Kevin R. Johnson is professor emeritus at the UC Davis School of Law, where he joined the faculty in 1989 and was dean from 2008 to 2024. His scholarship covers immigration law and civil rights.
Case
California's AB 2760 bars all law enforcement, including federal agents, from using electric shock gloves. Newsom and the author defend the ban. DHS and a federal prosecutor reject California's authority over federal agents. As of October 1, 2026, no court has ruled.
Role at the time: Professor emeritus at the UC Davis School of Law, quoted in an Associated Press report
Response to this claim
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said on September 29, 2026 that California has no jurisdiction to regulate federal agents and that he had advised the Department of Homeland Security to disregard AB 2760.
“The state has very limited, if any, powers in dictating to the federal government how its officers are armed”
Relative to the ban as applied to federal officers, Johnson predicts that courts will hold the state lacks the power to bind federal officers, which rejects the ban's federal application as beyond California's authority. He addresses only the power question. We used Condemned because he rejects the application as unenforceable, even while calling the laws well-intentioned. The closest competing label is Mixed or conditional, because he calls the laws well-intentioned and frames his conclusion as a prediction (likely), but he credits only the laws' purpose and rejects their application to federal officers.
Statement dates: September 29, 2026
Statement dates: September 29, 2026
Statement dates: September 29, 2026
