A law that lived fifteen days
On 17 September 2024 the governor of California signed AB 2839, which added section 20012 to the state Elections Code and took effect at once as an urgency statute. It forbids knowingly distributing, with malice, election communications carrying materially deceptive synthetic content about a candidate, an elections official, an elected official, or voting equipment. On 2 October the Eastern District of California enjoined its enforcement, except for a severed audio-only portion.
Why it matters
This is the shortest gap between taking effect and being stopped in all the election rulemaking of the period: fifteen days. It showed the wall every such law runs into: the court called the risks real and stopped the statute anyway, because it reached parody and satire.
The prohibition runs for 120 days before any election in the state; for two of the four categories, the elections official and the voting equipment, the window continues 60 days after. Satire and parody are exempt if they carry the disclosure This ____ has been manipulated for purposes of satire or parody, with the blank filled and the size or spoken interval prescribed. A recipient, a candidate, a committee or an elections official may seek an injunction, and a prevailing plaintiff recovers attorney fees and costs. The plaintiff in Kohls v. Bonta makes political parodies; the suit was filed on 17 September, the same day the bill was signed. The order says most of AB 2839 acts as a hammer instead of a scalpel. What the record does not claim. The report placed the rule at section 20010; that is a different and older section, which the Legislative Counsel's digest describes as existing law. The record does not follow the later course of the case and does not cover AB 2655, signed the same day.