California Vetoes SB 1130: No Smart Glasses Recording Law

California Governor Vetoes SB 1130, Leaving No Smart Glasses Recording Law

California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed Senate Bill 1130 on September 30, 2026, rejecting a measure that would have made it a misdemeanor to use a wearable camera to capture sound or video of another person, without that person's explicit consent, inside a business where they had a reasonable expectation of privacy. California still has no wearable-specific recording statute.

Information last verified on October 1, 2026.

Status: Vetoed by the Governor on September 30, 2026. The bill never became law and was never chaptered. The Senate's action log for the same date reads "In Senate. Consideration of Governor's veto pending," so the measure sits formally with its house of origin; the 2025-2026 regular session adjourns sine die at midnight on November 30, 2026.

Jurisdiction scope: This article covers California state law only, specifically the veto of SB 1130 and the Penal Code provisions that continue to govern recording in California. It does not address the federal wiretap statute, other states' wearable-camera rules, or the separate question of courthouse and courtroom camera bans. For a non-California example of an institutional restriction on wearables, see our report on the New York courthouse order on wearable cameras.

What Happened

Senate Bill 1130, introduced by Senator Reyes on February 17, 2026 and captioned "Invasion of privacy: wearable recording devices," cleared both houses in the final weeks of the 2025-2026 regular session. The Assembly passed it on August 30, 2026 by 57 ayes to 14 noes, and the Senate concurred in the Assembly amendments on August 31, 2026 by 29 ayes to 10 noes. The bill was enrolled and presented to the Governor at 2 p.m. on September 9, 2026. We covered the measure while it was still moving, in our September report on the wearable-recording bill.

The Governor vetoed it on September 30, 2026. The Legislature's bill history records two entries under that date: "Vetoed by the Governor" and "In Senate. Consideration of Governor's veto pending."

The veto message, on Office of the Governor letterhead and dated September 30, 2026, opens with the standard return formula and then sets out two objections. The first is definitional:

While I support the author's attempt to meet that demand, we must approach this issue with precision and care. This measure defines several terms too broadly or imprecisely. For example, the bill's definition of "wearable recording device" could include certain smartwatches or other worn devices widely used in public spaces and capable of recording, which could lead to significant confusion and unintended consequences.

Veto message of Governor Gavin Newsom returning Senate Bill 1130 to the California State Senate, September 30, 2026, page 1.

The second objection is redundancy. The message states that although the bill seeks to prohibit visual and audio recording in a place of business where an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy, "existing law already makes it a crime to use an electronic device to record a person in any area in which the occupant has a reasonable expectation of privacy, as well as the recording of confidential communications without consent." The message closes: "For these reasons, I cannot sign this bill."

The Governor did not dispute that the underlying problem is real. The same message describes wearable technology as "rapidly advancing, with articles that closely resemble ordinary eyewear and other accessories containing cameras, microphones, and artificial intelligence systems," and says that reports of "disturbing, invasive, and potentially dangerous behavior utilizing this technology have surfaced and demand a legislative response." The objection is to the drafting, not to the premise. The conduct that drove the bill is the same conduct we covered in the Meta Ray-Ban wearable camera episode.

What the vetoed bill would have done

Because none of it is law, the enrolled text is useful mainly as a map of what California considered and declined. As enrolled on September 4, 2026, SB 1130 would have:

• Added Penal Code 632.8. Subdivision (b)(1) read: "A person shall not operate a wearable recording device to capture sound or video of any other person in any area within a place of business where the person has a reasonable expectation of privacy unless the person operating the device has the explicit consent of that person to capture sound or video of that person." "Place of business" was defined narrowly as a physical office or retail establishment where members of the public receive goods or services.
• Separately banned defeating the recording indicator. Subdivision (c) said a person "shall not disable any light, sound, or other indicator on a wearable recording device that indicates that the device is capturing sound or video." That prohibition carried no place-of-business limit and no privacy-expectation limit.
• Set the penalty at a fine not exceeding $1,500 per violation, imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or both.
• Carved out a long list of devices and users. Body-worn cameras used by public or peace officers in their official duties, employer-issued headsets and two-way radios used by employees in the normal course of business duties, ordinary wireless headphones and earphones, hearing aids, augmentative and alternative communication devices, and assistive technology used by a person with a disability as defined in 42 U.S.C. 12102 were all excluded.
• Protected the right to record officers. Subdivision (b)(2) provided that photographing or recording a public officer or peace officer, while the officer is in a public place or the person recording is somewhere they have a right to be, does not by itself violate that prohibition, give reasonable suspicion to detain, or supply probable cause to arrest.
• Declined to create a private right of action. Subdivision (i) read: "Notwithstanding Section 637.2, this section does not create a private right of action against a person who has violated this section." Enforcement would have been criminal only.
• Added Business and Professions Code Chapter 40 (Sections 22949.85 to 22949.88). Section 22949.86 would have barred manufacturing, selling, delivering, holding or offering for sale in California a wearable recording device "without a light, sound, or other indicator that is sufficiently prominent so that a reasonable person in the vicinity would be alerted to the capturing activity," operative January 1, 2028. Section 22949.87 would have banned trafficking in, acquiring or using technology whose primary purpose is defeating that indicator. Section 22949.88 set a civil penalty not exceeding $2,500 per knowing violation.
• Made conforming amendments to Penal Code 633, 633.1 and 633.5, inserting the new section number into the existing law-enforcement and crime-evidence exceptions.

