A California bill meant to choke off illegal cockfighting operations by limiting how many roosters a person could keep has died in committee, after hundreds of opponents traveled to Sacramento to oppose it. Assembly Bill 928 will not move forward during the 2026 legislative session, falling short of the votes needed to advance to the Senate floor.
The bill, introduced by Assemblymember Chris Rogers, would have prohibited anyone from keeping more than 25 caged or tethered game fowl roosters on a single property. As reported by the Sacramento Bee, hundreds of Californians came from across the state to oppose the measure in committee, with some wearing shirts reading “stop targeting minorities.” The newspaper's Capitol Alert coverage, written by Naomi Taxay, laid out how a bill built around civil enforcement of bird-keeping limits collapsed under the weight of an organized opposition campaign.
What the Bill Was Trying to Stop
Game fowl are bred for aggression by definition, according to the reporting, and cockfighting itself is illegal under both federal and California law. Jenny Berg said the bill addressed conditions in which birds are kept that are consistent with cockfighting, and she framed cockfighting as a crime rather than a cultural practice. Berg also said the legislation was intended to address animal cruelty and did not target specific communities or farmworkers, according to the same account.
The bill included exemptions for food production, educational programs, animal shelters and exhibitions, and legitimate poultry businesses were exempt from its provisions as well. Berg said misinformation about AB 928 was circulating as opposition mounted, per the Bee's reporting.
Opponents Cite Property Rights and Cultural Heritage
Opponents told the paper they were concerned about effects on their livelihoods or cultural practices, and immigrant rights groups opposed AB 928 over fears that enforcement could bring immigration scrutiny into people's homes. The California Association for the Preservation of Gamefowl said its opposition was rooted in property-rights and cultural-preservation concerns, and the group reported that 90% of game fowl breeders are Latino, per the opposition group's own figures cited in the Bee's account.
Rogers alleged that some game fowl preservation groups operated as political fronts to protect cockfighting, an accusation the California Association for the Preservation of Gamefowl denied. The dossier does not resolve which characterization is accurate, and the dispute remained unsettled as the bill died in committee.
A Pattern of Large-Scale Seizures
The debate unfolded against a backdrop of major law enforcement seizures across the state. Deputies recovered more than 800 birds at a rural property in Santa Rosa in February, a raid Hoodline reported at the time explicitly tied to Rogers' proposed legislation in his own district. Deputies also seized approximately 7,000 birds in Southern California, according to the Sacramento Bee's reporting, and the paper noted that California has been the site of some of the nation's largest cockfighting busts.
Those numbers echo other recent operations. In August 2025, the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department completed what it called Operation Crowing Rooster, a six-week task force effort that led to 56 arrests and the seizure of 3,500 fighting roosters along with $259,000 in cash, illegal firearms and narcotics, according to CBS News Los Angeles. Law enforcement officials described it as one of the largest criminal animal-fighting syndicate takedowns in U.S. history. Years earlier, a 74-year-old Ceres resident was sentenced in federal court to 16 months in prison and fined $25,000 after agents raided his farm and found nearly 3,000 gamecocks bred and shipped internationally, according to GV Wire.
The Scale of the Underground Industry
Federal estimates cited in state legislative committee analyses this year put illegal cockfighting in California at a multimillion-dollar criminal industry involving more than 3 million birds statewide, per a Senate Judiciary Committee analysis. Under California Penal Code Section 597b, participating in or facilitating cockfighting is a misdemeanor carrying up to a year in county jail and fines up to $10,000 for a first offense, with later offenses eligible for felony charges, according to the Shouse Law Group.
AB 928's civil penalty structure, up to $2,500 per violation with each day of noncompliance treated separately following a mandatory 14-day notice to correct, was designed to sidestep that higher criminal burden of proving intent to fight. Bill authors also pointed to avian flu outbreaks since February 2022 that have killed or led to the culling of more than 23 million commercial and backyard poultry statewide, according to legislative records tracked by LegiScan, arguing that unmonitored bird movement raises biosecurity risks.
Bureaucratic Hurdles and a Divided Coalition
Opponents also pointed to practical obstacles built into the bill's exemption process. Agricultural business owners testifying in 2025 said obtaining certification under the National Poultry Improvement Plan, required for exemption from AB 928, meant facing a statewide waitlist of up to five years because California had only two inspectors covering the entire state, according to reporting in The Business Journal.
The bill's path through the Legislature was not smooth even among animal advocates. AB 928 passed the Assembly in June 2025 by a 46-15 vote, but later amendments split animal welfare organizations, with groups such as the Humane Farming Association opposing the amended version over newly added commercial exemptions even as the Humane Society continued to champion it, according to Animals 24-7. Courts have previously upheld local rooster limits elsewhere in the state; a 2019 appellate decision affirmed Monterey County's municipal cap on roosters as a permissible land-use regulation that did not violate property rights, per NBC Palm Springs.
The Santa Rosa raid was one of several similar actions Hoodline has tracked this year, including a Lodi bust in which San Joaquin County deputies broke up an active rooster-fighting gathering and seized live birds. For now, AB 928's failure in committee leaves California's civil enforcement gap unaddressed, with prosecutors still required to meet the higher criminal bar under existing law to shut down suspected fighting operations.
