California State Senator Susan Rubio is a California State Senator Susan Rubio is a domestic violence survivor and has been a longtime champion of policies and funding that help victims. In 2019, her first year in the California Legislature, she partnered with actresses and advocates Evan Rachel Wood and Esmé Bianco to pass The Phoenix Act, which allows survivors more time to seek justice. She has worked with the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence as well as other organizations to ensure critical funding for service providers and prevention programs and passed legislation that permanently removed financial barriers to state funds. In 2020, she passed groundbreaking legislation related to coercive control, which required courts to allow this type of psychological and manipulative abuse as evidence, later leading to passage of legislation on reproductive coercion. This year, she continued the fight for victims’ rights and protections and introduced Senate Bill 538, which allows victims to electronically petition for a restraining order and testify remotely.
