EdLaw nat/us/state/ca/ab-1159/README.md

language: en · status: enacted · last checked: 2026-10-13

AB 1159 (2026) — student personal information and AI

Enacted, not yet in effect. AB 1159 (Stats. 2026, ch. 182), approved by the Governor and filed with the Secretary of State on 10 September 2026, rewrites California's operator-side student-privacy statutes: the K–12 Pupil Online Personal Information Protection Act (KOPIPA, Bus. & Prof. Code §22584 — the provision this corpus carries as SOPIPA), the Early Learning Personal Information Protection Act (ELPIPA, §22586), and adds the Higher Education Student Information Protection Act (HESIPA, Chapter 22.2.6, §§22587–22587.2). It widens who is covered, bars using covered information to train generative AI or develop AI, and creates a private right of action. The act has no general effective-date clause, so the KOPIPA and ELPIPA changes take effect on 1 January 2027 under Cal. Const. art. IV, §8(c)(1): "a statute enacted at a regular session shall go into effect on January 1 next following a 90-day period from the date of enactment of the statute". HESIPA has its own date: "This chapter shall become operative on July 1, 2027."

The in-force text until then is the SOPIPA instrument; this instrument carries the enacted text beside it (METHODOLOGY section 6).

Applicability to EdTech

The Legislative Counsel's Digest summarises the coverage change: the act would apply KOPIPA and ELPIPA "to an operator, or an entity working on behalf of the operator, of an internet website, online service, online application, or mobile application with actual knowledge that the site, service, or application is used for the applicable school purposes and was designed or marketed for those purposes" (Digest) — replacing the current test of use "primarily" for school purposes, designed "and" marketed for them.

The AI provision is a new prohibition in each of the three acts. An operator shall not "Use covered information, including persistent unique identifiers, created or gathered by the operator’s site, service, or application to train a generative artificial intelligence system or service or develop an artificial intelligence system" — KOPIPA §22584(b)(5), ELPIPA §22586(b)(5), HESIPA §22587(b)(5). The terms "Artificial intelligence", "Generative artificial intelligence" and "Train a generative artificial intelligence system or service" take their meanings from Civil Code §3110 (§22584(a)(1), (a)(5), (a)(13)). An EdTech service that sends pupil conversations or work to a model provider has to read the prohibition against both what it does with that data and what its provider's terms allow.

Key obligations at a glance

Enforcement

The Digest summarises the new remedy: the act "would authorize a pupil or student actually harmed by noncompliance with KOPIPA, ELPIPA, or HESIPA to bring a civil action against the noncompliant operator, as prescribed, and would require a person bringing that action to furnish a copy of the complaint to the Attorney General within 10 days after filing the action" (Digest). The operative text is in the sections reproduced in AB-1159.md.

Contents

Document Covers
AB-1159.md The chaptered bill in full: Legislative Counsel's Digest; SECS. 1–7 (§§22584, 22585, 22586, 22586.1, Chapter 22.2.6 §§22587–22587.2)

Licence

The corpus reproduces the chaptered text of AB 1159 and the Legislative Counsel's Digest verbatim from the California Legislature's own database. Statute text enacted by a state legislature is outside copyright under the government edicts doctrine. In Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc., 590 U.S. 255 (2020) (slip opinion, read 2026-10-01), the Supreme Court held: "Under what has been dubbed the government edicts doctrine, officials empowered to speak with the force of law cannot be the authors of—and therefore cannot copyright—the works they create in the course of their official duties." The Legislature's XML carries the comment "Copyright © Legislative Counsel Bureau, State of California."; the Bureau is the Legislature's own drafting office, and the same opinion holds that "Because Georgia’s annotations are authored by an arm of the legislature in the course of its legislative duties, the government edicts doctrine puts them outside the reach of copyright protection." The bulk-export readme (pubinfo_Readme.pdf, read 2026-10-13) states no copyright notice or terms of use.

Conditions: none attach. The corpus names the official source in Sources and in each section's {.meta} provenance line, and Meta describes what it changed (anchors added, nothing reworded).

Sources