San Francisco Senator Scott Wiener introduced SB 59 on January 8, 2025 — the day before Donald Trump's second inauguration — and now, nine months after Newsom signed it, its civil enforcement provisions for unauthorized disclosure of sealed records are fully in effect.

The Transgender Privacy Act (SB 59) seals California court records of name and gender changes for transgender and nonbinary adults, extending retroactively to all past filings. As of July 1, 2026, the law's full enforcement teeth are live: anyone who discloses or posts those sealed records faces civil liability, including punitive damages and attorney's fees. The law represents the sharpest statewide legislative shield yet for a community that Wiener and advocates argue is under direct federal attack.

On January 8, 2025 — the day before Donald Trump was inaugurated for a second term — state Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco filed a bill that his office described as a direct response to what was coming. "The incoming Trump Administration and Republican Congressional leadership have made clear that targeting and erasing trans people is among their highest policy priorities," Wiener said in a statement announcing the legislation, "and California must have our trans community members' backs."

That bill, SB 59, is now the law of the land in California — and as of July 1, 2026, it has real penalties attached.

What the law does

The Transgender Privacy Act automatically seals court petitions for name and gender changes filed by transgender and nonbinary people, removing them from public court records. Critically, it applies retroactively: people with older filings can request their records be made confidential too.

Until now, those records were public documents — and in documented cases, right-wing activists used them to forcibly out trans individuals online. A 2024 Stanislaus County case in which a trans woman sued after being outed on social media based on court records helped crystallize the problem and galvanized support for the legislation.

SB 59 builds on AB 223, a 2023 law that extended similar protections to minors. Wiener's bill takes that framework statewide for all ages.

The vote and the opposition

The bill passed the Senate 28–10 on June 2, 2025, and cleared the Assembly on September 12, 2025. Governor Gavin Newsom signed it into law October 13, 2025 as an urgency statute, putting it into immediate effect.

The bill drew formal opposition from the California Catholic Conference and Californians for Good Governance, who raised concerns about law enforcement background checks and First Amendment implications — specifically, the law's prohibition on non-petitioners posting sealed records online. "Removing the public record of a person's birth name and birth sex could prevent law enforcement or background checks from recognizing the same individual under other aliases," Californians for Good Governance argued in the Senate Judiciary Committee analysis.

Sponsors of the bill included Equality California, Secure Justice, the ACLU of Southern California, TransFamily Support Services, Trans Youth Liberation, and the Harvey Milk Democratic Club Transgender Caucus.

Why July 1 matters

Under the terms of the statute, civil enforcement — allowing lawsuits for actual, statutory, and punitive damages plus attorney's fees — kicked in six months after enactment. That trigger date is now passed. Any person who improperly accesses, shares, or posts sealed records can now be sued.

Wiener has framed the law squarely as a counter-move against federal policy, not just a procedural privacy fix. "Right-wing groups and individuals have used publicly available personal information to harass trans people in California and across the nation," he said when the bill advanced to Newsom. "The incoming Trump administration will only embolden abusive right-wing extremists."

Whether that legal shield will hold against any federal preemption attempts remains an open question, but on the state level, the enforcement clock is now running — and it started on July 1.