What’s next for reparations in California?

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Good morning, Inequality Insights readers. I’m CalMatters reporter Wendy Fry.

The California Legislative Black Caucus is hitting the road on a statewide tour to promote its slate of 14 reparations bills , while the clock is ticking on getting those proposed laws to the governor’s desk before the legislative session ends Aug. 31. Last weekend, the campaign kicked off in San Diego. CalMatters’ Neil Chase, Denise Amos, Deborah Brennan, and I all got to attend the event at Crawford High School.

Deborah wrote a news report about a town-hall style discussion of the measures. There’s also a video of presentations made at the event, including those of Secretary of State Dr. Shirley Weber, Assemblymembers Akilah Weber, Corey Jackson, Mike Gipson, and State Sen. Steven Bradford. The legislators encouraged community members to read a 1,000-page report that outlines the reasons for reparations and gives more than 100 recommendations to make them happen.

California became the first state in the nation to form a reparations task force three years ago and the first to introduce a comprehensive reparations package.

The six-city tour is meant to urge the public to get involved in lobbying lawmakers to pass the new legislation. Their 14 reparations measures tackle education, business, criminal justice, health care, and civil rights and include two proposed constitutional amendments that lawmakers hope to place before voters in November.

One of the amendments, ACA 8 , would ban one of the last vestiges of involuntary servitude: forced labor in jails and prisons. The other, ACA 7 , would authorize the state to pay for programs designed to improve life expectancy and educational outcomes of “groups based on race, color, ethnicity, national origin, or marginalized genders, sexes, or sexual orientations.”

The bills to place the proposed amendments on the ballot must first pass the Senate Appropriations Committee by June 24 in order to meet a June 27 deadline to finalize ballot measures, Brennan reported.

There will be more State of Black California community listening sessions events in five additional cities over the next five months.

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• Lawful pathways. The Biden administration on Tuesday announced an executive action allowing certain undocumented spouses and children of U.S. citizens to apply for lawful permanent residency without leaving the country – an election-year shift that could shield hundreds of thousands of people from deportation. New measures are also in place for some undocumented immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children. The administration announced plans to more quickly process work visas for DACA recipients and other Dreamers who have earned a degree at an accredited U.S. institution of higher education and who have received an offer of employment from a U.S. employer in a field related to their degree.
• Legal challenge. The ACLU and other immigrant rights groups have filed a federal lawsuit over Biden’s asylum restrictions, which were announced two weeks ago. The directive limits asylum processing once encounters with migrants between ports of entry reach 2,500 per day. The ACLU and others say the border crackdown differs little from a similar move by the Trump administration that was blocked by the courts.
• ‘Weathering’ research. Researchers are studying the effects of racism on public health. They are using a new term to describe the detrimental impacts of systemic oppression, such as discrimination and poverty: “weathering.” According to a post by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition , the U.S. economy leaves nearly $500 million in growth each year unrealized because of health disparities.

• Child well-being. California ranks in the bottom third of all states for overall child well-being, according to a recent report . The state’s best ranking was in children’s health, while its worst was in economic conditions, EdSource reported. Researchers found that over half of California’s 3- and 4-year-olds are not in school, less than one-fourth of its eighth graders are proficient in math, and a greater number of children and teens per 100,000 died than in previous years.
• Workplace protections. The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health sent a letter last month to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security asking the federal agency to grant at least two years of protection from deportation to seven immigrants who are key witnesses in an ongoing case over alleged workplace violations at an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement detention facility in McFarland, California. According to the immigrants’ attorneys, this is likely the first time that any state OSHA agency nationwide has made such a request for detained immigrant workers in the course of investigating workplace violations at detention centers.
• Food as medicine. A California pilot program that provides about 29,000 low-income residents with free, healthy produce to treat illness is on the state budget chopping block. Federal funding for the program runs only through the end of 2026, Capital and Main reported . Assemblymember Mia Bonta, a Democrat from Oakland, introduced a bill that would make food-as-medicine programs a permanent benefit of Medi-Cal by July 1, 2026.

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Thanks for reading,
Wendy and The California Divide Team