Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) vetoed a bill that would have banned discrimination based on caste on the basis that it was already covered by existing laws.
The bill, S.B. 403, was authored by California Sen. Aisha Wahab, who was the first Afghan-American woman elected to public office in 2018. Its intent was to “define ‘ancestry’ for purposes of the act to include, among other things, caste” in the state’s existing civil rights law. Casteism is a form of descent-based discrimination.
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“In California, we believe everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect, no matter who they are, where they come from, who they love, or where they live,” Newsom wrote in his veto. “That is why California already prohibits discrimination based on sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, and other characteristics, and state law specifies that these civil rights protections shall be liberally construed. Because discrimination based on caste is already prohibited under these existing categories, this bill is unnecessary.”
The Hindu American Foundation celebrated the veto, claiming the bill was “premised in racist rhetoric” and “false claims about the Hindu religion.”
“With the stroke of his pen, Governor Newsom has averted a civil rights and constitutional disaster that would have put a target on hundreds of thousands of Californians simply because of their ethnicity or their religious identity, as well as create a slippery slope of facially discriminatory laws,” HAF Managing Director Samir Kalra said in a statement.
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Seattle was the first U.S. city to outlaw caste discrimination as a result of a city council vote earlier this year. Toronto was the first school board in Canada to recognize the existence of caste discrimination in schools. Two colleges in Maine and Massachusetts respectively have banned discrimination by caste as well.
There are roughly 550,000 Indians in California, making it the fourth-largest group of immigrants in the state.
