Independent journalist Nick Shirley has been exposing blatent fraud that was undetected by government agencies, and California lawmakers seem more interested in protecting the fraudsters than taxpayers. Last week, Governor Gavin Newsom signed a law — AB 2624 — which is supposedly designed to prevent frontline non-profit workers from being harassed.
The bill was drafted not long after independent journalist Nick Shirley uncovered millions of dollars in fraud.
“After Nick Shirley, the 23-year-old independent journalist, helped blow open Minnesota’s child care fraud case, which has resulted in over 100 indictments, he went to California to post videos exposing Medicaid and other fraud,” Unleash Prosperity recently reported. “Rather than follow up on his findings, the state’s welfare industrial complex concocted a bill dubbed the ‘Stop Nick Shirley Act.’ It shields government-funded nonprofits and groups from investigative journalism that aims to expose fraud, making it a crime to post video evidence of fraud or images of ‘immigration support’ workers on camera. It also weakens the state’s shield law protecting journalists.”
In a video posted on X, Shirley decried the law, saying “California would rather protect fraudsters over law-abiding taxpayers.”
Unleash Prosperity noted that state law in California was sufficient to protect those workers.
“State law already protects those who face threats, harassment, or violence related to their work, so the bill clearly has the intent to protect the fraud foxes who are raiding taxpayer hen houses,” Unleash Prosperity wrote, adding that the author of the bill is Assemblywoman Mia Bonta, the wife of Rob Bonta, the state’s Democratic attorney general. Rob Bonta was recently blasted by Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, for failing to vigorously prosecute fraud in welfare programs.
Moreover, Max Kautsch, a Kansas attorney specializing in First Amendment issues said the law is likely unconstitutional.
“The law is unconstitutional for a variety of reasons, starting with the fact that the protections it affords appear unending and infinite,” Kautsch said. “Laws implicating the First Amendment cannot be so broad; rather, they must be narrowly tailored to serve a legitimate interest.”
Kautsch said even if there were privacy issues to be dealt with, there were other ways to protect them.
“Even if there is a legitimate privacy interest at stake, there is no evidence that far-reaching criminal penalties are necessary to preserve that interest,” Kautsch said. “Moreover, there is no evidence that legislators considered whether other avenues to protect privacy, such as civil restraining orders, existing criminal laws, or takedown notices delivered to YouTube, would be reasonable alternatives to a new criminal law so clearly implicating free speech. Applying this law seems likely to trigger litigation.”
