Sexual battery.

Assembly Member Soria advances a measure that adds a hospital-employment aggravating factor to the sentencing calculus for felony sexual battery, specifying that when the offender was employed at the hospital where the offense occurred and the victim was in the defendant’s care or seeking medical care at the hospital, this employment status shall be considered an aggravating circumstance.

The bill maintains the existing framework for sexual battery, which includes several scenarios such as touching an intimate part while the victim is unlawfully restrained or incapacitated, or where the act is fraudulently represented as serving a professional purpose. Penalties remain tied to whether the conviction is a felony or a misdemeanor: felonies carry imprisonment in state prison for two to four years with fines up to ten thousand dollars, while misdemeanors carry up to one year in a county jail with fines up to two thousand dollars. In the misdemeanor track, the measure preserves a provision where, if the defendant was an employer and the victim was an employee, the fine can be higher (up to three thousand dollars) but any amount above two thousand dollars for the listed offenses is directed to the state Treasury for redistribution to the Civil Rights Department for enforcement of the California Fair Employment and Housing Act. In the felony context, the newly added hospital-employment fact would function as an aggravating factor in sentencing, alongside the existing aggravation for an employer-employee relationship.

Implementation and fiscal considerations accompany the proposal: the bill is structured as a state-mandated local program, requiring a majority vote and a fiscal committee review, with local-program implications identified in the analysis. It also provides that no reimbursement is required under the California Constitution because the changes are framed as alterations to penalties and offense definitions rather than new state-m mandated local costs. The measure thus places the hospital-employment context within the statutory framework for aggravating circumstances in sexual-battery cases and aligns with the existing structure that considers the relationship between offender and victim in sentencing.