California Enacts Apprenticeship Law, Vetoes Species Defense Bill

California enacted an apprenticeship pilot program inside its Department of Industrial Relations and vetoed a bill creating a self-defense exception to its endangered species law. Federal courts added 134 opinions to the record, the most since August 14.

Why it matters: The Department of Industrial Relations and the Department of Human Resources must partner with employee bargaining units by January 1, 2029 to design and develop the apprenticeship program, and the governor's veto means the endangered species self-defense exception the legislature had passed was not signed into law.

What moved

• Department of Industrial Relations: apprenticeship pilot program. (SB1227), California. Creates an apprenticeship pilot program inside the Department of Industrial Relations to address staffing vacancies exceeding 25 percent. The DIR and the Department of Human Resources must partner with employee bargaining units by January 1, 2029 to design and develop the program, which covers DIR civil service positions in labor law enforcement divisions. Status: enacted, chaptered by the Secretary of State as Chapter 326, Statutes of 2026.

• California Endangered Species Act: take prohibition: self-defense. (AB1722), California. Adds a self-defense exception to the California Endangered Species Act's take prohibition, exempting civil, administrative, and criminal penalties when a person uses necessary and reasonable force to protect themselves or others from immediate bodily harm from an endangered, threatened, or candidate species. Status: vetoed by the governor.

• NOTICE OF PROPOSED UPDATE TO THE ALASKACARE DEFINED BENEFIT RETIREE HEALTH PLAN - Alaska Online Public Notices, Alaska. The State of Alaska's notice, from the Division of Retirement and Benefits, proposes adding licensed massage therapists to the recognized provider list under the AlaskaCare Defined Benefit Retiree Health Plan. The public comment period runs through October 19, with a teleconference set for October 8. Status: comment period open; next step is the close of public comment.

• In re: Firefighter Turnout Gear Marketing, Sales Practices, and Products Liability Litigation, Minnesota. The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation centralized firefighter turnout gear litigation in the District of Minnesota, declining to fold the cases into the existing AFFF litigation. The coordinated cases involve claims by turnout gear purchasers alleging PFAS contamination against manufacturers. Status: transfer order entered, coordinating the cases in the District of Minnesota.

• Stephen Schaaf, on behalf of himself and all others similarly situated v. Cret LLC, et al., Nevada. The court certified a preliminary FLSA collective action covering hourly employees in Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, New Jersey, and Texas who received performance pay between April 10, 2022 and the certification order date, and separately granted a Rule 23 class certification for state law claims, over allegations that an online auction platform underpaid overtime by excluding performance bonuses from the overtime rate. Status: FLSA collective and Rule 23 class certification granted.

By the numbers

• 179 items entered the record on September 20: 134 federal and 45 spread across 22 states, combined.
• Opinions across all jurisdictions totaled 176, above the trailing 30 day weekend average of about 73 for that kind of day.
• Federal opinions alone reached 134, well above the trailing weekend average of about 39, and the most collected since August 14, a gap of 37 days.
• Federal regulations and bills each recorded zero on the collection day, well below their trailing weekend averages of about 50 for regulations and about 2 for bills.
• Maryland's courts logged 5 opinions against a trailing weekend average of about one, a level last matched on August 15. New Mexico's courts logged 5 opinions against a trailing weekend average of roughly one every two days, last matched on August 16.

Bill actions

Among tracked bills, no bill carried a LegiScan action dated September 20.

Methodology

"Collected" means the date OmniLegislation's pipeline processed a record, not the date it was originally filed or published. Counts are deduplicated processed records from OmniLegislation's own pipeline. Item descriptions come from the pipeline's own summaries of each record. Baselines are trailing 30 day daily averages for the same kind of day (weekend days against weekend days, weekdays against weekdays), excluding known bulk-load days; highest single-day counts are measured since tracking began on April 5, 2026 and include load days, which are labelled. Bill actions cover tracked bills only. This report covers September 20, 2026. Bill records originate from LegiScan; court opinions from CourtListener, a Free Law Project service; federal regulations from the Federal Register.