Assemblymember Ash Kalra represents California’s 25th Assembly District, which encompasses the majority of San José, including downtown and large open space areas in southeast Santa Clara County. He was first elected in 2016, becoming the first Indian American to serve in the California Legislature in state history, and was re-elected to his fifth term in 2024.
Assemblymember Kalra is the Chair of the Committee on Judiciary and also serves as a member on the Housing & Community Development, Labor & Employment, Natural Resources, and Utilities & Energy committees. He is Chair Emeritus of the California Legislative Progressive Caucus that works to ensure that key legislative priorities are successfully passed on civil rights, criminal justice, economic and worker justice, environmental justice, and housing justice. Previously, he served as Chair to the Assembly Committee on Labor and Employment and Assembly Committee on Aging and Long-Term Care.
Assemblymember Kalra has dedicated his tenure in public service to equity and social justice issues. To confront racism and systemic bias in our systems of justice, he authored the historic California Racial Justice Act of 2020, AB 2542, a landmark bill addressing racial discrimination in criminal sentencing and convictions and a follow up bill in 2022, AB 256, to apply the Act retroactively for persons with past convictions.
As a longstanding champion of a single-payer health care system, Assemblymember Kalra introduced AB 1400 in 2021 and AB 2200 in 2024–the statewide legislation also known as CalCare–which would guarantee comprehensive, high-quality health care for all Californians as a human right. He has advanced a number of issues to assist our aging population, like expanding the Assisted Living Waiver program, and to protect our public health, like reducing worker exposure to lead poisoning. To safeguard nursing home and long-term care facility residents, he authored AB 323 in 2021, which updated citation penalties and standards for negligent care.
Assemblymember Kalra has consistently put forth solutions to help alleviate our housing crisis and encourage compassionate and thoughtful assistance for people experiencing homelessness. He authored a robust housing package last year with bills to protect renters, help housing projects move forward, and preserve affordable housing: AB 2347 extends the time for a tenant to respond to an eviction summons by five additional days to allow tenants a meaningful amount of time to exercise their rights, AB 2926 helps California preserve limited affordable housing stock by allowing a preservation buyer to bid to keep the property as affordable housing, and AB 3122 streamlines qualifying housing projects by providing flexibility for a developer to adjust the size of a project based on changes to density bonus law.
Assemblymember Kalra has also led efforts to address the housing crisis unique to San José. In 2019, Assemblymember Kalra authored AB 1745 to extend the authority for the City of San José to develop emergency bridge housing communities to help the city’s homeless population transition into permanent supportive housing. Assemblymember Kalra secured $2 million in the state budget to extend the City of San José’s eviction diversion program, which has prevented over 100 households from forced eviction by providing targeted gap assistance to low-income households on the brink of eviction. He has secured additional funding for the city’s Responsible Landlord Engagement Initiative. Additionally, he authored AB 1469 to allow Valley Water to assist unsheltered people living along streams or other areas near natural water within the district’s jurisdiction, to provide solutions or improve outcomes for the unsheltered individuals.
Assemblymember Kalra has established himself as an environmental leader. By authoring AB 3030 in 2019, he was the first state lawmaker to commit California to protect 30% of lands and coastal waters by 2030 in order to preserve biodiversity and combat global warming. He authored a follow up bill, AB 2278 in 2022, to provide an update on the state’s progress toward the 30x30 goal and require coordination across agencies, departments, and programs to ensure complementary efforts. He authored AB 454 in 2019, the Migratory Bird Protection Act which went into effect after the previous Trump administration adopted rules that weakened the Migratory Bird Treaty Act that had been on the books since 1918. AB 454 ensured that migratory bird protections would continue to be enforced in California regardless of federal rollbacks. Assemblymember Kalra authored AB 1162 in 2019 to reduce the impact of plastic waste in our environment by restricting hotels and other lodging establishments from placing small single-use toiletry bottles. In 2023, he authored AB 2208 to phase out toxic and inefficient fluorescent bulbs.
In the district, Assemblymember Kalra is a vocal advocate for protecting open spaces, authoring AB 948 in 2019 to create the Coyote Valley Conservation Program which conserves, protects, and restores the natural and working land aspects of Coyote Valley and the benefits these lands provide. He has secured $10 million for Santa Clara County to purchase Laguna Seca for permanent land conservation and $1.5 million for Lake Cunningham water quality and shoreline improvements.
Assemblymember Kalra has authored successful legislation to protect workers, such as AB 1947 in 2019, which increased the statute of limitations for filing a worker retaliation claim from six months to one year to allow vulnerable worker populations more time to gather necessary evidence and materials to remedy disputes with employers. Assemblymember Kalra also authored AB 96 in 2023 to protect transit workers’ voices in the implementation of new autonomous transit vehicle technology, putting workers and riders’ safety at the forefront of transitions to the future of work with autonomous technology. In 2024, he authored AB 2602 to require informed consent by performers in film, music, and other entertainment sectors if studios wish to utilize their digital replicas created through AI technology. In September 2019, he was appointed to the inaugural Future of Work Commission, where he joined a diverse group of leaders from technology, labor, business, education, and other sectors to help ensure shared growth and success among workers and their families.
Assemblymember Kalra previously served on the San José City Council for eight years and was formerly a Deputy Public Defender for Santa Clara County for 11 years, representing clients in dozens of jury trials. As a public defender, he represented indigent clients in both felony and misdemeanor matters, and much of his time was spent in drug treatment court where clients were given the opportunity to complete a rehabilitation program and turn their lives around. He has also been an instructor at San José State University and Lincoln Law School of San José.
Assemblymember Ash Kalra was born in Toronto, Canada, and moved to California in 1978 as a young child, residing in the same South San José neighborhood where he grew up. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Communication from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a law degree from Georgetown University.