Nick Shirley sues California to block anti-reporting law

California lawmakers tried to shut down viral undercover reporting with severe financial penalties.

Independent journalist Nick Shirley filed a federal First Amendment lawsuit against the state after legislators passed Assembly Bill 2624. Introduced by Assemblymember Mia Bonta and co-sponsored by Chirla, an immigration group receiving $80 million in state grants, the law allows state-funded service providers to stop journalists from uploading video footage. Violators face minimum fines of $4,000 per employee caught on camera, plus forced coverage of legal fees.

The statute directly follows Shirley’s viral video investigations into state-funded daycare centers and social service programs. Those reports proved effective enough to force the California Department of Justice to charge 12 individuals in a $10 million fraud scheme. Rather than welcome public oversight, Sacramento responded by handing state-funded entities a legal weapon to silence future probing.

On All-In, the discussion highlighted how independent reporting is stepping into ground traditional regulators routinely ignore. Shirley’s parallel investigation into California’s high-speed rail project revealed that after spending $15 billion, the state has not laid a single mile of track. Initial cost estimates rose from $33 billion to $236 billion while the project scaled down from a Los Angeles to San Francisco line to a route between Merced and Bakersfield.

The financial waste stems from basic bureaucratic mismanagement. One-third of the rail project's spent funds went toward delay claims because state officials failed to secure land rights before awarding construction contracts. Bureaucratic delays cost taxpayers $170,000 a day in idle fees, including a single $500 million delay payout to an Italian firm.

Despite duplicate Amtrak tracks covering the same Central Valley corridor, California Senate Transportation Chair Dave Cortese secured $1 billion annually for the next 20 years to keep the rail authority alive. Taxpayers could fly every passenger between San Francisco and Los Angeles for free for three centuries for less than the projected rail cost.

California’s political response to exposed waste was not reform, but censorship. By suing to strike down AB 2624, Shirley is testing whether state lawmakers can legally fine away their accountability.