chickenpox. But passage of the law removed personal belief exemptions, giving California one of the toughest vaccination mandates in the nation. Without a medical exemption, the only way parents could opt out of vaccinating their children was to home-school them or enroll them in an independent study program without classroom instruction. 

The legislation also included several options for adding vaccinations to the mandated list. The state Legislature could pass a new statute or amend the law at any time, opting to add a new vaccination with or without a personal belief exemption.

Alternatively, a clause in the law allowed the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) to mandate new vaccines, taking into consideration advice from health experts. But if a vaccination is added to the schedule in this way, the legislation stipulates that personal belief exemptions must be offered to parents and students.

The law raises several legal concerns for school districts currently mandating COVID-19 vaccinations for students. Dorit Reiss, a professor of law at UC Hastings in San Francisco and a member of the Vaccine Working Group on Ethics and Policy, said the law can be interpreted as a minimum standard that schools must follow and noted that one clause in the legislation gives districts “broad authority” to act in ways that do not conflict with the law.

However, Reiss said legal challenges could stem from the fact that state law does not lay out any sort of formal process for individual districts to add vaccination requirements.

“The argument is that because the state has extensively regulated this area, the state has occupied it, and districts cannot deviate from state law at will,” Reiss said. “The broad school immunization law covers it, and there is no room for local action.”

Ultimately, it’s unclear where courts will land on the issue. Jacobs said schools mandating COVID-19 vaccinations are “pushing the envelope” legally.

Will More California Schools Mandate COVID-19 Vaccinations?

So far, just a handful of California school districts have mandated COVID-19 shots for students. 

Culver City and Los Angeles Unified are the two largest districts to do so in Southern California. Neither are currently offering personal belief exemptions.

Last week, the Oakland Unified School District and Piedmont Unified School District, both in Alameda County, became the first districts to mandate the vaccination in Northern California. While Piedmont Unified is only allowing medical exemptions, Oakland Unified will accept personal belief waivers.

Other school districts seem less eager to jump into new mandates. Officials with the San Francisco Unified School District and the San Diego Unified School District told CalMatters earlier this month that they did not plan to set a vaccination requirement.

When Culver City Unified announced its vaccination mandate, Superintendent Quoc Tran told EdSource that he believed the requirement was legally sound. He said school officials did not ask district lawyers to look at the policy.

A spokesperson for Los Angeles Unified declined to comment on the school’s legal authority for this article, and a spokesperson for Oakland Unified said they could not discuss legal specifics with PolitiFact California as the school believes “there is the possibility of litigation on this topic.”

If school districts get challenged in court, Jacobs, with the McGeorge School of Law, said a judge could issue an emergency order to halt vaccination requirements as the case moves through the legal system.

It’s also possible that districts soon won’t be making the vaccination rules in classrooms across the Golden State. During a media briefing last week, California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said officials are considering a statewide requirement, although no definitive decision has been made.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday said school mandates are “still on the table.”

In the meantime, whether or not California school districts can independently require students to get vaccinated will likely be fought out in the courts. 

That process may be repeated across the country as districts in other places confront their own state laws on vaccinations in schools.

“State law controls,” Jacobs said. “It will be up to a court to look at these sources of state law to determine what's happening.”

Source List: 

Email interview with Dorit Reiss, a professor of law at UC Hastings and a member of the Vaccine Working Group on Ethics and Policy, Sept. 23, 2021

Zoom interview with Leslie Jacobs, a professor of constitutional law at McGeorge School of Law and director of the Capital Center for Law & Policy, Sept. 23, 2021

The Los Angeles Times, Culver City Unified to require student COVID-19 vaccinations, in what may be a first, Aug. 18, 2021

The Los Angeles Times, L.A. school officials order sweeping student vaccine mandate, a first by a major district, Sept. 9, 2021

ABC7, Parents protest vaccine mandates despite Glendale Unified not having requirement for students, Sept. 24, 2021

Cornell Law Library Legal Information Institute, Henning Jacobson v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts

California Legislative Information, Senate Bill No. 277

National Conference of State Legislatures, States With Religious and Philosophical Exemptions From School Immunization Requirements, April 30, 2021

The Los Angeles Times, California Legislature passes mandatory vaccination bill, June 29, 2015

SF Gate, State Assembly approves vaccine bill, June 25, 2015

Centers for Disease Control, Measles Outbreak — California, December 2014 - February 2015, Feb. 20, 2015

Culver City Unified School District, Facebook post, Aug. 17, 2021

Los Angeles Unified School District, Los Angeles Unified to Require All Students 12 and Older to be Vaccinated Against COVID-19 by January 10, 2022, Sept. 9, 2021

Los Angeles Unified School District, Safe Steps to Safe Schools: Frequently Asked Questions

Piedmont Unified School District, PUSD Board Meeting Summary – September 22, 2021, Sept. 24, 2021

Oakland Unified School District, OUSD Board of Education Passes Vaccine Requirement for Students 12 Years Old and Up, Sept. 23, 2021

CalMatters, Other school districts in no rush to follow Los Angeles Unified vaccine mandate, Sept. 10, 2021

EdSource, Culver City Unified mandates Covid vaccine for students, possibly a first for California, Aug. 18, 2021

NBC Bay Area, California Considers COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate for Students 12 and Up, Sept. 23, 2021

Updated at 10:54 a.m. on September 24, 2021

Reports about vaccinated Americans catching COVID-19 are energizing vaccine skeptics and leading to more misinformation about efficacy and breakthrough cases.

CapRadio’s PolitiFact California Reporter Chris Nichols examined the facts about breakthrough infections in this week’s Can You Handle The Truth.

Nichols sat down and spoke with CapRadio’s afternoon anchor Randol White and broke everything down.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Interview Highlights

On how rare breakthrough COVID-19 cases are feeding into misinformation

One example is a popular and misleading post on Instagram.

It wrongly claimed that the vaccines are “the first in history to not prevent people from catching or spreading a virus” and that they only last a few months.

