The California Assembly Public Safety Committee has advanced legislation aimed at changing how the state defines “severe neglect” in child-welfare cases, setting off a sharp debate between advocates who argued the reform would reduce unnecessary investigations and law-enforcement groups who warned it could weaken reporting to police.
The committee voted 5-2 on March 3 to move forward Assembly Bill 1566, authored by Corey Jackson, which seeks to align California law with the Structured Decision Making assessment tool already used by county child-welfare agencies. The bill then headed to the Assembly floor for further consideration.
No Republicans voted for the bill, and two Democrats had no votes recorded. Among them was Assemblymember Stephanie Nguyen, a Sacramento-area Democrat who was present during the hearing but did not vote when the measure was called. Her office has not yet provided an explanation for the decision.
Nguyen’s resistance to Jackson’s bill illustrates the ongoing tension in the Capitol between moderate Democrats and Republicans who have pushed back on progressive Democrats’ criminal justice reforms post-George Floyd.
Jackson, in an interview with The OBSERVER, addressed why some members abstained from voting. “This is part of the problem,” he said. “I’ve always said adult issues are the number one reason why children are not being served effectively. Unfortunately, people are making political decision votes, not votes based on the best interests of the children.”
Jackson also said some members automatically will not support something as soon as law enforcement voices opposition “whether it makes sense or not.”
Nguyen has an 85% alignment with the Peace Officers Research Association of California, according to CalMatters Digital Democracy. That score is based on 159 voting opportunities from 2023 to 2025.
Nguyen also has received at least $34,800 in campaign contributions from the Peace Officers Research Association from 2021 to 2023. She’s married to an Elk Grove police officer.
Republican Assemblymember Tom Lackey expressed strong opposition during the hearing, citing cases in his district where underreporting or failure to report suspected abuse had resulted in child deaths, including Gabriel Fernandez in 2013, Anthony Avalos in 2018, Noah Quatro in 2019, Angel Flores in 2023, and 6-month-old Jackson Manson in 2018. Lackey said in each case warning signs were missed or ignored.
“But ‘see something, say nothing’ is the wrong approach in my mind,” he said.
Lackey, a former CHP officer, emphasized that minimizing or delaying reports of suspected abuse, even out of fear of making unfair allegations, could have deadly consequences.
“Unfortunate outcomes compared to death of a child, that’s not much of a choice,” he said, stressing that the potential risk to children made him skeptical of the bill’s approach. He said he had been working to find solutions in his district but believed this measure posed a significant danger.
Nguyen echoed Lackey’s sentiment while acknowledging the tension between addressing disproportionate reporting and protecting children from harm in her district.
Nguyen said she understands the concerns about disproportionate reporting in certain communities but remained conflicted.
She pointed to repeated cases in her district where young children have been severely abused, sometimes fatally, and questioned whether adding another step to the reporting process could delay action.
“Like Mr. Lackey, I believe action is needed, but I’m not convinced this is the right approach,” Nguyen said.
Supporters pointed to statewide data showing that nearly 90% of child abuse or neglect reports were ultimately unsubstantiated.
Jackson explained that the bill’s purpose was to ensure that the legal definition of severe neglect reflected the way child-welfare professionals already evaluated cases.
“Current law was actually a deviation from best practice that counties were already following,” Jackson told the OBSERVER. “The best practice was to ensure that if an accident did not happen on purpose, meaning a parent did not intentionally hurt the child, it might not be necessary to create a legal process or insert them into the child welfare system.”
He said the change still would allow authorities to intervene when children were harmed, but would help prevent families from being unnecessarily swept into investigations that could have lasting consequences.
“They might need resources; they might need additional help to prevent that from happening again,” he said. “But that was different from assuming intentional harm and opening a legal case.”
Advocates for the measure said the high number of unsubstantiated reports showed the current system often exposed families to investigations even when abuse was not found, disproportionately affecting Black and Native children.
“That meant hundreds and thousands of children and their families had experienced an investigation, systems intrusion, fear and stigma without findings of abuse,” said Janae Eustace of the California Family Resource Association and the Child Abuse Prevention Center during the hearing. “That was not natural or neutral, that was trauma.”
Black and Native American families are significantly overrepresented in California’s Child Protective Services system. A 2023 study found that nearly 50% of Black and Native American children in California experienced a CPS investigation by age 18, compared with 22% of white children.
Jackson said the bill also was part of an ongoing effort to address such disparities in the child welfare system.
“My whole goal over the last few years has been working in the mandated reporting space,” he said. “There was a direct correlation with the huge disproportion of Black and Native American children and families being involved in the system.”
He added that the legislation might not reduce the number of reports made to authorities but could help reduce the number of cases that escalated into formal child-welfare investigations.
Opposition came from law enforcement representatives and groups representing school resource officers.
Ryan Sherman, speaking on behalf of several organizations including the K-12 School Police Chiefs Association, argued the proposal could create confusion between two reporting systems — calls made to Child Protective Services through the state hotline and the legal duties of mandated reporters such as school staff who must report suspected abuse directly to law enforcement.
Sherman claimed the bill would have removed several existing triggers for mandated reporting under current law. He claimed the proposal would have eliminated language related to unjustifiable physical pain and unjustifiable mental suffering as grounds for reporting suspected abuse.
He further claimed the measure would have removed provisions related to willfully causing illness to a child or permitting a child to face an imminent risk of serious injury, illness or death.
Sherman also claimed the bill would have eliminated a cross-reference to a section of the penal code that defined the willful harming or injury of a child, which he argued could weaken the legal framework used to identify abuse.
Additionally, Sherman claimed the bill narrowed mandated reporting by requiring that a person willfully cause or permit “serious” illness or injury to a child, rather than illness or injury more broadly, and removed language tied to actual or potential harm suffered by a child.
Supporters of the legislation disputed those interpretations, maintaining the measure preserved existing protections for children while clarifying how intent was evaluated in neglect cases.
Another point of contention involved how the bill’s language would read in statute.
A summary of the proposal indicated that severe neglect would explicitly include situations in which a caregiver willfully caused or permitted a child to suffer serious illness, injury, death or an imminent risk of harm. Supporters argued that that language preserved core protections for children while clarifying how intent was evaluated.
Jackson said he rejected the argument that the bill weakened reporting requirements, saying it maintained protections while ensuring families were not unnecessarily exposed to law enforcement interactions.
“Harm can be done when law enforcement is called unnecessarily,” he said. “Sometimes it ends up in [needless] death.”
He added that the current system should focus on protecting children while avoiding trauma for families who ultimately were found not to have committed abuse.
“We wanted to catch the 10% of calls that were substantiated,” Jackson said. “But we also wanted to make sure the 90% that were not didn’t experience trauma [unnecessarily].”
Jackson said that counties already were applying similar standards through the Structured Decision Making assessment tool, which guided how child welfare workers determined whether a case warranted deeper intervention.
If AB 1566 becomes law, he said, the transition would largely involve aligning state statute with procedures already in use.
“There would be training,” Jackson said. “But there wouldn’t have to be much because counties are already using the updated best practice protocol.”
The bill now awaits consideration by the full Assembly in the coming weeks. Jackson said his office is still working to secure enough votes to move it forward.
For him, the issue ultimately comes down to balancing child protection with minimizing unnecessary harm from the system itself.
“People were worried that if we changed the system, more people would be hurt,” he said. “But the reality is people are being hurt by the current system.”