The enrolled bill contained no urgency clause and set no special operative date for the Penal Code provisions. Under article IV, section 8(c)(1) of the California Constitution, a statute enacted at a regular session takes effect on January 1 following a 90-day period from enactment, so a signature on September 30, 2026 would have produced a January 1, 2027 operative date for Penal Code 632.8. Only the sales ban in Section 22949.86 carried an express later date.

What the Law Actually Says

The practical question a reader has after a veto is not what the bill said but what the rules are now. The answer is that they are exactly what they were on September 29, 2026.

Audio is governed by Penal Code 632. Subdivision (a) punishes a person who, "intentionally and without the consent of all parties to a confidential communication, uses an electronic amplifying or recording device to eavesdrop upon or record the confidential communication, whether the communication is carried on among the parties in the presence of one another or by means of a telegraph, telephone, or other device, except a radio." A first offense carries a fine up to $2,500 per violation, county jail up to one year, or both; a prior conviction under 631, 632, 632.5, 632.6, 632.7 or 636 raises the fine ceiling to $10,000.

Two limiting clauses in Section 632 do most of the work. Subdivision (c) defines a confidential communication as one "carried on in circumstances as may reasonably indicate that any party to the communication desires it to be confined to the parties thereto," and expressly excludes communications made in a public gathering, in a proceeding open to the public, or "in any other circumstance in which the parties to the communication may reasonably expect that the communication may be overheard or recorded." Subdivision (b) excludes from the definition of "person" an individual "known by all parties to a confidential communication to be overhearing or recording the communication." So glasses with a visible, understood recording indicator sit in a materially different position from glasses nobody realizes are running. Section 632.7 adds an all-party rule for recording communications transmitted between cellular or cordless telephones and landlines.

Section 632 reaches a communication, not a scene. A silent video clip of a stranger is not a confidential communication, which is one reason the statute is an awkward fit for a device whose main output is video. This is the same structure we set out in our guide to California's all-party consent rules.

Video in private spaces is governed by Penal Code 647(j). Paragraph (1) makes it disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor, to look through a hole or opening into, or otherwise view, "by means of any instrumentality, including, but not limited to, a periscope, telescope, binoculars, camera, motion picture camera, camcorder, mobile phone, electronic device, or unmanned aircraft system, the interior of a bedroom, bathroom, changing room, fitting room, dressing room, or tanning booth, or the interior of any other area in which the occupant has a reasonable expectation of privacy, with the intent to invade the privacy of a person or persons inside." The phrase "any instrumentality" and the catch-all "electronic device" are why the Governor could call the bill redundant: camera glasses are an instrumentality. Paragraphs (2) and (3) reach concealed-camera recording of an identifiable person under or through clothing, and of a person who may be in a state of full or partial undress in those same spaces. Under subdivision (k), a second or subsequent 647(j) violation, or one where the victim was a minor, is punishable by county jail up to one year, a fine up to $2,000, or both.

Civil exposure comes from Penal Code 637.2. A person injured by a violation of the Invasion of Privacy chapter may recover the greater of $5,000 per violation or three times actual damages, and subdivision (c) says actual damages are not a prerequisite. That remedy attaches to Section 632 and its neighbors. SB 1130 would have switched it off for the new section it created.

Nothing above moved on September 30. For how these provisions apply to specific wearable-camera situations, see our California smart glasses page.

Analysis: Why This Matters

The following is analysis from the Recording Law Editorial Team.

The two objections in the veto message pull in different directions, and the tension is worth naming because it describes the drafting problem any successor bill inherits.

The redundancy objection is strongest where SB 1130 was narrowest. In a fitting room or a clinic restroom, Section 647(j)(1) already reaches viewing by any instrumentality, including a camera, where the occupant has a reasonable expectation of privacy, and the vetoed Section 632.8(b)(1) would have covered much of the same ground in the subset of those spaces that sit inside a place of business. On that overlap the Governor's point is textually accurate.

The overlap thins out at the edges of the bill. Section 632.8(c), the flat prohibition on disabling a device's recording indicator, had no analogue in the Invasion of Privacy chapter the Governor invoked; neither did the Business and Professions Code chapter conditioning sale on a prominent indicator. Those provisions regulated the hardware signal rather than the act of recording. Existing law conditions liability on where the subject was and what expectation they had, not on whether the device told them it was on. A reader should understand that the redundancy objection, as written, addresses the Penal Code prohibition and does not by its terms account for the indicator and sales provisions.

The breadth objection is about scope rather than overlap. The enrolled definition of "wearable recording device" covered any device designed to be worn on or attached to the body with the capacity to record or transmit sound or video, subject to three carve-outs. Smartwatches were not among the carve-outs, and a smartwatch does fit that definition on its face. That is an observation about the text; it is not a statement about how a court would have read it, and no court will, because the section does not exist.