PolitiFact found that is completely false. No vaccine is 100% effective. That’s the case for the flu vaccine and also the case for the COVID-19 vaccines.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says on its website some fully vaccinated people will get sick, some will even be hospitalized or die from COVID-19, and that vaccinated people with breakthrough infections can also spread the disease.

On current COVID-19 cases in unvaccinated people

Studies show vaccinated people are eight times less likely to be infected — and 25 times less likely to be hospitalized or die from COVID-19 than unvaccinated people, according to the CDC.

And those who are fully vaccinated and get one of these breakthrough cases are less likely to suffer a serious illness.

On the false claim that vaccine efficacy ‘only lasts for months’

It’s still not clear how long the protection provided by the vaccines will last. Health officials are still debating whether everyone will need a booster shot.

But the last part of the social media post is misleading because plenty of other vaccines require boosters.

People are asked to take the flu vaccine every year, and vaccines against Hepatitis B, whooping cough, chickenpox and measles all require multiple shots.

On the odds of a fully vaccinated person developing a breakthrough case

The New York Times found that the average vaccinated American’s odds of getting a breakthrough infection are roughly 1 in 5,000 a day, or 1 in 10,000 in highly vaccinated states.

They used data on daily average COVID-19 cases in different parts of the country to arrive at these odds.

A recent CDC report includes data showing the odds of a breakthrough might be even lower, at about 1 in 5,000 per week.

PolitiFact found all of these statistics have some limitations. For example, they don’t take into account the undercounting of breakthrough infections. But, they do show the vaccines are reducing infections and the overall risk of a breakthrough is low.

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the risk of breakthrough infections. They are rare, but not exceedingly rare.

UPDATE: Tuesday night the Associated Press called the recall for Gov. Gavin Newsom, projecting more than 50% of voters would vote "No" on the recall.

The eyes of the nation will be on California this week as voters decide whether to retain or remove Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in Tuesday’s recall election.

But once the final ballots are mailed, dropped off or cast in-person, many will ask: ‘How soon will the results come in?’ And ‘when will we know the outcome?’

Election experts say it’s impossible to predict exactly when the race will be decided. If it’s a landslide, we might know within hours of polls closing. But a close contest could mean weeks of hand-wringing as late arriving mail ballots are counted before a winner is declared.

“If it’s very close,” said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, “then you’re going to have to wait possibly all the way until the end of the certification period which is 30 days after election day.”

As a refresher, the election won't be officially certified by the Secretary of State until Oct. 22. Before then, CapRadio and NPR will rely on the Associated Press to call a winner in the recall. Here's how that process works.

All registered voters in California were issued vote-by-mail ballots, though they also have the option of casting their ballot in-person. Altogether, officials issued 22.2 million mail ballots.

When Will The First Results Come In?

Partial results are expected to arrive in three waves, with the first crashing down shortly after the polls close at 8 p.m. on election night. You can track the recall election results here after 8 p.m.

It will consist of the millions of vote-by-mail ballots sent in and tabulated before election day. As of early Monday, 7.7 million of the more than 22 million ballots issued in the recall had been returned, said Paul Mitchell, whose polling firm Political Data Intelligence tracks returned ballots.

Mitchell, a Democrat, said the early results will likely favor Newsom.

“We definitely are seeing that in this early vote, this 2 to 1 Democratic over Republican advantage,” he explained, noting that ballots returned by registered Democrats totaled 4 million while those from registered Republicans amounted to 1.9 million as of Monday.

The second wave should arrive later on election night and into Wednesday morning when county election offices publish in-person votes cast on election day.

Mitchell said that batch could be more favorable for recall supporters.

“If we see a big swing in that election day vote, I think you might have some people pausing and not calling the race right away,” he added.

A third and final wave of results could arrive several days after the election and could be decisive in a close race. Those will come in from voters who mail their ballots right before or on election day, said Alexander of the California Voter Foundation.

State law requires counties to count all ballots that arrive up to seven days after the polls close as long as they are postmarked no later than Sept. 14.

What Factors Could Influence The Outcome?

Mitchell added that turnout among Latinos and young voters could have a large impact on the outcome of the recall. He said early vote totals showed late last week that 40% of registered voters who are White had returned their ballots compared with 22% of registered voters who are Latino.

Also, more than half of the state’s registered voters 65 and older had returned their ballots, while just 20% of those ages 18 to 34 had done so.

County election officials must verify results 30 days after the election.

The Secretary of State’s Office must certify the election eight days later, said spokesperson Jenna Dresner.

If the recall is successful, the new governor would be sworn in on Oct. 22 for the one year remaining in Newsom’s term in office, Dresner added.

California’s next gubernatorial election, whether Newsom is recalled or not, is scheduled for November 2022.

To find the voting site nearest you, visit Vote.ca.gov. All voting locations will be open on election day from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. 

Check out CapRadio’s Voter Guide for more information about how the recall works. You can also debunk false claims about the election by checking out our PolitiFact California Misinformation Guide.

Caltrans officials clearing a Berkeley homeless encampment last month were joined by a surprise guest: Gov. Gavin Newsom, who personally spoke with the workers about their efforts to move unhoused people into shelters and was photographed at the site moving items.

Ninety minutes later, the photos were posted on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, along with a statement:

“California is moving folks out of encampments, into safe housing and getting them the mental health services they need. The conditions at this site in Berkeley are unacceptable and unsafe. Homelessness can be solved and the #CAcomeback Plan puts us on that path.”

Some Californians immediately expressed their displeasure online, calling the photos “cruel” and ”propaganda.”

Optics aside, there was another issue: Several local homeless advocates said not everyone from the site, known as the Seabreeze encampment, was placed into safe housing, as the tweet suggests.

While Newsom was taking pictures, advocates claimed many former residents of the encampment were left in limbo, desperately seeking new places to live.

With the local controversy well underway and the gubernatorial recall days away, we set out on a fact check.

The Encampment

The Seabreeze encampment was located at the intersection of University Avenue and Interstate 80, near the Berkeley Marina. It was comprised of “upstairs,” located in the grassy area between the freeway and Frontage Road, and “downstairs,” an area next to the freeway underneath the University Avenue overpass.

