“In practical terms, there are all kinds of legitimate reasons why, especially older adults, might not be able to meet the work requirements in terms of actually putting in the number of hours, and that’s before we even get to all the administrative issues,” Rhee said.

“This creates a new benchmark,” Ken Jacobs, co-chair of the Labor Center at the University of California, Berkeley, told ABC News. “We went through the Fight for $15 and now $20 is out there as a new target wage.”

Like other states, California is trying to resolve its costly problem of uninsured residents, according to public health experts. A study released last year by the UC Berkeley Labor Center and UCLA Center for Health Policy Research found that 3.2 million Californians, 9.5% of the state’s population, likely would remain uninsured in 2022.

The University of California Berkeley Labor Center predicts more than 3 million people won’t have health insurance in California next year, 65% of them people who are undocumented.

According to the UC Berkeley Labor Center, Latino workers also have the highest rate of employment in essential front-line jobs, where there’s a higher risk of exposure to COVID-19.