SACRAMENTO, California — This week, California lawmakers passed some of the nation’s most ambitious legislation aimed at ending a legacy of racist policies that have created disparities for Black people in areas such as housing, education and health care.
But they left out two bills that would have created a fund aimed at addressing discriminatory state policies and an agency to implement reparations programs — key pieces for the state to implement other reparations measures. Black Caucus Chair Assemblymember Lori Wilson confirmed Saturday afternoon that lawmakers will not vote on them before a year-end deadline.
This effectively sweeps the two proposals off the table after years of effort, according to proponents.
“What do we need a Black Caucus for?” said Chris Lodgson, an organizer with the Coalition for a Just and Equitable California, a reparations advocacy group. “These are priority bills from the caucus, and they’re blocking their own bills.”
None of the bills would provide for widespread direct payments to African Americans. The state legislature instead approved proposals that would allow for land restitution or compensation to families whose property was wrongfully seized by the government, and issue a formal apology for laws and practices that harmed black people.
Democratic Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer, who is black, called his bill to issue a formal apology for discrimination “a labor of love.” His uncle was among a group of African-American students escorted by federal troops past an angry white mob to Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in the 1950s, three years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that school segregation was unconstitutional. The students became known as the “ Little Rock Nine.”
“I think my grandmother, my grandfather, would be incredibly proud of what we’re going to do today,” Jones-Sawyer said before the vote on the legislation that passed. “Because that’s why they were struggling in 1957, so that I — and we — could move our people forward.”
The reparations bills now go to Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has until Sept. 30 to decide whether to sign them into law.
The Democratic governor has not spoken on most of the bills, but he signed a $297.9 billion budget in June, including up to $12 Million for Reparations LegislationHowever, the budget did not specify what proposals the money would be used for, and his government has indicated it will oppose some of them.
Newsom signed a law in 2020 that created the nation’s first task force to study reparations proposals. New York state and Illinois have since followed suit. The California group a final report published last year with more than 100 recommendations for legislators.
Newsom signed a law last month that requires school districts that receive state funding for a vocational education program to collect data on the performance of participating students by race and gender. The legislation, part of a reparations package is supported by the California Legislative Black Caucus and aims to address gaps in student learning outcomes.
Below are some of the key bills lawmakers passed this week:
The Senate has overwhelmingly approved the bill to provide land restitution or compensation to families whose property has been unfairly taken through racial discrimination using the right of expropriation.
The issue gained renewed attention in California when Los Angeles area officials a beach house returned in 2022 to a black couple, decades after it was taken from their ancestors.
The Newsom administration’s Department of Finance opposes the bill. The agency says the cost of implementation is unknown, but that it “could range from hundreds of thousands of dollars to several million dollars per year, depending on the workload required to accept, review and investigate applications.”
It’s not immediately clear how the initiative would be implemented, even if Newsom signs it into law, after lawmakers dropped a measure designed to create an agency to implement it. That proposal would have created a genealogy office to help Black Californians research their family lineage and verify their eligibility for any reparations that become law.
California would accept responsibility and formally apologize for its role in perpetuating segregation, economic inequality and discrimination against black Americans, under another bill the Legislature has approved.
The legislation requires the Secretary of State to send a final copy of the apology to the State Archives, where it can be viewed by the public.
The apology would say that the state “affirms its role in protecting the descendants of enslaved people and all black Californians, as well as their civil, political, and sociocultural rights.”
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Associated Press editor Tran Nguyen contributed to this report.
Austin is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues. Follow Austin on X: @sophieadanna
