On January 6, 2025, the California Legislature reconvened and started its 2025-26 regular legislative session. Since the beginning of the new year, CFER has been monitoring new proposals introduced in the State Assembly and Senate, in preparation for our annual legislative reports. While more proposals are still being submitted for the session, we’ve flagged 12 interesting bills.

A comeback for reparations

After encountering setbacks in the legislature and at the governor’s desk last year, proponents of slavery reparations are gearing up for another round. So far, they have authored:

· AB 62: to legalize assistance targeting victims in seeking the return or financial compensation of the taken property under the state’s “Racial Equity Framework.” (A similar bill SB 1050 was vetoed by Governor Newsom in 2024.

· AB 7: to mandate California’s public and private universities to provide a preference in admissions to an applicant who is a descendant of slavery.

· AB 57: for the California Housing Finance Agency to reserve funds in affordable housing for descendants of slaves.

Racial justice and gender equity not out of fashion

In addition to bills advancing reparations, progressive lawmakers have also introduced:

· SB 21: to create the Equity, Climate Resilience, and Quality Jobs Fund in the State Treasury and prioritize “individuals with employment barriers" to include "Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians" and "Transgender and gender nonconforming individuals."

· AB 4: to grant healthcare access to "who have historically and systematically faced barriers to accessing health care include people of color and immigrants, both documented and undocumented."

· AB 73: to "develop criteria for a specialty certificate program and specialized training requirements for a Black Mental Health Navigator Certification.”

· AB 15: to prohibit the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation from detaining individuals on the basis of a hold request because “California’s punitive carceral system unjustly and disproportionately harms Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and Asian and Pacific Islander American communities."

Doubling down on ideological virtue-signaling

The following proposals carry on the woke dogma to a lesser extent:

· ACR 9: to recognize month of January '25 as the National Human Trafficking Awareness Month and declare that human trafficking afflicts certain racial minorities and 2SLGBTQIA+ community.

· ACR 2: to declare March 21 as the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

· AB 96: to require a community health worker to develop cultural competence including “respect for lived experience.”

Education freedom and gender equality

Last but not least, the Legislature’s Republican minority introduced some good legislation, the viability of which may be hampered by the Democratic supermajority:

· SB 64: to establish a state trust for a school choice flex account to authorize enrollment of certain children based on parent or guardian income.

· AB 89: to prohibit a pupil whose sex was assigned male at birth from participating on a girls’ interscholastic sports team.

CFER will continue to monitor new legislative proposals daily and give you updates in the coming weeks. For those bills that blatantly attack equal opportunity and merit, we will follow their progress closely and take action with position letters as well as testimony requests. If you find other concerning bills, please don’t hesitate to alert CFER to them.

As a state watchdog, CFER has been doing this for the last four years. Check out our previous reports here. We've also written about the return of reparations here and here. If you think what we do is valuable, please consider making a kind contribution today to help CFER expand our policy monitoring operations.

Thank you!