The site, on land owned by the California Department of Transportation, or Caltrans, was a long-standing encampment in the community. Some unhoused people had resided there for years, including Christopher “Chaos” Lilley, who said he lived at the site since March 2018.

It was also one of the largest encampments in the city, with an estimated 80 people at the time of the sweep, according to figures published by Berkeleyside.

A local nonprofit, Where Do We Go Berkeley, was involved in managing the tent community. The group assists residents of encampments in the Interstate 80 corridor in the East Bay.

During most of the COVID-19 pandemic, Caltrans halted encampment clear-outs, an effort to prevent the spread of the virus and ensure residents remained near their medical service providers. But at the start of the summer, officials resumed sweeps.

Newsom joined officials for the clean-out of the “downstairs” portion of the encampment on Aug. 9. The “upstairs” was cleared the following week.

The sweep was prompted by deteriorating conditions, said Caltrans spokesperson Matt Rocco. He said a large fire broke out at the camp several weeks before and that it “presented potentially hazardous conditions for the traveling public.”

“Electrical boxes for lighting on the quad area are continuously being broken into and tapped for power sources, along with constant fires from unsafe heating equipment,” he added.

Shelter Or The Streets

At the “downstairs” portion, signs notifying residents of the encampment’s pending closure appeared roughly 10 days before the clearing.

California cities generally give residents at least 72 hours notice of pending sweeps, and Caltrans must give notice under the terms of a $5.5 million settlement of a class-action lawsuit in early 2020.

Officials also cannot arrest people for sleeping on the street without first offering them shelter, the result of a 2018 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Martin v. Boise.

But they aren’t required to give them social services such as permanent housing or health care following the evictions, said Heather Freinkel and Danny Homer, managing attorneys at the Alameda County Homeless Action Center.

“While Martin v. Boise prohibits criminal action against homeless people when no alternative shelter is offered or available, that only applies to criminalization,” Freinkel said. “Cities can still come in and throw people's property in a dumpster and force them to leave, as long as they don't arrest or charge anyone.”

Ian Cordova Morales, president of Where Do We Go Berkeley, said the signs posted at the camp encouraged residents to call 211, Alameda County’s housing and health services hotline, to access housing services.

He noted the signs were only posted in English, even though several residents only spoke Spanish. Additionally, he said the outreach worker in charge of helping people enter Berkeley’s shelter system was not initially present at the sweep.

“He arrived an hour late,” Morales said. “So at the time of the sweep, when people were getting kicked out of the area, there was nobody there to offer them services. They were all gone by the time he showed up.”

The city of Berkeley assisted with on-the-ground outreach efforts prior to the sweep, said spokesperson Matthai Chakko. He said workers visited the encampment at least once per week in May and June, and held an event to provide information about housing options in late June.

Those options came with offers for transportation, he added.

“Our commitment to people who are unhoused means that the City, Alameda County, and nonprofit partners we fund continue to provide outreach and shelter and service offers to as many people as possible who are unhoused,” Chakko said. “We strive to serve all within the constraints of our resources.”

For the “downstairs” sweep, Morales said unhoused residents ultimately had three options: go to the Grayson Shelter, try to secure a spot in Project Roomkey or refuse services entirely and stay on the streets.

The Grayson Shelter, formerly known as the Horizon Transitional Shelter, opened in July and can temporarily house 50 people. It is a 24-hour shelter, which Morales said makes it a better option than what was previously available in Berkeley. But he said it’s little more than a warehouse with tents.

“The general vibe of the place freaks people out a little bit because it's got a weird set up,” Morales said. “People were getting FEMA vibes from it. And unhoused people are generally a little bit paranoid about FEMA.”

Project Roomkey, a program partially funded by the state, was started by the Newsom administration in March 2020, has provided temporary shelter for tens of thousands of homeless Californians in hotel and motel rooms since the start of the pandemic. 

Supporters say the program prevented major outbreaks of the virus in the homeless community and connects residents with housing and social services. They say the rooms offer simple but profound benefits — clean water, the chance to take a shower and dignity. 

Morales said most unhoused residents of the Seabreeze encampment were open to joining the Roomkey program. But by the time of the sweep, finding rooms was a struggle.

Lilley, the unhoused resident who had lived at the tent community for three years, is currently participating in Roomkey. He said it took five days after the sweep to secure his room. In the meantime, he added, he was forced to find new places to sleep on the street.

Even though he now has a room, Lilley said the program has been far from ideal.

“We do not get a key to our own rooms,” he said. “If we are not in by 11 p.m. we can't come till 6 a.m., although there are two security guards in the parking lot 24 hours per day.”

He added that security guards search residents’ backpacks before they are allowed to enter the hotel and that each person is only allowed to have a certain number of items in their room.

“It's very stressful,” Lilley said.

Unhoused people often encounter unexpected barriers to entering temporary housing, Homer, of the Homeless Action Center, said. In most places, animals are not allowed in shelters and storage space is not available for bikes, carts and other belongings. Sometimes, shelters and other housing options are in unfamiliar areas.

“As an analogy, if someone came to my apartment and said, ‘Hey, we have to bulldoze this building, pack a backpack and come with me to another temporary apartment sight unseen,’ I'd be hesitant too,” Homer said. “So even though it might seem like a good offer, I can understand people being tentative, suspicious and some refusing a room or shelter bed.”

The Impact

It’s unclear where everyone from the “downstairs” of the Seabreeze encampment is currently located.

Rocco of Caltrans said that local agencies reported 15 clients in the encampment in June. Of those 15 people, he said 11 were placed into temporary or permanent housing. Four declined services and remain unhoused.

But other sources found more people remained unsheltered.

Berkeleyside reported that 35 people lived in the camp, based on data from Where Do We Go Berkeley. At least 10 are still on the streets, at least 10 have some sort of shelter and one is deceased. It’s unclear where the others are located.

Morales said he and others with Where Do We Go Berkeley were “upset” by the statement from the governor’s office.

“The biggest problem that I had with it was [Newsom] putting out this message that everything is fine and that everything went great and they cleaned and the people got housing when our whole group, our message and what I've been working on for the last two years, is letting people know that things are not fine,” Morales said. “They are as far from fine as they could be.”

