Attorney General Bonta Stands Up for Survivors of Abuse and Combats Gun Violence with ‘Survivor Pathways to Safety Act’

OAKLAND — California Attorney General Rob Bonta today issued a statement celebrating the signing into law of Assembly Bill (AB) 1753, The Survivor Pathways to Safety Act, a comprehensive package of reforms designed to modernize the state’s court protective order system to prevent gun violence and strengthen protections for survivors of violence and abuse. AB 1753 addresses access and implementation barriers that keep survivors from being able to request protective orders, promotes proactive enforcement and coordination between courts and justice partners to ensure compliance or accountability for violating protective orders, and addresses a range of other implementation barriers to prevent dangerous individuals from keeping or acquiring firearms. Authored by Assemblymember Catherine Stefani (D-San Francisco), AB 1753 was co-sponsored by Attorney General Bonta and GIFFORDS, the national gun violence prevention organization led by former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, and endorsed by a coalition of law enforcement, gun violence prevention, healthcare professionals, and domestic violence survivor advocates. 

“For too long, survivors of abuse and violence have had to overcome dangerous barriers to obtain protective orders and ensure those orders are effectively served and enforced to keep them safe. We are taking crucial steps forward to end that with AB 1753,” said Attorney General Rob Bonta. “I am proud to have partnered with survivor advocates to develop this comprehensive package of reforms that implement ten of the legislative recommendations from my office’s ‘Strategic Plan to Sustain California’s Record Progress Against Gun Violence’ report. AB 1753 will ensure our court protective order systems rightfully set a national standard for safety, access to justice, and proactive, coordinated enforcement, especially to prevent gun violence, domestic violence, and hate-motivated violence. This law will strengthen protections for our most vulnerable residents, and build on California’s record safety progress through prevention, protection, and accountability.”

"AB 1753 takes on one of the most critical gaps in survivor protection by making sure California's protective order laws actually work,” said Assemblymember and California’s Gun Violence Prevention Working Group Co-Chair Catherine Stefani. “This bill tackles the problem from multiple angles. It strengthens firearm surrender requirements, improves coordination between courts and law enforcement when someone is illegally armed in violation of a protective order, registers more protective orders in law enforcement and background check databases, and ensures that people convicted of dangerous misdemeanors fail background checks. Too often, survivors get a protective order and assume they're safe, only to find that the system meant to back it up is broken. This bill closes the gap between what the law promises and what survivors actually experience."

Protective orders authorize people in danger to request court-ordered safety interventions to protect them from individuals engaged in violent or other dangerous conduct, including court orders requiring dangerous individuals to temporarily relinquish their firearms to a licensed dealer or law enforcement while the court order remains in effect. These processes empower survivors and law enforcement to request protections to reduce risk, separate dangerous individuals from victims in danger, and prevent further harm. While protective orders are vital pathways to safety, survivors navigating these court processes too often face hazardous administrative barriers, delayed and siloed enforcement, and systemic gaps that leave them vulnerable to violence. 

To address these barriers, AB 1753 includes a package of 10 priority recommendations from the California Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Office of Gun Violence Prevention’s Strategic Plan to Sustain California’s Record Progress Against Gun Violence, published in July 2026, which identified “strengthening implementation of court protection orders” and “strengthening firearm eligibility standards” as critical priorities for reducing gun and domestic violence in California. 

This bill includes provisions to:

1. Prevent people convicted of hate crimes, violating Gun Violence Restraining Orders and other protective orders, violating firearm probation conditions, or making criminal threats of violence against a school, house of worship, medical facility, or other sensitive locations, from purchasing or possessing firearms and ammunition for at least 10 years following conviction. 
2. Prevent courts from requiring survivors seeking protection orders to provide pre-filing notice to a dangerous individual of their intent to request an urgent preliminary protective order in cases in which providing such advance, pre-filing notice would endanger any person’s safety. 
3. Address access barriers by ensuring that across all protection order types, individuals may electronically file court protection order petitions and other documents and may participate in protection order hearings through videoconference or other remote means.
4. Ensure that in any stage of any protective order case, courts can and should access or receive information maintained in law enforcement databases. That includes the Automated Firearms System and other criminal history and protective order databases, including to inform the court’s determination about whether the respondent possesses firearms and has lawfully relinquished them, and whether the respondent is or has been subject to other restraining orders or firearm prohibiting criminal events. This provision also requires prosecutors to provide information to the court about a defendant’s firearm access in domestic violence-related criminal cases.
5. Require prosecuting agencies to develop standard protocols for responding to court notifications of firearm relinquishment noncompliance in protective order cases, as law enforcement agencies are required to do pursuant to AB 451 (2025, Petrie-Norris), and require local law enforcement and prosecuting agencies to designate a position responsible for receiving these firearm violation notices from the court. 
6. Authorize prosecutors to request firearm-prohibiting Criminal Protective Orders in criminal hate crime cases and require courts to consider issuing these protective orders on their own motion, including when the hate crime defendant is a danger to the public or groups of people instead of specific targeted individuals. 
7. Make all local law enforcement agencies eligible to receive reimbursement for serving protective orders on an equal basis, since all local agencies are now required to serve protective orders in their jurisdiction upon petitioners’ request. 
8. Provide a standard process for registering in the California Restraining and Protective Order System (CARPOS) and enforcing under California law all valid protective orders issued by tribal courts and courts in other states to promote consistent enforcement in California, including for firearm background checks. 
9. Require prosecuting agencies to make reasonable efforts to notify victims and witnesses when a criminal court issues a protective order naming them as protected parties. 
10. Authorize DOJ to seek grant funding to establish an automated protected person information portal that would provide survivors with direct electronic access to information maintained in law enforcement databases about their own protective order case, including whether the order has been served or violated.

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