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California Legislative History

This guide provides an overview of California legislative history materials available at Rains Library, as well as a how-to guide to perform your own legislative history.

Using the California Legislature's Website to Retrieve Legislative History Materials

Major legislative history documents for bills passed in 1993 or later can be quickly and easily retrieved from the California legislature's website:

The legislature's website provides:

  • Votes taken on the bill.
  • History- A list of each action taken on a bill from its introduction to the governor's signature or veto.
  • Bill Analysis- Reports written by committee staff explaining how the bill changes existing law, identifying who supports and opposes the bill, and summarizing arguments for and against the bill. These analyses are distributed to legislative committees (committee analyses) and to the Senate or Assembly as a whole (floor analyses) to prepare them for each vote on a bill. 
  • Text of the bill.

For information on reading the text of a bill, see:

Usually, the information on the legislature's website will be more than enough but, if you need a truly comprehensive history of a bill, you can also separately retrieve:

To access a bill on the California legislature's website, input the session year and bill number.

For example, to retrieve Stats. 2011, ch 296 (A.B. 1023), input Session: 2011-2012, House: Assembly (for A.B., Assembly Bill), and the Bill Number: 1023.

To access a bill on the California legislature's old website, input the session year and bill number.

For example, to retrieve Stats. 2011, ch 296 (A.B. 1023), input Session: 2011-2012, House: Assembly (for A.B., Assembly Bill), and the Bill Number: 1023.