Lilley said he knows at least five people who are still unsheltered. He called the statement from the governor’s office “an absolute lie.”

“Instead of looking like he was going through our possessions and destroying what little we had … he could have had a conversation with us himself to show his concern,” Lilley said. “But instead he focused on garbage and cleaning it up.”

Rocco confirmed that Newsom did not speak with any unhoused people while he was at the encampment sweep.

“Gov. Newsom arrived around 10 a.m., and by that time, there were no people experiencing homelessness present at the site,” Rocco said.

He added that Newsom is “dedicated to providing proper care to those struggling the most and who’ve found themselves homeless due to mental health and addiction struggles.”

In the weeks since the “downstairs” sweep, Newsom has appeared at several other encampment clear-outs and clean-ups, including one in San Francisco at the end of last month.

Our Rating

A statement from the governor’s office claimed that California is providing unhoused people with services and shelter. It was posted on social media alongside photos of Newsom assisting with an encampment sweep.

While the post gives the impression that all or most people at the encampment received housing, that’s only partially true. At least four people declined the offer of housing and remained unsheltered, according to state officials. A local advocacy group believes more than twice as many remain on the streets.

People who did accept services largely ended up in temporary housing programs, but some spent days after the sweep on the streets while sorting through the logistics of being placed in the Grayson Shelter or Project Roomkey. The social media post ignores this important context.

Perhaps most importantly, the story behind this sweep speaks to the broader challenges of accessing housing and services in California. Newsom and other state officials have worked to create new options for unhoused people, such as Project Roomkey, and Newsom’s California Comeback Plan invests $12 billion into tackling homelessness.

However, temporary housing often comes with barriers to entry that are insurmountable to unhoused people who have disabilities, are struggling with addiction or are experiencing mental illnesses. Additionally, the California Comeback Plan was just signed this summer, so it’s too early to tell how much of an impact new funding will have.

In short, while California officials are working to find solutions to homelessness, they are still a long way from housing and providing services to the state’s vast homeless population. 

While some Berkeley encampment residents received housing, we found that several remain on the streets or in temporary residences with high barriers to entry. Therefore, we rate this statement Half True.

HALF TRUE – The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.

Sources:

Facebook post, Aug. 9, 2021

Instagram post, Aug. 9, 2021

Twitter post, Aug. 9, 2021

Email interview with Danny Homer, a managing attorney at the Homeless Action Center, Sept. 2, 2021

Email interview with Heather Freinkel, a managing attorney at the Homeless Action Center, Sept. 2, 2021

Email interview with Matt Rocco, public affairs chief for the California Department of Transportation, Aug. 20, 2021

Messenger interview with Christopher “Chaos” Lilley, a former resident of the Seabreeze encampment, Aug. 28, 2021

Interview with Ian Cordova Morales, president of Where Do We Go Berkeley, Aug. 23, 2021

Email interview with Matthai Chakko, public information officer for the city of Berkeley, Sept. 7, 2021

Berkeleyside, Residents under I-80 underpass search for housing after encampment sweep, Aug. 10, 2021

Berkeleyside, Berkeley’s biggest homeless camps were closed. Where are the residents now?, Sept. 2, 2021 

San Francisco Chronicle, Newsom grabs a broom and talks homeless policy at an S.F. encampment, Aug. 27, 2021

The New York Times, Laws Punishing Homeless People for Sleeping in Public Are Cruel and Unusual, Court Rules, Sept. 5, 2018

California Department of Social Services, Project Roomke

Office of the California Governor, California Roars Back: Governor Newsom Signs $100 Billion California Comeback Plan to Accelerate State’s Recovery and Tackle Persistent Challenges, July 12, 2021

League of California Cities, Strategies for Addressing Homelessness: Policies and Enforcement Issues, Aug. 28, 2019
The Mercury News, Caltrans settles claims of unconstitutional homeless ‘sweeps’ for $5.5 million, Feb. 19, 2020

If Your Time Is Short

• GOP recall candidate Larry Elder claimed the science is unsettled on whether young people should receive the COVID-19 vaccine or wear masks in schools.
• That’s not supported by the facts. For months, leading scientific groups have offered clear recommendations.
• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Federal Drug Administration and the American Academy of Pediatrics all recommend young people, ages 12 and up, receive the COVID-19 vaccine to protect their health and slow the pandemic. 
• Additionally, leading health groups including the CDC and AAP recommend students wear masks at schools to reduce the spread of the virus. 

 

California’s recall election will determine whether Gov. Gavin Newsom remains in office or is removed and replaced by another candidate. As voters make their choice, they may encounter misinformation or confusion about how the recall process works. 

To help sort through the facts, PolitiFact California debunked false claims about the election and demystified how it works in our guide to misinformation about the recall. 

Before we call out some false claims, let’s explain the basics on how to vote.  

The recall ballot will have two parts:

Voters will choose "Yes" or "No" on Question 1. A "Yes" vote means you want Newsom to be recalled. A "No" vote means you would like Newsom to remain governor. If more than 50% choose to recall Newsom, the candidate who wins the most votes will replace him. 

All registered voters can expect to receive a mail-in ballot by mid-August. County election officials are required to send those ballots out by Aug. 16. 

Voters can fill them out and return them in the mail or use a secure drop box. 

In-person voting will be available in all 58 counties on election day, Sept. 14, according to Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation.

“Many counties will also have early voting available the weekend before election day and 10 days prior to election day in some counties,” she added. “In addition to that, every county elections office is also a voting place. So, wherever you live in California, if you want to vote in-person after August 16th, you can do that at your county elections office during normal business hours.” 

Contact information for each county elections office is available online here.

Find out more about how the recall process works, key dates & answers to your questions in CapRadio’s California Recall Election Voter Guide. 

Next, we set the record straight about some recall misinformation:

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Widely-shared social media posts made this claim, which is contradicted by the facts.

The decision to use mail-in ballots was made this winter, long before the delta variant swept across the country. The variant is a mutation of the original COVID-19 virus and did not become the dominant strain in the United States until July. 

