Introduction to Indivisible CA State Strong Working Groups

Recapping the first monthly CASS meeting of 2026

On Jan 12th Indivisible CA hosted the first monthly CA State Strong (CASS) meeting for the 2026 legislative year. This purpose of this blog post is to share notes and slides from the meeting and to give some introductory background for anyone not familiar with CASS. There is also information on the process for selecting Priority Bills and how to join a Working Group.

2026 Legislative Timeline

The second year of the 2025-2026 legislative session began on Monday January 5th 2026. The deadline for legislators to introduce any new bills is February 20th so there are about 3 weeks left for new bills to be introduced in the 2025-2026 legislative session. The slide below covers the deadlines for 2026 with the red circled area indicating where we are currently in the process.

Slide from CASS January Monthly Call. Source: Indivisible CASS

CA State Strong (CASS) and Priority Bills

The CASS coalition works to support and pass progressive legislation as described in the slide below:

Thousands of bills are introduced each legislative year, and CASS coalition members research, nominate and vote for bills to become one of approximately 20 Priority Bills. Priority bills are progressive bills that CASS working group members work to support by investing organizational resources including:

Submitting support letters
Advocacy at meetings with state representatives
Coordinated call campaigns
Social media campaigns

The slide below highlights some of the different tactics that we can use to advocate for priority bills:

Priority bills are followed throughout the entire legislative process in one of five CASS working groups:

Working groups meet every 2 weeks at the day & time indicated on the slide above. The form for joining a group is linked at the end of this post.

Researching New Bills

Currently working groups are researching new bills as they are introduced by legislators and starting to identify progressive bills to be nominated as Priority Bills. Each Working Group can nominate up to 5 bills. For example, as a member of the Economic Justice Working Group we are currently researching bills that would fall into these categories:

Housing & Homelessness
Tenants Rights
Workers Rights
AI/Big Tech
Data Centers
LGBTQ+
Education
Childcare
Ending Poverty
Anti-Monopoly
Public Banking

There are several places to search for bills by keyword or legislator such as Legiscan, CalMatters and Leginfo.

Nominating and Voting for Priority Bills

In addition to Working Group nominations, each Indivisible CA group in the CASS coalition can submit bills for nomination. Visit bit.ly/statestrongpolicyguide for selection criteria.

Next Steps

Indivisible CA groups in the coalition can nominate bills now through February 27th. Groups can nominate up to 5 bills per group. I will share some more information about the nomination and voting process in upcoming blog posts.