(The Center Square) – California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday afternoon signed a new bill into law that would strengthen protections for veterans trying to access benefits and protect them from claims sharks.
Senate Bill 694, which was introduced by state Sen. Bob Archuleta, D-Norwalk, would require those helping veterans file benefits claims to be federally accredited. The legislation is intended to protect former service members from being targeted by unregulated services that claim they are there to help veterans get the benefits they earned through their service.
“This law ensures that we can fight the misinformation and false promises that so many of these companies make and who prey upon our veterans,” Secretary of Veterans Affairs Lindsey Sin said during a press conference in which Newsom signed the bill. “All of these services are offered for free and always should be.”
“These companies aggressively target veterans at some of the most vulnerable moments of their lives – right after discharge, during a medical crisis, or when they’re simply trying to understand the benefits they’ve already earned,” David West, veterans services officer for Nevada County, said during the press conference. “They bombard veterans with phone calls, pressure them into contracts they don’t fully understand, charge excessive fees and interfere with legitimate claims.”
The bill has garnered some opposition. Multiple for-profit veterans benefit claims services testified against the bill, saying the bill will make backlogged cases worse.
“Trapping Veterans in a backlogged appeals system only benefiting a handful of attorneys is something Veterans Guardian aims to avoid by focusing on getting claims done correctly the first time,” Veterans Guardian, a veteran disability benefits company, wrote in opposition to the bill. “The current US Department of Veterans’ Affairs (VA) disability benefits system is at best cumbersome and adversarial, and at worse broken to a point where it harms the Veterans for the benefit of a small number of powerful boutique law firms.”
According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the department’s veterans benefits claims backlog has gone up in recent years. In December 2022, the claims backlog was roughly 150,000 to more than 200,000 in March 2023. By December 2023, that number climbed to more than 300,000, and by summer 2024, that jumped even further to more than 400,000. It has since dropped to 98,813 as of December 2025.
Assemblymember Pilar Schiavo, D-Santa Clarita, said during the press conference that comparisons to punishing private defense attorneys as opposed to public defenders are off-base.
“It’s not even the same thing at all – it’s like apples and oranges,” Schiavo said during the press conference. “This is more like an illegal dentist in a garage. What they’re doing violates federal law, plain and simple.”
California joins a growing list of states who are enacting similar laws. Maine, New Jersey and New York have passed laws restricting for-profit veterans benefit claim services, while other states have passed laws allowing those service providers to continue operating, according to news reports. Such was the case in Louisiana, which in 2024 passed a law that allowed such companies to charge up to $12,500 for providing a service to veterans.
Federal law doesn’t allow for charging veterans to file claims to access their benefits, according to the text of SB 694.
“It’s all part of the momentum we’re building in this space to do more than rhetorically say we have the backs of our veterans,” Newsom told reporters. “We have the backs of millions of our American heroes who are here and call California home.”
