Newsom Wouldn’t Ban AI Therapists. He Signed the Clinic Version.

State Sen. Steve Padilla had a line ready for his AI therapy bill, and it was a good one: “AI can be a tool in the hands of licensed professionals, but it cannot be the professional itself.” His office put it in an Aug. 31 release as SB 903 cleared the California legislature. On Sept. 30, the last day Gavin Newsom could act on this year’s bills, the governor vetoed it.

The same afternoon he signed a different bill that says something very close to Padilla’s sentence, as long as the AI is inside a clinic. That split is the clearest way to read Newsom’s final batch of AI laws before he leaves office.

The therapy bill that died

SB 903 would have limited AI to “administrative or supplementary support in psychotherapy services,” according to CalMatters’ Digital Democracy summary. It barred AI from triaging patients or making therapeutic decisions without review by a licensed professional, required patient consent before AI was used in their care, and banned advertising psychotherapy services “provided through the use of companion chatbots.”

We could not extract text from the veto message PDF the governor’s office posted, so we are not quoting Newsom’s reasoning. Padilla’s office described it in an Oct. 1 statement: “The Governor’s veto message claims the protections for patients and clinicians in this bill go too far, but Governor Newsom knows all too well the dangers chatbots pose to vulnerable Californians, and despite that knowledge, has allowed unlicensed algorithms to act as therapists.” That is the bill author’s account of the veto, and it should be read as one.

A second health measure went down too. AB 2575, Assemblymember Liz Ortega’s bill on AI in health care services, was vetoed, per the governor’s Sept. 30 legislative update and a tally by the privacy law firm Stauss.

What he signed for hospitals

AB 1979, from Assemblymember Mia Bonta and sponsored by the California Nurses Association, went the other way. Healthcare IT News reports it restricts AI to advisory roles in clinical care and prevents AI from performing licensed clinical functions, while exempting AI used for clinical documentation and for communications that don’t require professional judgment. The Transparency Coalition adds that it treats businesses offering health care chatbots as providers under California’s medical confidentiality law.

Newsom also signed SB 503 from Sen. Akilah Weber Pierson, which requires developers and deployers to identify clinical decision support systems with known risks of biased impact and make reasonable efforts to mitigate them, per the same report.

Our read: the line Newsom drew is about setting, not principle. AI may not act as the clinician where licensed clinicians already work. SB 903 went after the consumer side, where a companion chatbot can be marketed as something like therapy without a clinician anywhere in the loop. That was the part he would not sign.

Workers got a 90-day clock

The labour bills fared better. SB 951, from Sen. Eloise Gómez Reyes, requires 90 days’ advance notice before technological changes that affect 25% or more of a workforce, according to the Transparency Coalition. As introduced in February, Reyes’ office said notice would go to affected workers, local governments and the state Employment Development Department, triggered at 25 employees or 25% of the workforce, whichever is less. We could not confirm the final thresholds against the chaptered text, and they may have changed in amendments.

SB 947 from Sen. Jerry McNerney bars employers from relying solely on automated decision systems for discipline or termination, and AB 1883 from Assemblymember Isaac Bryan restricts workplace AI surveillance tools from collecting neural data or recognizing emotions, per Stauss. Newsom’s framing, as quoted by the Transparency Coalition: “AI should expand opportunity, not come at the expense of workers.”

The kids’ bills and the auditors came earlier

Several bills that some year-end roundups bundle into the Sept. 30 haul were signed weeks before. SB 1119, from Padilla with Assemblymembers Buffy Wicks and Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, requires independent child safety audits and annual risk assessments for companion chatbots, plus crisis protocols, parental controls and safety notifications. Padilla’s SB 867 regulates toys that are companion chatbots. Both were signed Sept. 10.

SB 813 and AB 1405, which set up oversight of independent verification organizations and a state registry for AI auditors with standards for independence, transparency and integrity, were signed Sept. 9. Stauss lists all four with a Sept. 30 date; the governor’s own releases say otherwise, and we go with the governor.

Counts vary with the definition of an AI bill. Stauss tallies 15 AI bills signed and two vetoed in its year-end review. The Transparency Coalition counted 11 signed on the final day alone and nearly 30 AI-related measures enacted across the session. None of the releases we read give effective dates, so compliance teams should check each chaptered bill.

Padilla’s sentence, the one about AI not being “the professional itself,” is now roughly the law inside a California hospital. On a phone, in an app that calls itself a listener, it is a question for the next governor.