He was succeeded as California's Assemblyman for District 17 by San Francisco Board of Supervisors President David Chiu on December 1, 2014.

[3] Ammiano competed successfully on the school's track team and earned a varsity letter that he never received, apparently because he was perceived to be gay, an experience that he described as "humiliating".

After discussing the long-time slight on the radio in 2020 while being interviewed about his book Kiss My Gay Ass, a listener reached out to the school and pleaded his case "in the interest of healing old wounds".

[6] In 1975, he was one of the founders of the Gay Teachers Caucus which successfully pushed the school board to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.

[3][5][6] In 1977, Ammiano, with activists Hank Wilson and Harvey Milk, co-founded "No on 6" against the Briggs Initiative, which would have banned any gay person from teaching in California.

As president of the Board of Education, Ammiano was successful in his efforts to include a gay and lesbian sensitivity curriculum for all students in the San Francisco Unified School District.

[citation needed] In 1999, Ammiano came into conflict with San Francisco's Roman Catholic community when the Board of Supervisors, at Ammiano's request, granted the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a charity group of drag queen nuns, a street-closure permit for Castro Street for their 20th anniversary celebration on Easter Sunday.

[11] In the San Francisco mayoral race of 1999, Ammiano mounted a successful write-in campaign in the November election, preventing the incumbent Willie Brown from achieving a victory without a run-off.

With the state's severe budget shortfalls the bill was discussed in light of revenue generation as well as savings from decriminalizing and prosecuting marijuana-focused possession crimes.

[17] A group of activists made an attempt to repeal the law through a California ballot initiative,[16] but in February 2014, the effort failed after it fell "about 17,000 signatures short of the 504,760 valid names needed to go before voters.

[23][24] Governor Schwarzenegger denied the hidden message was inserted intentionally,[24] but media outlets consulted a mathematics professor, who reportedly determined that the odds that it was simply a coincidence were astronomical.