Biography

First elected in 2016, Senator Scott Wiener represents District 11 in the California State Senate. District 11 includes San Francisco, Broadmoor, Colma, and Daly City, as well as portions of South San Francisco and San Bruno.

In the State Senate, Senator Wiener works day and night to make housing more abundant and affordable; strengthen and expand our public transportation systems; increase access to health care, including mental health and addiction treatment; ensure families have access to food, child care, paid family leave, and other critical supports; fight climate change and keep California in the lead on climate action; reform our broken criminal justice system; and safeguard and expand the rights of all communities, including immigrants and LGBTQ people.

Senator Wiener has authored 87 bills that have been signed into law (see Legislation tab for a full list). He has been recognized by respected community organizations for his work (see the Awards tab for a full list).

Senator Wiener serves as Chair of the Senate Budget Committee and Chair of the Senate Legislative Ethics Committee. He previously served as Chair of the Senate Housing Committee and the Senate Human Services Committee. He serves as Co-Chair of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus and Chair of the Senate Mental Health Caucus. He previously served as Chair of the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus. Senator Wiener is a member of the Public Safety Committee, Judiciary Committee, Local Government Committee, and Health Committee. He also serves on the Governor's Council on Holocaust and Genocide Education.

Before his election to the Senate, Senator Wiener served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, representing the district previously represented by Supervisor Harvey Milk. During his time on the Board of Supervisors, Senator Wiener authored a number of first-in-the-nation laws, including mandating fully paid parental leave for all working parents and requiring water recycling and solar power in new developments. He focused extensively on housing and public transportation, authoring laws to expedite approval of affordable housing, legalize new in-law units, and tie public transportation funding to population growth.

Before his election to the Board of Supervisors, Senator Wiener spent fifteen years practicing law: as a Deputy City Attorney in the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office, in private practice at Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe, and as a law clerk for Justice Alan Handler on the New Jersey Supreme Court. Senator Wiener co-chaired the Alice B. Toklas LGBTQ Democratic Club, BALIF (the Bay Area’s LGBTQ bar association), and the San Francisco LGBTQ Community Center, and served on the national board of directors of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ civil rights organization.

Senator Wiener grew up in New Jersey, the son of a small business owner and a teacher, and flipped burgers at Burger King while attending public school. He received a bachelor’s degree from Duke University and a law degree from Harvard Law School. He spent a year in Chile on a Fulbright Scholarship doing historical research. He has lived in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood since 1997.

Senator Wiener’s major legislative accomplishments in the California Senate include:

Housing:

• SB 35 and 423, landmark laws to expedite housing permits, which have resulted in thousands of new affordable homes in San Francisco;
• SB 4, which allows faith institutions and nonprofit colleges to build affordable housing on their land by-right, without any discretionary approval process;
• SB 10, which provides a powerful tool for local governments to zone for more housing more quickly;
• SB 828, which required California cities to plan for much more housing than they had previously;
• SB 886, which streamlines and accelerates student housing production across the state;

Transportation

• SB 922, which expedites approval of rapid bus lanes, bike lanes, and pedestrian safety projects;
• SB 960, which requires CalTrans to prioritize improvements for all road users, including pedestrians, cyclists, and transit riders.

Mental Health

• SB 855, which made California the national leader in mental health and addiction treatment access by requiring insurance companies to cover all medically necessary treatments;

Technology

• SB 822, which enacted the strongest net neutrality protections in the nation;

Public Safety

• SB 1045 and SB 40, which expanded and strengthened California’s conservatorship laws to help individuals who are living on our streets with severe mental health and substance use disorders;
• SB 905, which removed a senseless legal loophole to holding auto burglars accountable.
• SB 73, which ended mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenses;
• SB 923, which modernized California’s eyewitness identification standards to ensure innocent people are not sent to prison; SB 136, which reduced mass incarceration by repealing California’s most commonly used sentence enhancement;

The Climate Crisis

• SB 253, a first-in-the-nation climate law which requires corporations to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions;
• SB 379, which required cities to implement instant, app-based permitting for solar and energy storage systems; SB 700, the largest investment in clean energy storage in California history;

LGBTQ Issues

• SB 107, which provided refuge for trans kids and their families in California so they can avoid criminal prosecution for seeking or allowing gender-affirming care in states like Texas and Alabama;
• SB 957, which requires public health agencies to collect demographic data on the LGBTQ community to combat health disparities, as they do for various racial and gender groups;
• SB 407, which ensures foster families provide affirming environments for LGBTQ foster youth;
• SB 219, which protects LGBTQ seniors in long-term care facilities;
• SB 159, which allowed pharmacists to provide PrEP and PEP (powerful HIV prevention medications) without a physician’s prescription; and
• SB 132, which required prisons to house transgender incarcerated individuals according to where they’re safest (for example, by gender identity).