State’s reparation bills face pushback
State lawmakers are about to consider legislation to speed up government agencies’ handling of African Americans’ applications for occupational licenses in California, among a package of measures related to reparations for descendants of slaves.
A conservative group warns that the bill and others would be challenged in courts that have struck down race-based affirmative action. Its opposition suggests that while none of the bills proposes direct financial payments, they’ll still likely face a tough road both politically and legally.
In hopes of warding off lawsuits, some of the legislation has been drafted to apply only to direct descendants of enslaved Americans, or of free Blacks who lived in the United States before 1900.
AB2648 by Assembly Member Mike Gipson, D-Carson (Los Angeles County), which was to be heard Tuesday by the Assembly Business and Professions Committee, would require licensing boards to “prioritize African American applicants seeking licenses,” particularly if they are descendants of slaves. The bill would enact one of the recommendations made by the state’s Reparations Task Force in a historic 1,080-page report released last year. The report found that “State, and sometimes local, governments, have designed these licensing requirements so that Black workers are less likely to qualify, which has intensified the impact of discrimination by private employers and unions.”
The bill would not allow more lenient standards for any applicants, but would require boards to act promptly when Black professionals seek licenses for occupations or professions such as accountants, architects, barbers, pharmacists and real estate brokers.
“By ensuring fair access to licensure, this bill contributes to our overarching goal of promoting economic empowerment for African American entrepreneurs and professionals across the state,” the California African American Chamber of Commerce, a sponsor of the bill, said in a letter to the committee.
But the Pacific Legal Foundation, a nonprofit whose stated mission is to “defend Americans from government overreach and abuse,” says AB2648 would be an act of racial discrimination. The group has challenged other programs seeking to benefit minorities.
“Low- and moderate-income workers are hardest hit by licensing requirements,” Andrew Quinio, an attorney for the foundation, said in a filing with the committee. “Making race a factor for receiving a license adds another barrier standing in the way of hardworking Californians. It also violates principles of equality under the law.”
Quinio cited the California Supreme Court’s ruling in 2000 that barred the city of San Jose from requiring city contractors to make efforts to hire subcontractors run by minorities and women. And last year the U.S. Supreme Court, which 20 years earlier had upheld affirmative action in higher education, ruled 6-3 that any consideration of a college applicant’s race or ethnicity is an unconstitutional act of discrimination. Voters in California have prohibited affirmative action in education and public employment and contracting since 1996.
Last year’s ruling “strongly suggests an antagonistic position within the current composition of the Supreme Court when reviewing policies that necessarily consider race as a means of improving equitable access to opportunity,” Quinio wrote. He said Pacific Legal Foundation attorneys “have extensive experience successfully challenging laws and policies that discriminate against citizens based on protected categories.”
AB2648 is one of more than a dozen reparations measures proposed by the California Legislative Black Caucus in February after two years of study and hearings by the Reparations Task Force.
They include bills to return property that was seized by eminent domain for reasons found to be racial, to train barbers on providing care for people with different hairstyles and to limit solitary confinement in state prisons. An earlier proposal to restrict solitary confinement was vetoed in 2022 by Gov. Gavin Newsom, who said it could endanger guards and other inmates.
One measure approved by the state Senate Housing Committee last week, SB1007 by Sen. Steven Bradford, D-Gardena (Los Angeles County), would provide housing funds to descendants of slaves and of free 19th century African Americans.
In California, Bradford told the committee, the average home owned by Black residents is 22% less valuable than a white-owned home. The only dissenter in the bipartisan 8-1 vote, Sen. Kelly Seyarto, R-Murrieta (Riverside County), said the bill failed to require clear documentation that an applicant for funding was a descendant of slaves.
The chair of the state Reparations Task Force, Los Angeles attorney Kamilah Moore, said the funding in Bradford’s bill and others was intentionally limited to descendants of slaves in order to fend off race-based legal challenges.
“Funding for Blacks, as a whole, will probably face challenges, but bills narrowly tailored to descendants of slaves could be successful” because they are not defined solely by race, Moore told the Chronicle on Monday.
A similar view came from Erwin Chemerinsky, the law school dean at UC Berkeley and a liberal legal scholar. “I believe that reparations that are racebased are likely to be struck down by the courts because of the Supreme Court’s strong hostility to race-based programs,” he said by email. “If reparations are in a race-neutral way, such as descendants of slaves, they are more likely to be upheld.”
But Kate Pomeroy, spokesperson for the Pacific Legal Foundation, said legislation that favors the descendants of enslaved persons “is likely unconstitutional as well” because it is related to race.
Moore said another bill, SB1407 by Bradford, to be heard Tuesday by the Senate Judiciary Committee, would create a state agency to help descendants of slaves determine their eligibility for benefits.
The newly proposed measures would also include a formal apology by the state for harms caused by California officials who enforced slavery and its discriminatory aftermath. But although the Reparations Task Force recommended compensation of up to $1.2 million for Californians who are the descendants of slaves, none of the bills would provide any financial payments.
“Funding for Blacks, as a whole, will probably face challenges, but bills narrowly tailored to descendants of slaves could be successful.” Kamilah Moore, chair of the state Reparations Task Force