Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) on Wednesday signed a bill that reversed the state’s anti-truancy law, one of the most contentious policies that former Vice President Kamala Harris championed more than a decade ago during her time as San Francisco district attorney.

The controversial 2011 policy punished parents for their children’s chronic absence from school, slapping them with misdemeanors.

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Harris pitched the bill in 2010 as a form of crime prevention. At the time, her office worked with the San Francisco Unified School District to target parents of truant children, sending them letters and having them meet with prosecutors. A “chronic truant” was defined as a child absent from class for 10% or more of the school year.

Harris claimed that putting pressure on the parents would “allow local jurisdictions to establish and strengthen efforts like these to hold parents accountable and get elementary school children back in school.”

“My bottom line is these children have to be in school,” she said. “There will be outrage when, in 10 years, they’re a menace to society hanging out on the corner.”

Her words came back to haunt her as her political aspirations rose.

Coverage of police handcuffing mothers of truant schoolchildren sparked backlash and led to Harris eventually walking back her support.

“I regret that that has happened,” she said in 2019. “The thought that anything I did could have led to that … because that certainly was not the intention.”

Democratic Assemblyman Patrick Ahrens sponsored the legislation to reverse the law but stated his motivation came from personal childhood experience and that the repeal had “nothing to do with our former VP.”

“Thank you Governor Newsom for signing my bill to repeal this failed policy of criminalizing struggling California families for their children missing school,” Ahrens wrote in a statement. “Families and kids need support, not criminal charges and fines, to improve school attendance. Fining or imprisoning parents did nothing to get kids the education and support they need.”

Rebecca Gonzales, a policy advocate with the Western Center on Law & Poverty, also commended the law’s reversal.

“This outdated and ineffective strategy criminalizes families rather than offering support,” she said. “This bill will assist families who may be facing challenges such as fear of deportation, poverty, and mental health challenges.”

Newsom did not make any additional comments when he signed the bill reversing Harris’s legislation.

The moment comes at a crossroads for the pair, who have seen their relationship fray over the years. In Harris’s new book, 107 Days, she claimed that Newsom did not return her phone call to request his endorsement after then-President Joe Biden bowed out of the 2024 race. Newsom told her that he was hiking and would call back. She noted in her book that he did not.

Newsom brushed off her jab, telling reporters that he had not read the book and described a chaotic scene in the hours after Biden’s announcement, explaining that after missing Harris’s call, he was busy scrambling for more information about Biden’s decision.

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Newsom and Harris came up through local politics together.

They are both considered contenders for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination.