SACRAMENTO, Calif. — It’s been a little over a month since the bill he’s longed to see pass suffered a stinging defeat. But Paul Kimball was back in California’s legislative office building Wednesday hoping 2027 will be the year it is finally signed into law.

In the office of Assemblymember Gail Pellerin, D-Santa Cruz, Kimball made a pitch: California-born adoptees are unable to access their unredacted birth certificates. All that he and other members of California Alliance for Adoptee Rights want is to be able to have the original document.

“The world is watching,” he said, while showing a legislative aid a petition with signatures from people living in the United States and 18 other countries. “Gail would be a hero amongst us.”

The California Legislature just finished its work for the year last month, but the race to lobby legislators on what bills they should introduce next year is well underway. Members of the California Alliance for Adoptee Rights recently traveled from Oregon, Los Angeles and in Kimball’s case, Stockton, to go around the building with fact sheets and a plea — for a legislator to re-introduce or support a bill that died this year despite having no registered opposition.

The measure, Senate Bill 381, was authored by U.S. Rep Aisha Wahab, D-Hayward, who until recently was serving in the state Senate. If passed, the bill would have allowed people adopted in California to receive a copy of their original birth certificate.

Under a state law, passed in the 1930s, adoptees can only obtain a record that is amended to not list their birth parents unless they can convince a county judge that they have a “good and compelling cause” for it. Judges often deny those requests.

The bill died in the Assembly Appropriations Committee through a largely secretive process where many measures are killed. It was the last stop before the bill would have gone to the entire Assembly.

Wahab said she never received an explanation for why it didn’t make it through the committee. Members of the adoptee organization are also still searching for answers and looking for a new person to champion their cause.

Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland the committee chair, and her staff, did not respond to requests for comment.

Kimball, 63, was adopted on his first birthday by a family in Berkeley after spending a few months in the foster care system. He still feels like he’s in the system because he can’t get the birth record.

“I don’t want to be a ward of the state,” he said, at a small lunch Wednesday put on by members of the adoptee group to talk through their strategy for the year ahead. Kimball wants something that he can hold in his hands that says he existed when he was born.

Others want the document because they are looking to secure citizenship in another country, find out about their family’s medical history or help with genealogical research.

Elizabeth Watson-Semmons, 81, wants the record because it is hers. Watson-Semmons said she has been advocating for the birth certificate rules to change for decades and came up to Sacramento from Menlo Park for the lunch.

She found out she was adopted in her 20s. In 1979, a judge denied her petition for her record, saying that her desire to know more about her background was not enough for her to get it.

“I am aware of some proposed legislation which, if adopted, may permit the court to give you the information you are requesting,” the judge wrote. “You may decide to make contact with your legislators to see if in the next several years there is any new legislation passed to accomplish this.”

Almost 50 years later, Watson-Semmons is still waiting for legislators to accomplish what she wanted: to force the state to release her original birth certificate. By not doing so, she said, California is maintaining secrets and lies. Seventeen other states allow people who were adopted to obtain a copy of their original birth certificate without any other conditions that are separate from someone who wasn’t.

“It’s very personal to us,” Watson-Semmons said at the lunch. “We want it for ourselves.”

The adoptee record advocates planned to continue their lobbying in the coming months. The next two-year legislative session officially begins Dec. 7, but legislators won’t introduce the vast majority of their bills until after Jan. 1.

In the legislative office building, Kimball again showed the petition to a staff member. This time, it was in the office of state Sen. Steve Choi, R-Irvine, who was a supporter of SB 381. The petition, he said, has over 2,500 names.

“We started this about a year ago now,” Kimball said. “We’re literally not going to stop it until a governor signs.”

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