“Due to new ‘delta variant’ California will be mailing in ballots for recall election,” former San Francisco Giants baseball player Aubrey Huff wrote on Instagram. “You can’t make this shit up. Setting it up for @GavinNewsom to stay in power. If you can’t see how obvious the corruption & lies are then you’re truly lost.” 

Alexander of the California Voter Foundation called these assertions “absolutely false.” 

In February, Newsom signed Senate Bill 29, legislation requiring county elections officials to mail a ballot to every registered voter in California for all elections announced or held before Jan. 1, 2022. Democratic state lawmakers passed the bill earlier that month with the goal of providing all voters a safe way to cast their ballot, recognizing “that the pandemic has not gone away,” as Asm. Marc Berman, D-Menlo Park, described it at the time. 

Most Republican legislators opposed the bill, with some saying mail-in ballots should only be sent to those who request them to avoid wasting resources. Nationally, GOP leaders have claimed sending mail-in ballots to all voters favors Democrats over Republicans.

Sen. Tom Umberg, D-Santa Ana, was the primary author of SB 29. He pointed out that providing vote-by-mail ballots to all voters, as California did during the 2020 general election, helps with turnout but doesn’t necessarily favor Democrats. 

“Democrats lost four seats (in California’s congressional races) this past election and we had the highest voter turnout since 1952,” he told the Associated Press in February. “I think more people voting, irrespective of what happened to Democrats, is a good thing for democracy.”

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This baseless rumor popped up online in late July after several California counties including Sacramento, Yolo and Los Angeles reinstated mask mandates for indoor public settings. The requirements followed a surge in COVID-19 cases driven by the highly contagious delta variant.

Sacramento County elections officials corrected the record in a recent press release, saying “despite the new indoor mask mandate, the September 14 recall election voting options will not change.”

“This reminder is in response to online chatter suggesting that voters will not be able to vote in person due to the new mask mandate,” the county press release added. “Those rumors are FALSE.”

Seven counties — Marin, Mono, Placer, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Sonoma, and Tulare — received waivers to have fewer in-person voting locations, citing both the short amount of time to get ready for an unplanned election and the COVID-19 pandemic. But the counties say there will still be enough locations to meet demand for in-person voting.

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Responding to more false rumors, Sacramento County elections officials debunked this inaccurate and provocative claim that Dominion employees work at their office. 

Following last year’s presidential election, right-wing cable TV networks and supporters of former President Donald Trump spread misinformation that Dominion rigged ballots in President Joe Biden's favor through their voting machines. 

Election officials and news outlets including PolitiFact found no credible evidence showing the company’s voting system affected any vote tallies. Minor problems, including human error and temporary machine malfunctions, took place in a few jurisdictions and did not impact vote tabulations.

Sacramento County hired Dominion in 2018 to support the county’s “paper balloting method and bring new, easy-to-use, accessible voting devices,” the county wrote in a press release at the time. But no Dominion employees “have ever been or ever will be employed” by the county elections department, the county wrote in a release in August.

Dominion technicians recently provided on-site support and advice during accuracy tests on the county’s tabulation system, but were escorted by county elections staff and “are not allowed to touch voting equipment, election files, or ballots at any time,” the county said. 

In March, Dominion filed a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News Network. Fox has asked for the suit to be dismissed. The company has also taken legal action against MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, as well as former Trump lawyers Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani. In early August, it sued right-wing networks Newsmax and One America News Network for also spreading misinformation.

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In January, California Democratic Party Chairman Rusty Hicks falsely described the effort to recall Newsom as “the California coup.” We rated that claim Pants On Fire. 

A coup is the violent overthrow of a government, often with the help of the military or state police. A recall is nothing like that. It’s a legal process that asks voters to decide whether to remove an elected official at the ballot box.

The state constitution has allowed California voters to use the process for more than a century to try to remove local and state officials, for any reason, midway through their terms.

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Claim: California recall leaders are tied to militias and QAnon.

In a national TV blitz against the recall in March, Newsom claimed the lead proponent of the recall against him supported ‘putting microchips into migrants.’ A since-deleted Facebook post shows that is accurate. Orrin Heatlie, the recall leader and a retired Yolo County sheriff’s deputy, said his comment wasn’t meant to be taken seriously. 

Newsom also claimed recall leaders have ties to far-right militias and QAnon. An investigation by the Los Angeles Times along with additional evidence show there are some connections. Political observers, however, say Newsom’s statements do not apply to the vast majority of recall supporters.

"I think it is pretty legitimate to tie the initial [recall] effort to those groups," Kim Nalder, a Sacramento State professor who studies political psychology and disinformation, told PolitiFact California in March. "I think it becomes less persuasive when you get to the current movement, which has expanded far beyond those groups." 

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Some voters have expressed confusion and uncertainty about voting in the recall, or are inadvertently spreading incorrect information, such as the suggestion that if a voter votes “No” on the recall, they cannot vote for a candidate listed on the second question.

The Secretary of State’s office cleared up any confusion. 

“Regardless of how a voter responds to the question of recalling the governor, they can still cast a vote for a potential replacement candidate,” spokesperson Jenna Dresner told CapRadio. “The votes for each question are counted separately, so your vote for one question does not impact your ability to vote on another, that includes leaving a question blank.”

We’ll continue to examine claims about the recall through the Sept. 14 election. Send us a suggestion for a fact check at politifactca@capradio.org.

Update: This article has been updated to show that Fox News Network has asked for the Dominion lawsuit against it to be dismissed. 

---

Source List

Kim Alexander, president, California Voter Foundation, interview Aug. 9, 2021

Kim Nalder, political science professor, Sacramento State University, interview Aug. 9, 2021

Sacramento County, news release, Voting Option reminder from SacCounty Voter Registration and Elections, July 30, 2021

Sacramento County, news release, False Rumors Regarding Sacramento County Elections Staffing, Aug. 13, 2021

Associated Press, California OK’s mailed ballots for 2021 as recall looms, Feb. 16, 2021

CapRadio, Yes, You Can Vote On Who Would Replace Gavin Newsom Even If You Vote No On The Recall, Aug. 11, 2021

PolitiFact California, No, Efforts To Recall California Gov. Newsom Are Not ‘A Coup’, Jan. 13, 2021. 

