Efforts to implement reparations measures recommended by the California Reparations Task Force lost momentum at the end of the 2024 legislative session, but legislators have renewed the push with some new proposals and some modified versions of bills from last year. The list below is their priority bill package, which they’re calling “The Road to Repair 2025.”
ACA 6 (Wilson) – would prohibit slavery in all forms.
ACA 7 (Jackson) – seeks to clarify the state’s landmark 1996 anti-affirmative action ballot initiative, Proposition 209, to ensure state, county, and local institutions understand intent and parameters in current statute.
AB 7 (Bryan) – would authorize priority admissions for descendants of American slavery to higher education institutions.
AB 57 (McKinnor) – seeks to allocate 10 percent of the funds for the state’s Home Purchase Assistance program to first-time home buyers who meet the requirements for a loan under the program and who are descendants of formerly enslaved persons.
AB 62 (McKinnor) – seeks to establish a process for reviewing, investigating, and recommending compensation of claims for property taken by eminent domain. The governor vetoed a previous version of this bill last session because a companion bill establishing the Freedman Affairs Agency to review the claims stalled in the legislature.
AB 475 (Wilson) – seeks to require the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to develop voluntary work programs for institutional residents.
AB 742 (Elhawary) – seeks to designate descendants of American slavery for priority when issuing professional licenses.
AB 766 (Sharp-Collins) – seeks to, among other things, require racial equity analyses for state executive branch agencies and respond to the findings to further advance racial equity.
AB 785 (Sharp-Collins) – would create the Community Violence Interdiction Grant Program and fund community-driven solutions to decrease violence in neighborhoods and schools.
AB 801 (Bonta) – would direct the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, in collaboration with the Civil Rights Department, to identify and address ongoing mortgage lending discrimination.
AB 935 (Ransom) – would require the Civil RIghts Department and the Department of Education to collect anonymized data to determine how complaints are handled.
SB 437 (Weber Pierson) – would require the California State University to independently research and report on a scientific methodology to determine an individual’s genealogical fingerprint for the purposes of verification as a descendant of an enslaved person in the United States.
SB 464 (Smallwood-Cuevas) – seeks to expand employer-employee demographic and pay data reporting to the Civil Rights Department for the purpose of enforcing civil rights protections under existing law.
SB 503 (Weber Pierson) – seeks to regulate the use of artificial intelligence in critical healthcare applications to mitigate racial biases present in commercial algorithms.
SB 510 (Richardson) – seeks to require complete and accurate K-12 curriculum regarding racial disparities, including impacts of segregation, slavery, and systemic discrimination.
SB 518 (Weber Pierson) – would establish the Bureau of Descendants of American Slavery