The result for readers is a continuing structural gap rather than a change in the law. California's recording statutes were built around communications and around enumerated private interiors. A device that records continuously, in public and semi-public space, and that may transmit or process what it captures in real time, is not well described by either frame. The veto leaves that gap where it was. Whether it should be closed, and with what definitions, is now a legislative question with no pending answer on the record.

How This Affects You

Generally, and without reference to anyone's particular facts: the rules that applied to a person wearing camera glasses into a California store on September 29, 2026 are the rules that apply today. Audio capture of a conversation whose participants reasonably expect privacy is governed by the all-party consent requirement in Section 632. Recording into a restroom, fitting room, dressing room or comparable private interior with intent to invade privacy is governed by Section 647(j). A visible, working recording indicator matters under Section 632 because of the "known by all parties" exclusion in subdivision (b), but it is not a statutory safe harbor and it does nothing under Section 647(j), which turns on the space and the intent rather than on notice.

Private rules did not change either, and they were never dependent on SB 1130. A business, a medical office, a school, a courthouse or an employer can restrict or exclude recording devices on its own premises under its own authority. Those restrictions operate independently of the Penal Code and are unaffected by the veto.

What Happens Next

Two things on the record remain open, and neither has an outcome yet.

First, the veto is procedurally live. Article IV, section 10(a) of the California Constitution provides that a vetoed bill is returned to its house of origin, which "shall enter the objections in the journal and proceed to reconsider it," and that the bill becomes a statute if each house then passes it by rollcall vote with "two-thirds of the membership concurring." The Senate log entry of September 30, 2026 reflects that posture: consideration of the Governor's veto is pending. SB 1130 cleared the Assembly 57 to 14 and the Senate concurrence vote 29 to 10. An override would require a separate rollcall in each house, and no override vote appears in the record as of October 1, 2026. Under article IV, section 3(a), the 2025-2026 regular session adjourns sine die by operation of the Constitution at midnight on November 30, 2026.

Second, nothing in the record establishes whether similar language will be introduced in a future session. We are not predicting either outcome. We will update this page from the Legislature's own action log and the Governor's office if the posture changes.

This article is legal information, not legal advice. It describes California statutes and a gubernatorial veto as of October 1, 2026 and does not account for any particular person's circumstances. Recording law turns on specific facts, and penalties are serious. Consult a licensed California attorney before acting.

Related articles

• California smart glasses recording laws
• California recording laws and all-party consent
• Our earlier report on SB 1130 as it moved through the Legislature
• The Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses privacy episode
• New York courthouse ban on smart glasses

Last updated: 2026-10-01. Details verified as of 2026-10-01.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it now illegal to record someone with smart glasses in California?

There is no wearable-specific statute. California law continues to govern the conduct through Penal Code 632, which requires all-party consent to record a confidential communication, and Penal Code 647(j), which criminalizes recording into private interiors with intent to invade privacy (California).

Did SB 1130 become law in any form?

No. The Legislature's bill history records 'Vetoed by the Governor' on September 30, 2026, and the bill was never chaptered. None of its provisions, including Penal Code 632.8 and Business and Professions Code Sections 22949.85 to 22949.88, exist (California).

Why did the Governor veto it?

The veto message of September 30, 2026 gives two reasons: that the bill 'defines several terms too broadly or imprecisely,' using the example of 'wearable recording device' potentially covering certain smartwatches, and that existing law already criminalizes recording a person where the occupant has a reasonable expectation of privacy and recording confidential communications without consent (California).

Can the Legislature still override the veto?

Article IV, section 10(a) of the California Constitution allows each house to pass a returned bill by rollcall vote with two-thirds of the membership concurring, and the Senate log of September 30, 2026 shows consideration of the veto pending. No override vote appears in the record as of October 1, 2026 (California).

Would SB 1130 have required smart glasses to have a recording light?

Yes, and more. Proposed Business and Professions Code Section 22949.86 would have barred selling in California a wearable recording device without an indicator 'sufficiently prominent so that a reasonable person in the vicinity would be alerted to the capturing activity,' operative January 1, 2028, and proposed Penal Code 632.8(c) would have banned disabling such an indicator. Neither is law (California).

Does a visible recording light make wearable recording lawful in California?

Not by itself. Penal Code 632(b) excludes from the statute an individual 'known by all parties to a confidential communication to be overhearing or recording the communication,' so visible notice can matter to a Section 632 analysis, but Penal Code 647(j) turns on the space and the recorder's intent rather than on notice (California).

Could a person sue over a violation of the vetoed section?

The question is moot because the section does not exist, but the enrolled text expressly stated: 'Notwithstanding Section 637.2, this section does not create a private right of action against a person who has violated this section.' Penal Code 637.2 continues to provide a civil remedy of the greater of $5,000 per violation or three times actual damages for violations of the existing Invasion of Privacy chapter (California).

Can a store still ban smart glasses on its premises?

Private premises rules are a separate matter from the Penal Code and were never dependent on SB 1130. A business, employer or institution may restrict recording devices on its own property under its own authority, and the veto does not affect that (California).