New California laws reshape school phones, driverless cars, food labels

Fresno County school districts, charter schools and the Fresno County Office of Education had to have a smartphone policy in place by July 1, forcing campuses to decide whether phones will be limited or banned during the school day. Governor Gavin Newsom signed the Phone-Free School Act as Assembly Bill 3216 in September 2024, and California lawmakers said local education agencies had to include stakeholder input as they wrote the rules.

For parents and students in Fresno, that means checking campus policies before the first bell. The point of the law was to cut classroom distraction and answer concerns about youth mental health and social media use, a rationale Newsom pressed when he urged every district to restrict smartphone use in classrooms. In practical terms, a student who used to keep a phone at a desk or in a backpack may now have to leave it off, stowed away or surrendered during class, depending on the local policy adopted by the district or charter school.

California also put new rules on autonomous vehicles that operate without a human operator physically present. Assembly Bill 1777 took effect July 1 and requires manufacturers to meet added accountability standards, including a dedicated emergency response telephone line. For drivers in Fresno and across the Central Valley, the change matters because driverless vehicles are moving from test runs to regular road use, and the state is now imposing a clearer line of contact when something goes wrong.

Shoppers will see another change at the grocery store. California’s food date-label system, built on earlier efforts dating to Assembly Bill 954 in 2017, has been tightened to promote uniform quality-date and safety-date wording on packaged foods. The goal is to reduce confusion over whether a label signals peak freshness or actual safety, a distinction that affects what gets tossed in Fresno kitchens and what stays in the fridge a few more days.

The July 1 package also reached housing, consumer protections, employers and local governments statewide, but the most immediate daily changes for Fresno County are the ones that land in classrooms, on roads and on the kitchen shelf.