Los Angeles Times, Far-right movements including QAnon, virus skeptics linked to Newsom recall, Jan. 23, 2021

PolitiFact California, Are California recall leaders tied to militias and QAnon? We fact-checked Gov. Newsom's claims, March 18, 2021

PolitiFact, No evidence Dominion Voting Systems caused widespread tabulation errors that flipped votes for Biden, Nov. 13, 2021

A prominent California anti-vaccination group recently posted an image on Instagram falsely claiming that the state has a personal belief exemption for any new vaccine mandated for children attending school.

“Share everywhere because you will not be told by doctors or schools,” the image reads. “California has a personal belief exemption to any new vaccine added to the schedule after June 2015 for public and private daycare, preschool and K-12.”

The image was posted on June 21 by members of Freedom Angels, an anti-vaccination organization founded by a trio of women in 2019. It falsely cites California Senate Bill 277, which was passed in 2015.

“Use it to fight for your children,” the image reads.

A post from Denise Aguilar, one of the founders of the group, racked up more than 6,500 likes and hundreds of comments. Aguilar also shared the image in a private Telegram channel, where it was viewed by almost 2,000 people. Tara Thornton, another founder, shared the image on her page, garnering more than 250 likes. 

Both women shared the image in both Spanish and English. Additionally, the image was shared via a secondary account for Freedom Angels, which appears to have multiple accounts on Instagram.

Facebook flagged the image as part of its efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about PolitiFact California’s partnership with Facebook.) We decided to find out whether the image’s claims are accurate.

A history of California vaccination laws

Senate Bill 277 was introduced in the aftermath of an outbreak of measles at Disneyland in 2014. It’s primary author was state Sen. Richard Pan, a Democrat representing Sacramento and Yolo counties and a pediatrician.

The bill removed personal belief exemptions for mandated vaccinations against measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, hepatitis B, influenza type B, polio, whooping cough, tetanus and chickenpox.

Until then, California had technically required these vaccinations for school-aged children but had allowed parents to opt out for any reason with personal belief exemptions, making it one of the more lenient states in the country for vaccination mandates.

When the law was passed in June 2015, it became one of the toughest vaccination mandates in the nation. Without a medical exemption, the only way parents could opt out of vaccinating their children was to home-school them or enroll them in an independent study program without classroom instruction. 

The measure was contentious and drew large crowds of parents against vaccinations to Sacramento to voice their displeasure. Pan and co-author state Sen. Ben Allen (D–Santa Monica) both reported receiving death threats while the bill was being debated.

Pan argued that the law would help boost immunization rates and help prevent outbreaks similar to the one at Disneyland, which ultimately infected more than 150 people from eight different states, Mexico and Canada.

Four years later, Pan introduced another bill in response to rising medical exemption rates statewide. The bill, which ultimately passed, cracked down on medical exemptions by creating a review process that gave public health officials the final say on waivers.

It was accompanied by weeks of protest, some of which were so large and vocal that they shut down activity in the state Capitol building. Critics claimed the law would shut down access to waivers for kids who needed them and that doctors would fear the law’s investigative process.

What does SB 277 mean for flu, HPV and COVID-19 vaccinations?

The image claimed that SB 277 includes a clause that establishes personal belief exemptions for any new vaccine mandated for children attending school.

Currently, flu, HPV and COVID-19 vaccinations are not required for California students under Senate Bill 277. In fact, COVID-19 vaccinations have yet to be approved for children under the age of 12. Drugmakers are currently testing their vaccines in young children and are expected to have results for children aged 5 through 11 by early fall. 

Once the vaccines are fully approved for young children, it’s unclear whether lawmakers will consider adding the COVID-19 vaccine to the schedule of mandated shots.

That means there are currently no personal belief exemptions for these vaccinations, because they are not mandated in the first place. At the moment, parents can choose whether to vaccinate their children against these diseases.

But if those vaccinations were to be added to the state’s list of mandatory shots, experts say a personal belief exemption may not apply — depending on how the new vaccines are added to the list.

Dorit Reiss, a professor of law at UC Hastings and a member of the Vaccine Working Group on Ethics and Policy, said the law included a clause that allows the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) to mandate new vaccinations.

If vaccinations are added to the schedule in this way, the law stipulates that personal belief exemptions must be offered to parents and students.

“New vaccines required — like COVID, flu, HPV — will have a [personal belief exemption] if, and only if, the department of health adds them without going through the legislature,” Reiss said. “If the Legislature adds them, the Legislature will set the terms.”

That means that the state Legislature could choose to pass legislation that adds a vaccination to the current list without offering a personal belief exemption.

“The Legislature may at any time amend or pass a new statute to add a required immunization,” said Brandon Stracener, a senior research fellow at UC Berkeley Law School’s California Constitution Center. “This additional restriction on the department, an executive regulatory agency, reflects a balance between the greater speed with which agencies can react and the more direct voter accountability legislators face.”

SB 277 also included a clause that grandfathered in some children who had personal belief exemptions on file with their schools prior to the passage of the legislation. Stracener said those students are permitted to maintain their exemptions until they enter a new “grade span” when moving from preschool to elementary school or from elementary school to middle and high school.

“This temporary, transitional safeguard will apply to fewer and fewer, and eventually, no students as the years progress,” Stacener said.

Adding vaccines

It’s unclear whether COVID-19 vaccinations will be required for students in the future, but experts say they expect the legislature would take charge if state officials sought to mandate it.

Reiss said the CDPH has yet to add a vaccination of its own to the list since SB 277 passed in 2015.

“I expect that if it's added, it would be added by the legislature,” she said. “That's how all currently mandated vaccines were added. I think the CDPH would be very cautious of the political implications if it went at this without legislative mandate.”

That means there likely would not be a personal belief exemption.

“The [CDPH] could attempt to deem coronavirus an appropriate disease under these statutes to require immunization,” Stracener said. “But the legislature might have to respond itself if a large enough number of asserted personal belief exemptions made it clear that the legislature would have to act to ensure public safety.”

