What to know about California reparations: Is the state’s apology the beginning or the end?

Reparations programs acknowledge and address harms caused by human rights violations such as slavery, segregation, or the systematic denial of fair housing, education, or employment opportunities. 

The United Nations identified five components to an effective reparations plan: restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction, and guarantees of non-repetition.

Compensation could take many forms, according to scholars. They could include direct cash payments, infrastructure investments in historically underserved communities, and vouchers for housing, college or medical insurance. California’s task force also proposed hundreds of policy recommendations falling under such categories as justice and law, voting, education, health, business, and housing.

In 2023, California became the first state to tackle slavery reparations, and its initial process became a blueprint for other states nationwide. Then, the movement faced a crushing defeat in the final hours of the legislative session last year when two key bills stalled, and outraged protesters filled the Capitol. 

Before that, the topic of reparations gained renewed momentum following the Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd in May 2020. That’s when Newsom signed a law establishing the first-in-the-nation state task force to study racism and develop recommendations to address it. The task force issued a more than 1,600-page report detailing ongoing harm and making more than 100 recommendations for remedies. 

Since then, California apologized for a systemic history of laws and practices that have harmed Black residents, but two bills aimed at funding policies to undo that harm never even made it to Newsom’s desk. The measures were crippled by both a state budget deficit and concern about supporting measures viewed as extreme during an election year. 

Newsom signed AB 3089 last year, which required the state to apologize for being complicit in slavery in the 19th century and for supporting other policies that harmed Black Californians since then. Lawmakers earmarked $500,000 for a plaque memorializing the apology at the state capitol, but that’s the only taxpayer-funded money that’s been allocated to the reparations effort so far in California. A $12 million fund set aside for future reparations legislation signed into law has not yet been touched, according to the Department of Finance. 

The 2025 new slate of bills includes measures that would address mortgage lending discrimination, task California State University with developing a scientific methodology for determining a person’s lineage, and try to mitigate racial biases in commercial healthcare algorithms. 

Supporters have said reparations are not only a matter of justice but a necessary step toward healing deep-seated wounds from slavery and racism. Critics have countered that reparations are an impractical and divisive concept — questioning the cost amid state deficits, the fairness of determining eligibility, and the potential that reparations would open the floodgates for other aggrieved groups to seek repayment for government-sanctioned harms. 

“The government cannot advantage or disadvantage individuals based on race and ancestry without violating the right to equal protection,” said Andrew Quinio, an attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation, an organization that is critical of the reparations movement. “Presuming that one has a present injury that requires compensation because of the experiences of one’s ancestors offends our right to be treated as individuals.” 

But those who support cash reparations vow to keep pushing. Chris Lodgson, with the Coalition for a Just and Equitable California, attends state budget hearings every two weeks to advocate for “direct, unrestricted cash payments” for American Freedman to be included in the budget language, particularly for seniors, who may not live long enough to see reparations payments approved by the Legislature. 

He spoke at a March 12 assembly budget subcommittee meeting about the need to help youth and keep kids out of the child welfare system. “One of the best ways to do that is to help ensure a lot of the seniors and grandparents who are taking care of a lot of these kids actually have more income through a direct cash payments program,” Lodgson said.

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

Yes. While California did not have large-scale plantations like the Southern states, slavery existed in various forms during California’s early history.

Legally California was not a slave state, yet more than 2,000 enslaved people were brought to the state from 1850 to 1860, typically by plantation owners, to work in gold mines, according to the task force’s report. State and local government officials also, at times, upheld fugitive slave laws.

Figuring out who would be eligible for reparations is expected to be a complicated process. 

The task force in March 2022 voted to limit potential compensation to descendants of free and enslaved Black people who were in the United States prior to 1900. To qualify, a person would have to trace their lineage. The reparations panel narrowly rejected a proposal to include recent immigrants. The eligibility debate dominated the task force’s first year of work and highlighted a cultural schism within the Black community. 

The task force also voted to recommend the Legislature create a California American Freedmen’s Affairs Agency — an updated version of the Freedmen’s Bureau instituted by the federal government in 1865, after the Civil War, to assist formerly enslaved people. The new agency would help California residents trace their lineage. 

Efforts to establish this agency through legislation fell short during the last legislative session, but now there are dueling measures. The proposed bill backed by the Black Caucus would establish the Bureau for Descendants of American Slavery within state government.  Another bill was brought by Assemblymember Bill Essayli, a Republican from Corona, who has publicly opposed taxpayer-funded reparations. Essayli resigned on April 1 to become the interim U.S. Attorney in Southern California under the Trump administration, leaving his bill’s future uncertain. The measure would establish the California American Freedmen Affairs Agency, and has the support of some reparations advocates. 

