Shall I compare thee to a California politician? Thou art more lovely, more temperate, and less willing to put me in jail for genetic engineering.

Republican state assembly person Leticia Castillo, a first-term politician with a bachelors degree in social work from the University of Phoenix, recently introduced bill AB 1382 to the California legislature. It would make it against the law to sell transgenic gene-edited pets in California.

The bill passed through the assembly with a vote of 73-0. Last week, it died in the Senate Appropriations Committee — but Castillo says she’s “not done fighting.” Titled “Ethics over Aesthetics,” the bill would specifically seek to ban the sale of animals gene edited for cosmetic reasons (though they don’t actually define what exactly “cosmetic” encompasses). The stated reason for the ban is that gene editing “undermine[s] an animal’s health and will contribute to an out-of-control pet population.” And not to jump on the anti-WIRED bandwagon, but the bill’s author’s specifically reference an article WIRED wrote about my company, to my lasting chagrin.

The judiciary committee calls the PhD scientist-filled gene-edited pet industry “ethically suspect,” which is rich coming from California politicians.