Successfully defeating Assembly Constitutional Amendment 7 in the California Legislature is the battle that I’m proudest of this year. I feel like if I hadn’t worked my fanny off to stop it in the Senate (it had already passed overwhelmingly in the Assembly), it would have gone on the ballot. Happily, the senator who essentially told me that ACA7 was definitely going to pass and that I was wasting my time, turned out to be wrong.
But Dan Morenoff at the American Civil Rights Project and I (mostly Dan) also fought various “reparations” bills. The worst of them—the bill to establish a California Freedmen’s Affairs Agency to administer reparations (SB 1403) and the bill to fund the reparations project (SB 1331)—overwhelmingly passed the Senate. But then they were quietly shelved by the Assembly on the last day of the legislative session. Maybe our arguments—warnings that we would sue, really—convinced them. Or maybe these idiots finally took a look at the polls. As you might expect, reparations for African Americans in a non-slave state aren’t exactly a popular idea. In any event, the bills were killed.
The most recent reparations bill to get the hook—SB 1050—was a bill to allow the state to re-open eminent domain cases if racial motivations are suspected (even if the limitations period had long since passed). SB 1050 passed both the Assembly and the Senate, but was vetoed by Governor Newsom on Wednesday. What pleases me is that the reason Newsom gave for the veto was exactly the reason Dan argued: The bill assigns the California Freedman’s Affairs Agency the responsibility for enforcing the Act, and that agency doesn’t exist. The veto message reads as if it is quoting Dan. Go, Dan!