On February 20th, California Assemblywoman Mia Bonta introduced Assembly Bill 2624. The bill restricts journalists and citizens from publishing certain identifying information about workers at organizations providing immigration-related services. Internally, Sacramento wasn't subtle about who it was aimed at — they called it the "Stop Nick Shirley Act."
On September 4th, Nick Shirley sued.
Shirley, an independent investigative journalist whose reporting reaches millions of viewers, filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California against Attorney General Rob Bonta and Secretary of State Shirley Weber. The suit, backed by America First Legal and attorney John W. Howard of JW Howard Attorneys, alleges AB 2624 violates the First Amendment, the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and Article I, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution.
The timeline here tells the whole story.
On January 31st, Shirley posted that he had arrived in California. By February 2nd, Governor Gavin Newsom was publicly claiming San Diego's Somali community felt "under siege" after "right-wing provocateurs" showed up at daycares. By February 5th, Attorney General Rob Bonta — Mia Bonta's husband — was calling fraud allegations "reckless," "false," "outrageous," and "ridiculous." Fifteen days later, the Attorney General's wife introduced a bill to shut the journalist up.
That's not legislation. That's a restraining order with a committee vote.
Shirley's reporting had uncovered more than $100 million in fraud at Somali-run daycare centers in Minnesota. His investigations had examined alleged fraud at Armenian hospices and Somali daycares in California. His work contributed to the closure and termination of taxpayer-funded businesses allegedly involved in fraud. So California's response to a journalist exposing government-funded fraud wasn't to investigate the fraud — it was to silence the journalist.
AB 2624 creates a civil protection regime for "designated immigration support services" providers, their employees, and their volunteers. It authorizes written takedown demands and civil lawsuits over posted personal information, defined as home addresses, telephone numbers, employment history, and financial information. The law covers nonprofit offices, community legal clinics, law offices, and health care facilities providing immigration-related services.
Here's the part that makes the constitutional claim nearly airtight: AB 2624 does not restrict identical speech involving immigration enforcement organizations. The same information about an ICE agent's workplace can be published freely. The same information about an immigration services nonprofit cannot. That's not a neutral regulation. That's viewpoint discrimination written into statute.
Governor Newsom signed AB 2624 on August 22nd. It takes effect October 1, 2027.
Gene Hamilton, President of America First Legal, put it plainly: "Nick Shirley is an American patriot. He has been exposing fraud that too many people have tolerated for decades."
Shirley's own response was shorter: "Why create new laws that restrict the freedom of speech if you have nothing to hide?"
That question is doing a lot of heavy lifting, and nobody in Sacramento seems eager to answer it. When a state government sees a journalist uncovering $100 million in fraud and decides the problem is the journalist, the fraud isn't the part they're worried about.
They named the bill after him. As reported by Louder With Crowder, they didn't even try to hide it. And now a federal court gets to decide whether California can pass a law targeting one man's reporting because his reporting made the wrong people uncomfortable.
The First Amendment was written for exactly this scenario. Whether Sacramento remembers that is up to the Eastern District now.