The Legislature Passes AB 13
Back in the Legislature, AB 13 was continuing to move. After passing the Senate Appropriations Committee, it was sent to the Senate floor. Senator Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach), AB 13's floor manager in the Senate, successfully fought off several hostile amendments. However, one amendment was accepted on June 16: smoking areas would be allowed in long-term patient care facilities and in businesses with fewer than five employees so long as all air from the smoking area was exhausted directly outside, the area was not accessible to minors, no work stations were situated within the smoking area, and EPA or CalOSHA ventilation standards were met, once established. The bill passed the Senate on June 30, 1994. The Assembly voted concurrence with the Senate amendments. Governor Wilson signed the bill into law on July 21, 1994.
The final version of AB 13 retained its 100 percent smoke-free mandate as well as its preemption clause. Amendments were worded so any exemption from the smoke-free mandate allowing smoking was also an exemption from the preemption clause. Thus, local entities would be allowed to enforce existing regulations and pass and enforce new regulations restricting smoking in areas exempted from AB 13, despite its preemption clause. Nevertheless, Governor Pete Wilson cited the bill's preemption of local ordinances as a reason to sign the bill into law. He stated that AB 13 protected California's businesses as well as the health of workers because “by providing a uniform, statewide standard which
Wilson continued to press his view that AB 13 preempted local communities from regulating smoking. In 1995 a nursing home resident in San Jose complained that he was being forced to breathe secondhand smoke in the television room at the nursing home; he asked the city, under its clean indoor air law, to require that the room be smoke free. The city complied, and DHS sued, claiming that AB 13 preempted the ordinance. DHS lost in the trial court and appealed. On August 18, 1998, the Sixth District of the Court of Appeal unanimously ruled that the neither federal law nor state law preempted localities from enacting local tobacco control ordinances:
By disavowing any intent to preempt the regulation of tobacco smoking, and by in fact expressly authorizing local agencies to “ban completely the smoking of tobacco” in any manner not inconsistent with the law, the Legislature clearly indicated its intent to leave to the local authorities the matter of regulating the smoking of tobacco in their respective jurisdictions, provided the regulations so adopted do not conflict with statutory law. In delegating such regulatory power to local agencies and expressing its preference that regulation of tobacco smoking at the local level be made by local governments, the Legislature impliedly [sic] decreed that where the local agencies have stepped in to regulate the smoking of tobacco within their own territorial boundaries, the state's administrative agencies, such as the Department [of Health Services] should step back… .
Evidently, the rationale for the Legislature's deference to local governments, equipped as they are with superior knowledge of local conditions, [is that they] are better able to handle local problems relating to regulation of tobacco smoking.[108]
The fact that DHS under the Wilson administration was willing to advocate the position that a nursing home resident had no right to a smoke-free environment while watching television was just one more example of the administration's pro-tobacco position. The result, however, was a resolution of the bitter debate within California's tobacco control community over whether or not state law was preemptive. It was not.