Newsom Vetoes Bill Requiring CSU Report on Discipline

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday vetoed legislation that would have required the California State University system to report specifically on how it disciplined student protesters for misconduct. CSU had requested the veto.

Politico previously reported the story.

Assembly Bill 2551 would have required CSU to tell the Legislature annually about “student code of conduct violations that occurred during, or as a result of, a protest on campus and a description of the discipline imposed on the student.” The data would have been disaggregated by race and gender.

Democratic Assemblymember Sade Elhawary told Inside Higher Ed she introduced the bill because students who participated in protests told her they had received discipline that was uneven and disproportionate to their violations. Elhawary said she wanted to collect data on the issue.

California law already requires CSU to provide general info on code-of-conduct violations related to creating a hostile environment or limiting someone’s ability to “benefit from the free exchange of ideas or the educational mission” of CSU.

The bill also would have required CSU to hold a forum on one campus to gather students’ feelings on the system’s time, place and manner restrictions on student expression and how they’re being enforced. (It also asked—but did not mandate—the University of California system to do the same.)

In a letter to Newsom requesting the veto, Maggie White, a CSU representative, wrote that “only 201 of the system’s 461,612 students were found to have violated the [CSU time, place and manner] policy in the 2024–25 academic year.”

“CSU remains concerned that this bill will create uncertainty among our campus communities,” White wrote, adding, “We believe the existing framework provides opportunities for each campus community to share their perspectives, while maintaining a consistent application of the code of conduct and standards that should be adhered to.”

In his veto message, Newsom, a Democrat, objected directly only to the forum requirement in the bill, suggesting it duplicated “the numerous ways that the campus community can already provide perspective to policy leaders.”

“The CSU and UC governing bodies have regularly scheduled meetings where the campus community can address their respective boards in a public forum,” Newsom wrote. “The CSU and UC also have established communication channels between their respective student associations and administrations at both the system and campus levels.”

A Newsom spokesperson said in an email that “the veto message speaks for itself.” Elhawary said she was disappointed by the veto message.

“This was additional hearings that we were looking to push,” she said of the single forum the bill would’ve required. “We still believe that that’s incredibly important.”

The final votes approving the bill before Newsom’s veto were 23 to 12 in the Senate and 44 to 8 in the Assembly.