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A new California law aims to help families bring their loved ones’ remains home by providing judges with clearer standards for requests to move human remains from cemetery plots.
Read more New CA law aims to help families bring loved ones’ remains home for reburial
Assembly Bill 2331, authored by Assemblymember Stephanie Nguyen, D-Elk Grove, requires Superior Court judges to grant such requests when the consent of an eligible family member cannot be obtained, provided the application demonstrates good cause.
“AB 2331 is about making sure families are treated fairly when they go to court to bring a loved one home,” Nguyen’s Chief of Staff, Idriss Mezzour, wrote in a statement. “Ultimately, it’s about bringing greater certainty and fairness to families during an already emotional and difficult time.”
Before the new law, the remains of a deceased person could not be removed from a cemetery plot without either the consent of the cemetery authority and a qualified family member or a Superior Court order granting permission for the removal. However, existing law did not clearly direct courts on when such applications should be granted.
AB 2331, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law July 13, clarifies those standards.
Supporters, including the League of United Latin American Citizens, said the bill would especially help the families of veterans, farmworkers and immigrants because those groups are more likely to die without their relatives’ knowledge.
Nguyen’s office said the experience of Sacramento resident Sylvia Zepeda-Lara inspired the legislation. She lost contact with her brother in 2000 and learned in 2016 that he had died in Fresno County a decade earlier and that his remains had been buried there. She said she “did everything possible to bring him home” for reburial, without success.
“I just want my brother back,” she said. “I just want closure.”
Now, under AB 2331, Zepeda-Lara hopes to renew her effort to bring her brother home.
Zepeda-Lara, a constituent of Nguyen, met with Mezzour last November to share her story. According to Mezzour, “it became clear there was a gap in the law that was creating necessary uncertainty,” so the office wrote AB 2331 to address that gap.
“Assemblymember Nguyen believes government should solve real problems people experience, and this bill does exactly that,” Mezzour wrote in a statement.
In the early 2000s, Zepeda-Lara tried to locate her brother, Gilbert Zepeda, online but was unsuccessful. Zepeda-Lara said Fresno County never notified her family of his passing, which occurred in 2006, and did not report his death to the state until she requested the record in 2017.
She eventually discovered that he had died through the online people-search service TruthFinder. Because her brother was unhoused, Zepeda-Lara said, the county cremated his body and buried his remains in a potter’s field — a public burial ground for individuals who are unknown, unclaimed or cannot afford a proper funeral.
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She sought a court order to move his remains to Sacramento, where the rest of her family is buried, but a judge denied her application twice. The county told the court that labels may have fallen off containers of remains, remains may have spilled due to shifting soil, or water may have leaked into the coffin, according to Zepeda-Lara.
“It was (an) incredibly difficult and exhausting ordeal fighting to get him back,” she said, referring to her brother. “Dealing with the legal system is mentally and emotionally draining.”
Zepeda-Lara thanked former attorneys Ismael Castro and Robert Dresser for guiding her through the court system while she represented herself.
Having exhausted her family’s legal options, she and her family worked to change the law. They worked with members of the Sacramento LULAC Council and California LULAC to advocate for legislation that would ease the process of recovering and transferring a relative’s remains. Those efforts culminated in AB 2331.
According to Sandoval, the bill demonstrates how one person’s story can lead to legislation that helps many others. It is especially important to Latino families, he said, because it allows them to perform burial traditions and honor loved ones in accordance with their family, cultural and religious wishes.
“I had somebody in my family pass away, and they were very in the same plot that my grandma was, that some uncles were,” he said. “So I can see how it’s very important to have family close.”
Mezzour echoed that sentiment.
“Every family deserves the opportunity to lay their loved ones to rest according to their wishes and traditions,” Mezzour wrote in a statement. “While this bill applies equally to all Californians, it may be especially meaningful for communities where family, culture, and burial traditions are deeply important.”
Zepeda-Lara said she and her family are “hoping and praying” they can finally bring her brother home. Her nephew — her brother’s son — also passed away in 2023, and the family hopes to bury them together.
“We just feel that he needs to be home,” she said of her brother. “We need to be able to go somewhere and lay flowers, because where he’s at right now, he’s just a number. It’s a row, a number and no headstone. It’s just dirt… He should be here with family, so that way, his kids can see him, so we can visit him.”
Even if she cannot move her brother’s remains, Zepeda-Lara said she hopes AB 2331 will provide relief to families in similar situations.
“It comforts me to know that others will be able to have that opportunity, and I’m just hoping that someday I will.”
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