Our Rating

Posts on Instagram spread by anti-vaccination advocates claimed that California has a personal belief exemption for any new vaccine mandated after the passage of Senate Bill 277.

But experts say this is not the whole story. The law includes a clause that gives the California Department of Public Health the ability to add mandated vaccinations to the current schedule. For vaccinations added this way, the law stipulates that personal belief exemptions must be offered.

The state Legislature can also add vaccinations to the mandated list of shots. If a vaccination is added this way, lawmakers can choose whether they should include personal belief exemptions to the vaccine.

The posts further claimed that these exemptions would apply to flu, HPV and COVID-19 vaccinations, even though those shots have not been added to the state’s list of mandated vaccinations.

It’s unclear whether the COVID-19 vaccination will be mandated for students in California. If it is, experts said they expect the Legislature would take the lead on mandating the shots and it’s likely personal belief exemptions would not apply.

In short, personal belief exemptions do not currently exist for any mandated vaccination in California and there is only one process that would require personal belief exemptions to be offered for any new shots.

Therefore, we rate this claim False.

FALSE – The statement is not accurate.

Sources:

Instagram post, June 21, 2021

Instagram post, June 21, 2021

Instagram post, June 21, 2021

Instagram post, June 21, 2021

Instagram account, @freedomangels_

Instagram account, @freedomangels2.0

Telegram channel, The Informed Mama

The New York Times, Antivaccination Activists Are Growing Force at Virus Protests, May 2, 2020

California Legislative Information, Senate Bill No. 277

National Conference of State Legislatures, States With Religious and Philosophical Exemptions From School Immunization Requirements, April 30, 2021

The Los Angeles Times, California Legislature passes mandatory vaccination bill, June 29, 2015

SF Gate, State Assembly approves vaccine bill, June 25, 2015

Centers for Disease Control, Measles Outbreak — California, December 2014 - February 2015, Feb. 20, 2015

CalMatters, Five things to know now about California’s new vaccine law, Sept. 15, 2019

The Los Angeles Times, The hidden battle over California’s new vaccine law, Sept. 22, 2019

The New York Times, In the U.S., vaccines for the youngest are expected this fall, July 8, 2021

Email interview with Dorit Reiss, a professor of law at UC Hastings and a member of the Vaccine Working Group on Ethics and Policy, July 8, 2021

Email interview with Brandon Stracener, a senior research fellow at UC Berkeley Law School’s California Constitution Center, July 16, 2021

The Wall Street Journal, Can Schools Mandate Covid-19 Vaccines for Children? What We Know, July 11, 2021

Anti-abortion activists in San Francisco protested this week after Live Action, an anti-abortion nonprofit organization, released emails that they claim show researchers at University of California, San Francisco “harvesting the clitorises, testicles and penises of murdered babies.”

The emails were publicized in a Facebook post on the group’s page and an accompanying article on the organization’s website. In the Facebook post, which was published on July 6 and shared more than 500 times, the group wrote that “it’s time to outlaw abortion and criminally prosecute those who abuse the bodies of children.”

The claims do not accurately represent how UCSF obtains and uses fetal tissue. But that did not stop activists from gathering at the San Francisco Department of Public Health on July 14.

The protest was livestreamed on Live Action’s Facebook page, racking up 35,000 views. Holding signs that read “end live dismemberment” and “human rights begin in the womb,” activists chanted “do no harm” and “UCSF, we know what you do.”

Facebook flagged the posts as part of its efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed, so we decided to break down the claims. (Read more about PolitiFact California’s partnership with Facebook.)

The emails

Pro-Life San Francisco, an organization affiliated with Live Action, said it obtained emails between UCSF employees through the California Public Records Act, which requires government entities, including public universities, to make certain documents and records available to members of the public upon request.

The emails appear to log the collection of fetal tissue, a standard practice in biomedical research. They list what type of fetal tissue was collected and the time and date.

Genitalia are among the types of fetal tissue listed in the emails. In one email, a UCSF employee states that they collected tissue from three different fetuses: a “testis [and] bladder,” a “penis [and] bladder” and a “clitoris, bladder [and] uterus.”

Acquiring fetal tissue

UCSF does conduct biomedical research using fetal tissue and has done so for decades — but the claim that they obtain it from murdered babies greatly distorts the truth and is not correct.

In a statement to PolitiFact, UCSF officials said the tissue used for research comes from donations, which can happen after a woman miscarries, chooses to terminate a pregnancy for medical reasons or chooses to have an elective abortion. The officials asked not to be named because of safety concerns.

“Only tissue that has been donated may be used in research,” officials said. “Many women who choose to terminate or experience the loss of a pregnancy specifically ask whether they can make these donations.”

When fetal tissue is donated to research as the result of an elective abortion, officials said donations are made with written consent from women after they have “independently” decided to terminate their pregnancy.

 “The [Live Action] article inaccurately implies throughout, through words such as ‘procure’ and ‘harvest,’ that these abortions are being performed in order to obtain tissue, which is false,” officials said.

Live Actions’ article also claims that “the labor induction abortion techniques used in these facilities to procure ‘fresh’ parts can result in live births as often as 50% of the time.” To support this claim, the article cites a study published in 2011 on abortion in the second trimester.

That study applies only to medical abortions induced with misoprostol, a drug that causes the uterus to cramp and expel a fetus. Medical abortions make up more than a third of all abortions at over 8 weeks gestation in the United States. Typically, women are first given mifepristone, a drug that stops the absorption of progesterone in the womb, which fetuses need to survive. 

The study states that “survival with misoprostol for labor induction abortion at greater than 18 weeks ranges from 0% to 50%.” It cites research from 2002 on using misoprostol to facilitate mid-trimester abortions to support the claim. In that study, women were given just misoprostol, without taking mifepristone beforehand. 

The scientists behind that research note in the study that “live birth is a potential complication of any mid-trimester medical induction,” but that their research is “limited” by the study’s sample size, since 47 women participated and just 23 of them were treated with misoprostol. The end of the article encourages further research.

