BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 2159
Page 1
ASSEMBLY THIRD READING
AB
2159 (Gonzalez and Bonta)
As Amended March 31, 2016
Majority vote
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|Committee |Votes|Ayes |Noes |
| | | | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
|----------------+-----+----------------------+--------------------|
|Judiciary |8-1 |Mark Stone, Alejo, |Gallagher |
| | |Chau, Chiu, Cristina | |
| | |Garcia, Holden, | |
| | |Maienschein, Ting | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
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SUMMARY: Prohibits a person's immigration status from being
admitted into evidence or being subject to discovery in certain
civil cases. Specifically, this bill:
1)Provides that in a civil action for personal injury or
wrongful death, evidence of a person's immigration status
shall not be admitted into evidence, nor shall discovery into
a person's immigration status be permitted.
AB 2159
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2)Clarifies that the above provision does not affect the
relevance, admissibility, and discoverability standards under
other laws that contain protections for people based on
immigration status, namely Civil Code Section 3339, Government
Code Section 7285, Health and Safety Code Section 24000, and
Labor Code Section 1171.5.
EXISTING LAW:
1)Prohibits discovery or other inquiry in a civil action or
proceeding relating to a minor child's immigration status
except where the minor child's claims place the minor child's
immigration status directly in contention or the person
seeking to make this inquiry has shown by clear and convincing
evidence that the inquiry is necessary in order to comply with
federal immigration law. (Civil Code 3339.5(b).)
2)Pursuant to case law, provides that an undocumented worker
injured in the United States is not entitled to be compensated
based upon his or her projected earning capacity in the United
States, but rather may recover future lost wages based on
projected earning capacity in the country of his or her lawful
citizenship. (Rodriguez v. Kline (1986) 186 Cal.App.3d 1146.)
FISCAL EFFECT: None
COMMENTS: In order to ensure that injured persons are fairly
compensated for their injuries and medical costs regardless of
their immigration status, this bill seeks to prohibit discovery
of a person's immigration status in a civil action for personal
injury or wrongful death case, and further provides that
evidence of a person's immigration status is inadmissible in
such cases. This important change increases consistency with
other laws that recognize that immigration status is not
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relevant to issues of liability and closes off one controversial
exception to that general rule created by a single Court of
Appeal decision from 1986. According to proponents, "AB 2159
seeks to end the legal argument that immigration status is
relevant to determine the recovery an injured undocumented
person should receive in California. No individual should have
to face having immigration status raised in discovery for the
sole purpose of intimidating or undervaluing his or her claims
for future loss."
Existing state law generally establishes that a person's
immigration status is irrelevant to issues of civil liability,
with few exceptions. For example, Civil Code Section 3339
establishes that for purposes of enforcing state labor,
employment, civil rights, and employee housing laws, a person's
immigration status is irrelevant to the issue of liability.
Furthermore, in proceedings or discovery undertaken to enforce
this broad range of state laws, Section 3339 permits no inquiry
into a person's immigration status, except where the inquiry has
been shown by clear and convincing evidence to be necessary in
order to comply with federal immigration law.
According to proponents of this bill, the laws recently enacted
by the Legislature to protect all Californians regardless of
their immigration status are "substantially undermined" by a
single Court of Appeal decision from three decades ago. In that
case, Rodriguez v. Kline (1986) 186 Cal.App.3d 1147, the court
held that an undocumented worker injured in the United States is
not entitled to be compensated based upon his or her projected
earning capacity in the United States, but rather may recover
future lost wages based on projected earning capacity in the
worker's country of lawful citizenship. The court explained:
"When an individual enters this country in violation of our
immigration laws ... he is subject to deportation. As a
consequence, [Plaintiff's] status unquestionably bore upon the
amount of his anticipated future earnings. That is to say, if
[Plaintiff] were to return, voluntarily or involuntarily to
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Mexico, the income he could expect to receive there would be
markedly less than a figure derived from his earnings during his
sojourn here." (Id. at 1148.)
This bill seeks to address the impact that the Rodriguez v.
Kline decision has had upon injured undocumented persons.
According to proponents, the Rodriguez decision unfairly allows
defendants to inquire about the plaintiff's immigration status
when that undocumented person, injured through no fault of their
own, brings a personal injury action to recover for injuries (or
the family brings a wrongful death suit if the person was
killed). Proponents contend it is inequitable and contrary to
longstanding policy in California that an undocumented person's
claim is devalued solely because of immigration status-a result
directly attributable to Rodriguez. Proponents also argue that
the bill is needed to combat the inequity that arises from the
observation that inquiry into immigration status is
strategically applied by defendants only when the undocumented
person is from a country whose wages are lower than the U.S.
They contend that the defense never argues that immigration
status is relevant when the injured party is from a country like
Sweden, where calculation of the injured party's expected wages
would be greater than in this country.
Practitioners in the field report that defendants in injury
cases use Rodriguez to leverage the fear of deportation against
undocumented plaintiffs in order to reduce or even eliminate
claims for future lost income and, increasingly, to limit future
medical damages to what the injured person would expect to pay
for medical care in the plaintiff's country of origin, rather
than in the U.S. where he or she lives but where medical costs
are typically much higher. Proponents provided the Judiciary
Committee with the accounts of several actual examples of
injured California residents where, because of their immigration
status, the inequitable impact of Rodriguez is quite stark. For
example:
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A 29-year old father of two was catastrophically
injured when his Nissan vehicle suddenly accelerated
and crashed into a big rig truck. He was rendered a
quadriplegic as a result and brought an action against
Nissan to recover for his lost wages and future
medical costs since he was unable to continue his work
in construction and could not afford to cover his
extensive medical costs. Due to his Spanish surname,
the Defendant decided to investigate into his
immigration status. When the Defendant discovered he
was indeed undocumented, they argued that his future
recovery should be reduced to what his wages and
medical costs would have been if he was injured in
Mexico, in pesos. That could mean a substantial
reduction in his recovery, even though he was living
and would continue to live in the U.S.
In order to eliminate these inequities attributable to Rodriguez
and to ensure that injured persons are fairly compensated for
their injuries and medical costs regardless of their immigration
status, this bill prohibits discovery of a person's immigration
status in a civil action for personal injury or wrongful death
case, and further provides that evidence of a person's
immigration status (because it is considered irrelevant to
liability) shall not be admitted into evidence.
This bill is expressly limited to personal injury and wrongful
death cases, and does not apply in employment law cases. Recent
amendments clarify that the bill does not affect the standards
of relevance, admissibility, or discovery under specified
sections of state law, in order to ensure that the bill does not
impact the analysis of federal preemption law in the employment
context.
Finally, it should be noted that this bill would not allow
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either party in a personal injury or wrongful death case to use
immigration status as a tool of unfair advantage. Under this
bill, neither the plaintiff nor the defendant would be able to
argue for more or less compensation than would be expected in
this country, because immigration status would be irrelevant and
inadmissible, and not subject to discovery by either party.
Analysis Prepared by:
Anthony Lew / JUD. / (916) 319-2334 FN: 0002681