The California Effect
One state is carefully, sustainably building the policy future the federal government has abandoned. And it's been doing it for decades. And right now, that matters more than ever.
Today, we’re collabing with Gaby Goldstein of State Power! Gaby writes about the power of state level politics, collective action, and our democracy! Check her out here on Substack:
There’s a term that you may not have heard of: the California Effect.
It was coined by UC Berkeley Professor David Vogel, who I spent two years working with as his sole research assistant in graduate school as he wrote California Greenin’, a book about California’s rich history as a national and global leader in environmental policy. The California Effect describes something that sounds simple but has profound implications: because California is such a massive market, its regulatory standards don’t stay in California. They go national. Companies that want access to the largest state economy in the country have to meet California’s bar. And once they meet it in California, they meet it everywhere.
Car emissions. Food safety. Consumer protections. For decades, this is how California has quietly shaped U.S. life — not by convincing Washington, but by being too big to ignore.
The track record speaks for itself. California protected Yosemite in 1864, enacted the nation’s first tailpipe emissions standards in the mid-1960s, created one of the country’s most powerful coastal protection agencies in 1972, and adopted legally binding climate targets in 2006.
And right now, that dynamic and proof of concept has never mattered more.
As the federal government dismantles the regulatory infrastructure of the last several decades — on climate, labor, reproductive rights and more — California isn’t waiting around. It’s building the parallel policy infrastructure the federal rollback is trying to destroy. And because of the California Effect, what happens there doesn’t stay there.
Health Care and Reproductive Rights
Abortion rights are in the California state constitution. Yes, you read that right: not a statute, but the constitution. In 2022, nearly 70% of California voters approved Prop 1, which amended the constitution to explicitly protect the right to contraception and abortion – now durably and permanently ensconced in the state Constitution. It was tied for first-in-the-nation status, as voters approved similar state constitutional amendments that same day in Vermont and Michigan.
But California hasn’t stopped at abortion protection. In 2025, Governor Newsom signed AB 260, which allows providers to prescribe abortion medication anonymously — their names don’t appear on the label — and ensures California health plans cover mifepristone regardless of what the FDA does or doesn’t do. While other states had passed similar anonymous prescribing laws, California’s version is the strongest and has the broadest national impact: because California pharmacies are the primary hub for mailing abortion pills across the country, these protections extend far beyond state lines.
The state has also stockpiled abortion medication as a contingency against federal supply restrictions, and in 2022 passed a first-in-the-nation law to explicitly protect digital information from being used by out-of-state investigators for procedures that are lawful in California.
And if you’re a student at a UC or Cal State campus — medication abortion is available at your student health center, thanks to California’s first in the nation law passed in 2019 requiring that public universities provide students with access to the abortion pill.
California has long been the first in the nation to explore and implement other important health policy initiatives too. One of my favorites is CalRX – the state of California looked at how high the cost of insulin is and said, ok, how about if we just make it ourselves? CalRx empowers the State of California to develop, produce, and distribute generic drugs and sell them at low cost. Imagine if other states did the same, or if other states could buy into CalRx?
Climate
While Washington walks away from decades of environmental policy, California keeps setting requirements that become de facto national standards for any company doing business in the state.
California’s Cap-and-Invest program — which puts a price on carbon emissions and reinvests that revenue into clean energy — runs to 2045. As a massive fan of multi-state collaboration, it has always been exciting that CA’s program is tied to Quebec’s, through the Western Climate Initiative – which is now also exploring linking its carbon market with Washington State’s, a move that could reduce regional emissions by 50 million tons.
Additionally, the state’s new corporate climate disclosure laws require large companies to publicly report their greenhouse gas emissions — which is exactly the kind of accountability the federal government has actively abandoned. And when rules like these apply to a $4 trillion economy, they tend to spread.
Other California Firsts
California has a long and impressive track record of being the first in the nation on policies that eventually become the national standard, and that track record is continuing right now.
Back in 1969, California became the first state in the nation to adopt no-fault divorce. Before that, in every state, a court could grant a divorce only if the husband or the wife was able to prove that the other spouse had engaged in “misconduct” – a bar that women were too often unable to meet. The only other way to obtain a divorce was to prove that the other spouse was “incurably insane.” After California passed no-fault divorce, it spread to other states – and provided millions of women with an offramp from bad, abusive, or even just unwanted marriages.
California has also long been a leader in passing laws that protect workers. Among many historic firsts in labor policy, in 2018, California became the first state to ban employers from asking about a candidate’s salary history and later required salary ranges to be included in all job postings.
And California has often led the country in protecting children. As one of so many examples, last year Governor Newsom signed the ‘Real Food, Healthy Kids Act’, which is the first law in the United States to define and ultimately ban unhealthy ultraprocessed foods from school meals.
Time and again, while Washington debated and commissioned more reports, California acted. So many states – and in some cases, like no-fault divorce, all states – have subsequently replicated California’s landmark laws, particularly when it comes to protecting people’s rights to health care and bodily autonomy, a healthy environment, and dignity at work.
A note on nuance
As always, the devil is in the details. Some bills get watered down, enforcement gaps are real, and new innovative bills that challenge large corporate interests are often the subject of long, protracted litigation. I don’t want to oversell the idea of the California Effect, but over many generations, and across administrations of both parties, California has consistently led on protective, innovative policy in ways no other state has matched. That record doesn’t disappear because the details are messy.
And right now, at a moment when the federal government isn’t just failing to lead but actively working to reverse course, California’s willingness to govern boldly – and work cooperatively with other states through interstate initiatives, joint Attorneys General litigation, and state legislative working groups like those organized through State Futures, is one of the most important things happening in U.S. politics.
The rest of the country gets the California Effect whether it knows it or not. And we are glad for it.
For young people especially, this is worth sitting with. At a moment when federal leadership has failed and the national news cycle can feel relentless and hopeless, California is proof that state-level power is real, consequential, and worth paying attention to.
States set the tone.
States build the future.
And increasingly — as California has shown for generations — states are the story.
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