UCSF offers medical abortions, among other reproductive health services, at a clinic called the Women’s Options Center. Healthcare workers at the clinic use both mifepristone and misoprostol, and UCSF officials said there has never been a live birth during an abortion procedure.

Why collect genitalia?

Fetal tissue is used for many different types of research that helps advance scientific understanding of fetal development and can lead to new drugs and cures for a variety of conditions. 

By examining and conducting research with fetal tissue, researchers at UCSF have been able to further understand how the urinary tract develops in men and women, how genital malformations occur and the impact of fetal environment on the development of male and female reproductive organs.

“Tissues that have been donated to research after a miscarriage or abortion can offer significant insights that researchers would not otherwise be able to learn and translate into treatments for a range of diseases and illnesses,” officials said.

For many years, researchers at UCSF also used fetal tissue to study HIV and test new drugs that could help treat the disease. That research was supported with money from the National Institutes of Health, funding which was halted in 2019 after President Donald Trump’s administration announced new restrictions on government dollars going to research involving human fetal tissue.

UCSF officials said research with fetal tissue is conducted “in full compliance with federal and state law, and within the ethical standards established by preeminent scientific societies and professional research associations.”

Our rating

Live Action’s posts claimed that UCSF is “harvesting the clitorises, testicles and penises of murdered babies.”

The emails Live Action cites are real and it is true that UCSF conducts biomedical research using human fetal tissue, including fetal tissue from the genitals. However, the social media posts suggest that UCSF is purposefully killing children to obtain this tissue, which is wildly misleading and inaccurate.

The tissue used by UCSF scientists is donated by women who have miscarried, have terminated their pregnancies for medical reasons or have elected to have an abortion. In the case of elective abortions, women are only offered the option of donating fetal tissue after they have independently made the decision to terminate a pregnancy.

Furthermore, in an article posted to Live Action’s website that accompanied their initial social media post, the group claims that abortion techniques used to obtain fetal tissue often result in live births, suggesting that healthcare workers obtain fetal tissue from live fetuses.

Athough the group cites a scientific study to back up their claim, the study pertains only to abortions facilitated solely with misoprostol, a drug that causes the uterus to cramp and expel a fetus. At UCSF’s clinics, medical abortions are conducted using mifepristone, a feticidal drug, before misoprostol is administered to finish the abortion process. UCSF officials said there has never been a live birth during an abortion procedure at any of their clinics.

UCSF’s biomedical research and acquisition of fetal tissue is legal and adheres to ethical guidelines. It is clear that Live Action’s posts take the university’s emails out of context and disregard the facts.

Therefore, we rate this post False.

FALSE – The statement is not accurate.

Sources:

Facebook post, July 6, 2021

Facebook post, July 14, 2021

Live Action, UCSF’s callous abortion harvesting operations exposed in records obtained by pro-life group, July 3, 2021

National Institutes of Health, Guidelines for Human Biospecimen Storage, Tracking, Sharing, and Disposal within the NIH Intramural Research Program, Sept. 7, 2019

Email interview with UCSF officials, July 14, 2021

UCSF Human Gamete, Embryo and Stem Cell Research (GESCR) Committee, GESCR Consent Guidance, Oct. 21, 2020

Contraception: An International Reproductive Health Journal, Labor induction abortion in the second trimester, March 31, 2011

Gynecologic and Obstetric Investigation, High-Dose Oral Misoprostol for Mid-Trimester Pregnancy Interruption, Sept. 30, 2002

Kaiser Family Foundation, The Availability and Use of Medication Abortion, June 16, 2021

UCSF Health, Treatments A-Z: Medical Abortion

San Francisco Chronicle, UCSF loses contract as Trump administration restricts fetal tissue research, June 5, 2019

False information about COVID-19 vaccines continues to spread on social media, and comes as cases are on the rise across the United States.

CapRadio’s PolitiFact California reporter Chris Nichols and contributor Steven Rascon fact-checked several claims in this week’s Can You Handle The Truth segment. 

They spoke with CapRadio anchor Randol White.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Interview Highlights

On a false Instagram post that makes a questionable claim about vaccines and miscarriages

Chris Nichols: This post cherry-picks and manipulates some data from a scientific study to make a false and alarming claim. It says there’s a high miscarriage rate, more than 80%, for women who got an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine early in their pregnancies. 

The Instagram post arrives at this flawed conclusion based on a small sample of completed pregnancies known by researchers. But in reality, the majority of study participants are either still pregnant, or have not yet had follow-ups with the study’s authors.

Researchers said early results have not found an increased risk of miscarriage tied to the COVID-19 vaccination. They also acknowledge that there’s limited data on this topic and that it requires further research.

On a false claim about infants and childhood vaccines

Nichols:These social media posts claim that common childhood vaccines cause sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS. PolitiFact found this is also a false, baseless claim. 

SIDS refers to the sudden and unexplained death of an apparently healthy baby, also called crib death. But scientific studies have consistently shown that there is no causal relationship between vaccines and SIDS. Those studies also show that receiving recommended immunizations can lower an infant’s risk of SIDS. 

The CDC recommends that during their first six months, infants get vaccinated against a range of diseases, from tetanus to whooping cough to polio and several others. Studies looking at each of these vaccines have found no associations between them and SIDS. 

On a misleading claim on social media that said San Francisco was allowing children to get the COVID vaccine without their parent’s approval 

Steven Rascon: Just as the FDA was about to approve the Pfizer vaccine for emergency use for minors, San Francisco issued a health order saying if you are a minor you can consent to the vaccine only if you are emancipated as according to the state or considered self-sufficient.

Most of this information was in the health order, and it recognizes that emancipated minors are not the norm but should have a choice to receive the vaccine. Much of the misinformation came from Twitter and Facebook users sharing a portion of the health order which clearly says “San Francisco allowing minors to consent to receive the COVID vaccine.”

San Francisco’s Department of Public Health confirmed this was only the case for emancipated minors, and healthcare providers giving out the shot would still have to try to get a parent’s consent before giving out the shot.

Because San Francisco allows some minors to consent to the vaccine on their own, PolitiFact California rated this claim as Mostly False.