Senate Concurrent Resolution 104 declares October 2025, and each October thereafter, to be National Domestic Violence Awareness Month in California. The text is a ceremonial proclamation: it assembles legislative findings about the scope, cost, and disparate impact of domestic violence and urges communities and policymakers to prioritize prevention and survivor-centered services.
The measure creates no grant program, regulatory duty, or appropriation. Its practical effect is rhetorical and programmatic: it supplies a legislative framing that agencies, service providers, employers, and local governments can cite when planning outreach, prevention campaigns, or survivor services, and it formally transmits the resolution for distribution.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill is a concurrent resolution that proclaims October 2025—and every October after—as National Domestic Violence Awareness Month in California. It lists a series of factual findings about prevalence, economic costs, and vulnerable populations, and it asks the Secretary of the Senate to transmit copies of the resolution.
Who It Affects
Domestic violence shelters and community-based survivor services, state and local public health and safety agencies, schools and employers that run prevention or employee-support programs, and advocacy groups focused on marginalized survivors.
Why It Matters
Although nonbinding and without new funding, the resolution creates an authoritative statement of legislative priorities that stakeholders can use to justify outreach, coordinate awareness campaigns, and influence program agendas and grant applications.
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What This Bill Actually Does
SCR 104 is largely a statement of legislative concern and intent rather than a directive that changes law or creates programs. The document collects a set of "whereas" findings: prevalence statistics, demographic and intersectional disparities, shelter usage data, homicide figures, and an estimate of statewide economic costs.
Those findings are framed to emphasize prevention, culturally responsive services, and survivor-centered approaches.
After the findings, the operative language contains two short clauses: one that proclaims October 2025 and each following October as National Domestic Violence Awareness Month in California, and a second that instructs the Secretary of the Senate to transmit copies of the resolution. The resolution does not authorize spending, create new reporting or regulatory duties, or amend existing statutes.Practically, the resolution functions as legislative guidance.
State agencies, county coalitions, funders, and service providers can point to the resolution when designing public awareness campaigns or applying for grants, but they cannot rely on it to compel funding or regulatory changes. Because the bill explicitly highlights specific populations—young women, certain racial groups, transgender and gender nonconforming people, people with disabilities, and undocumented individuals—it signals the Legislature’s interest in targeted prevention and culturally responsive services without creating statutory mandates to do so.Finally, the text aggregates recent data: lifetime intimate-partner violence estimates for men and women, counts of people served by shelter and nonshelter programs between 2021-2022, and the number of domestic violence-related homicides in 2024.
Those figures strengthen the resolution’s rhetorical force and provide a ready citation set for practitioners and policymakers who need legislative backing for awareness and prevention initiatives.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The resolution proclaims October 2025—and each October thereafter—as National Domestic Violence Awareness Month in California.
SCR 104 is a nonbinding concurrent resolution: it contains findings and a proclamation but does not appropriate funds or create enforceable legal obligations.
The bill cites prevalence estimates included in the findings: about 54% of women and 38% of men in California experience physical intimate partner violence in their lifetimes, and California rates exceed the national average.
The text highlights specific disparities and vulnerability factors—higher rates among women aged 18–24, elevated prevalence for certain racial groups, a 40% greater risk for women with disabilities, and 76% lifetime domestic violence experience among transgender and gender nonconforming people.
The resolution urges survivor-centered, culturally responsive prevention and services, and directs the Secretary of the Senate to transmit copies of the resolution for distribution.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Legislative findings detailing scope, costs, and disparities
This section gathers the factual record the Legislature relied on: lifetime prevalence rates, demographic breakdowns (age, race, disability status, gender identity), economic impact estimates (including a 2022 California economic cost figure), shelter and nonshelter service counts for 2021–2022, and the 2024 domestic violence-related homicide tally. For practitioners, these findings are the resolution’s main substantive content because they supply citations and a legislative rationale for prioritizing certain populations and interventions.
Proclamation of National Domestic Violence Awareness Month
This short clause formally proclaims October 2025 and each following October as National Domestic Violence Awareness Month in California. The language is ceremonial—intended to mark an annual period for attention, outreach, and education rather than to require action by agencies or allocate resources.
Transmittal instruction
The resolution directs the Secretary of the Senate to transmit copies of SCR 104 to the author for distribution. This is administrative: it ensures the resolution can be circulated to stakeholders and used as an official legislative citation in communications, grant applications, or program materials.
Nonbinding status and lack of appropriations
Although not presented as a separate clause in the bill, the resolution’s structure makes clear it imposes no new legal duties and contains no appropriation. That means agencies are not legally required to act, and any ensuing programs or campaigns will rely on existing budgets or newly appropriated funds if stakeholders seek to turn the proclamation into services.
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Who Benefits
- Domestic violence shelters and community-based survivor services — they gain a legislative citation to support outreach, fundraising, and public-awareness campaigns during October each year.
- Survivors in marginalized groups (young women, certain racial groups, people with disabilities, transgender and gender nonconforming people, undocumented individuals) — the resolution explicitly recognizes heightened vulnerability and endorses culturally responsive, survivor-centered approaches that can shape program priorities.
- Public health and county agencies — they receive a clear legislative statement they can use to justify annual prevention campaigns, cross-agency coordination, and targeted data collection or outreach efforts.
Who Bears the Cost
- Service providers and advocacy groups — without accompanying funding, they may absorb costs for expanded October programming, awareness events, and culturally tailored outreach that the resolution encourages.
- Local governments and public agencies — they may face pressure to organize or fund awareness activities using existing budgets or to seek new allocations to respond to the resolution’s call.
- Employers and educational institutions — organizations expected to run trainings, awareness activities, or support programs may incur administrative and programmatic costs even though the resolution does not allocate money.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central tension is symbolic recognition versus material support: the resolution increases legislative attention to domestic violence and names priority populations and strategies, but because it is nonbinding and contains no funding, it leaves the heavy lifting—service provision, prevention programming, and culturally tailored interventions—to local agencies and providers without a guaranteed funding mechanism.
The resolution juxtaposes an explicit call for prevention and culturally responsive, survivor-centered services with no appropriation or enforcement mechanism. That creates a familiar implementation gap: stakeholders can cite legislative intent, but converting political recognition into sustained services requires separate funding streams or regulatory action that this bill does not provide.
Practically, the measure may increase demand for programs in October without supplying the means to scale services.
Another practical tension arises from the bill’s reliance on a mix of prevalence and cost figures. Those numbers strengthen the Legislature’s message, but they also risk oversimplifying diverse local conditions; counties with different demographic or service landscapes may interpret the findings differently.
Finally, the resolution elevates specific vulnerable populations, which is helpful for targeting, but it also obliges agencies and providers to design and resource more tailored interventions—work that typically requires training, data improvements, and sustained funding absent from this text.
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