California AB 387: What Parks, Schools And Facilities Now Owe Youth Leagues
Short answer: California AB 387 was signed September 27, 2026 and takes effect January 1, 2028. It does not require a park, field or school facility to buy an AED. What it does is say that a facility which chooses to provide one must make it accessible to the leagues playing there, and must work with those leagues on sharing the cost.
If you run a parks and recreation department, a school district that rents fields to outside leagues, or any venue with permanent sports infrastructure, a bill was signed in late September that puts your facility into a conversation it has mostly been standing outside of.
Assembly Bill 387, carried by Assemblymember Juan Alanis and signed by Governor Newsom on September 27, 2026, is the follow-on to the Nevaeh Youth Sports Safety Act. Most of the coverage has described it as moving an AED deadline. That is not quite what it does, and the difference matters if you are the one deciding what goes in a budget.
First, a correction worth getting right
A lot of reporting has credited AB 387 with pushing the AED access requirement out to January 1, 2028. That date did not come from AB 387. It came from AB 310, which was chaptered in October 2025 and moved the access requirement from 2027 to 2028.
AB 387 keeps that 2028 date and adds something new to it: a set of provisions describing how facilities and leagues are supposed to divide the work. So the timeline is unchanged. The cast of characters is not.
What AB 387 actually says about facilities
The bill introduces the term permanent sports infrastructure, defined as a fixed, nontemporary facility or structure designed and maintained for hosting organized sports activities that is regularly permitted, rented, leased, or otherwise granted permission of use for youth sports programs.
That definition reaches a lot of venues that have never thought of themselves as regulated: municipal ball fields, community gyms, aquatic centers, and school facilities rented out on weekends.
Here is the structure the bill sets up, effective January 1, 2028.
| Provision | What it means for a facility |
|---|---|
| The facility may provide an AED | Permissive, not mandatory. If it does, it must ensure the youth sports organization has access to it during a permitted practice or match. |
| Accessibility, for school facilities specifically | A local educational agency counts as providing an AED only if it is in the same common area of the building, or in the same outdoor field, or attached externally to a building and reasonably accessible. A locked device in an office down a corridor does not satisfy this. |
| No staffing obligation | A local educational agency is not required to keep staff onsite just to provide access to the device. |
| The league is the backstop | If no AED is available at the facility, the youth sports organization must ensure access to one that is operational and available for the entire practice or match. |
| Maintenance | Whoever owns the device maintains and tests it per manufacturer and FDA requirements. A facility already doing this under another statutory requirement is deemed to have met it. |
| Collaboration and cost sharing | Facilities must work with leagues so an installed AED is accessible, and a facility that has installed one must work with the league to identify means of sharing the cost of maintenance and access, or of installing a device. |
The sentence facilities should read twice
AB 387 states that the section shall not be construed to require a public or private local facility or its employees to procure or install an AED, or to operate or administer one. It also states that it does not impose a mandatory duty under Section 815.6 of the Government Code, and does not affect existing immunities.
The author's own office made the same point when the bill passed the Senate, describing it as not creating a new requirement for public or private local facilities to procure or install an AED.
One drafting note worth flagging if you are reading secondary summaries. The Legislative Counsel's digest describes access to an AED procured and maintained by the facility, which reads more mandatory than the operative text, which says the facility may procure. Follow the operative text.
So why should a facility do anything at all
Because the practical result of the statute is that an AED is going to be present at that practice either way. If the facility does not provide one, the obligation lands on the league, and leagues in this state are very often volunteer-run with no equipment budget.
Three things follow from that, and they are worth putting in front of whoever owns your facility agreements.
Your permit holders are going to ask. From January 2028 every youth league renting your fields has a statutory obligation to have an operational AED available for the entire session. The first question they will ask is whether you have one. A department with no answer will field that question repeatedly from every league, every season.
Cost sharing is written into the law. The collaboration language is not decorative. A facility that installs a device has a statutory basis to work out a shared arrangement with the leagues using it, rather than absorbing it as a pure facilities cost. That is a materially better position than either side buying separately.
Accessibility is a design decision, not a purchase decision. The school-facility language is the clearest statement in the bill of what access actually means: same common area, same outdoor field, or externally mounted and reasonably accessible. A device that satisfies an inventory list but sits behind a locked door on a Saturday satisfies nothing. For outdoor fields in particular, this points at an externally mounted cabinet, which brings its own weather and temperature questions.
What is not in this bill
No penalty, no fine, and no named enforcing agency. AB 310 and AB 387 both work the same way: the obligation is real, the consequence is civil and reputational rather than regulatory.
For a public agency, the practical pressure comes from risk pools and insurers rather than from the state. The California JPIA has already published compliance guidance for public agencies on the Nevaeh Act, which is usually the earliest signal that a requirement is about to show up in coverage conversations.
What to do in the next ninety days
Inventory what you already have, by location. Not by asset tag. By field, gym and building, and note whether each device is reachable during a weekend rental when the building is otherwise locked.
Pull the permit and rental list. Identify which of your permit holders are youth sports organizations under the statute. The definition covers organizations, businesses, nonprofits and local government agencies running competition, training, camps or clubs for participants seventeen and under, so it is broader than the obvious club leagues.
Decide the posture now, not in 2027. Facility provides, league provides, or shared. All three are legal. Only one of them is a surprise in January 2028.
Put it in the budget cycle you are in. Most public agencies commit calendar-year or fiscal-year funds well ahead. A department that starts this in 2027 has already lost the cheapest window.
Where to go from here
If you are on the league side rather than the facility side, the nearer obligation is the one landing on January 1, 2027: coach CPR and AED certification, and a written cardiac emergency response plan. We covered that in detail separately.
Maintenance obligations under both bills point at the manufacturer's instructions for use for your specific device, so that documentation is the authority on testing intervals and pad and battery replacement. If you want help working out what coverage actually looks like across a multi-site footprint, call us at 888-541-2337.
Sources
California Assembly Bill 387, Chapter 502, Statutes of 2026, approved September 27, 2026. Office of Governor Gavin Newsom, legislative update of September 27, 2026. California Assembly Bill 310, Chapter 254, Statutes of 2025. California Health and Safety Code §124235. Office of Assemblymember Juan Alanis, August 27, 2026. California JPIA compliance guidance on the Nevaeh Youth Sports Safety Act. This article summarizes statutory requirements and is not legal advice.
Related reading: California AB 310 Compliance Guide: What Youth Sports Programs Must Do Before January 1, 2027 · The Fall Sports Venue Walk-Through · Outdoor AED Placement: What Parks, Ball Fields And Trails Need