Kamilah Moore, chairperson of the task force, said nearly 80% of California’s 2.8 million Black residents would be eligible for reparations. 

Some task force members predicted a large percentage of Black Californians would have trouble proving eligibility, including children in the state’s welfare system, incarcerated people and those suffering mental illness or homelessness.

“Our most vulnerable could be left out,” said task force member Cheryl Grills.

Task force economic experts say the current wealth disparity between Black and white California households — pegged at $350,000 per person — is the best indicator of the impact of racism. 

They also calculated the costs of other harms African Americans endured and estimated Black Californians could be owed more than $800 billion total, for decades of over-policing, disproportionate incarceration, home seizures and housing discrimination. That is more than two-and-a-half times California’s $310 billion annual budget. Yet it does not include a recommended $1 million per person to older residents for health disparities that shortened their average life span.

If those debts were paid, where would the money come from? 

Some people suggested tapping tax revenues from marijuana sales. Evanston, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, voted in 2019 to allocate $10 million of its marijuana tax revenues to reparations initiatives addressing gaps in wealth and opportunity for Black residents. 

Others told California’s task force the state should create a “superfund” with taxes and donations paid by wealthy donors.

Some task force members suggested the state make a “downpayment” on reparations or pay installments. Steven Bradford, then a Democratic state senator from Gardena on the task force, proposed diverting 0.5% of the state’s annual budget to a $1.5 billion annuity, to fund reparations programs and payments over time.

Ultimately, the governor and Legislature would need to decide where money for reparations would come from.

Many times, reparations have been paid for human rights abuses in the United States and abroad. The University of Amherst catalogs several dozen cases on its library website.

• 1946 — Indian claims: Congress created the Indian Claims Commission to hear fraud and treaty violation claims against the United States government. By 1979, the Commission had adjudicated 546 claims and awarded more than $818 million in judgments.
• 1952 — Holocaust survivors: Germany agrees to pay $822 million to Holocaust survivors in what is called the German Jewish Settlement.
• 1974 — Tuskegee experiment: In Alabama, Black men with syphilis were left untreated to study the progression of the disease between 1932 and 1972. After the end of the Tuskegee experiment in 1974, the government reached a $10 million out of court settlement with the victims and their families.
• 1988 — Japanese Americans interned during WWII: U.S. President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act providing $1.2 billion ($20,000 a person) and an apology to each of the approximately 60,000 living Japanese-Americans who had been interned during World War II.
• 1994 — Black community of Rosewood, Florida: The state of Florida approved $2.1 million for the living survivors of a 1923 racial program that resulted in multiple deaths and the decimation of the Black community in the town of Rosewood.
• 2022 — Black residents of Evanston, Illinois: Evanston, Illinois began paying reparations to Black residents under their Restorative Housing Program. 16 residents were chosen at random and to receive $25,000 each for housing assistance.

Reparations for Black Californians and Black Americans have garnered mixed support in polls, with some panel recommendations more popular than others.

A national UMass poll conducted in January 2024 found 67% of those surveyed were opposed to the federal government providing cash payments, compared with 34% who said the government definitely or probably should pay descendants. Among those opposed to the idea of cash payments, 29% said their reason is descendants do not deserve the money.

In a 2023 survey by the nonprofit Public Policy Institute of California, nearly three out of five Californians supported the Legislature and governor offering a formal apology for human rights violations and crimes against humanity for enslaved Africans and their descendants. 

Yet the political calculus is likely to give lawmakers pause. Although most Californians surveyed believe racism is a problem, a majority of adults and a slightly greater majority of likely voters in the same poll said they had an unfavorable impression of the state having a reparations task force.

And a poll by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Government studies showed 59% of California voters opposed to cash payments to residents who are descendants of enslaved Black people, compared to 28% of voters in favor. The poll, conducted in late August 2023, found Democrats and liberals largely divided on cash reparations while Republicans and conservatives were nearly universally opposed. Two out of three voters who reported no party preference said they are against cash payments to Black residents.

A different poll, by UCLA’s Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, showed most respondents agreeing that some form of compensation is warranted. At least 81% endorsed investing in education, health care, and business development to benefit Black residents.

A common warning by some opponents of reparations is that it could encourage other historically aggrieved groups to seek payback from the government. 

Even some proponents agree. Task force members Don Tamaki and Reggie Jones-Sawyer, a former Democratic Assembly member from Los Angeles, have said the task force’s work could become a blueprint for other ethnic groups. 

Two Harvard University scholars argue the United States already pays reparations to a variety of groups, including coal miners with black lung disease, descendants of veterans, farmers, and people who have had bad reactions to COVID vaccines. Researchers Cornell William Brooks and Linda Bilmes said few groups are as deserving of reparative justice as Black Americans.

“When you talk about restorative justice in flesh-and-blood terms, it means how do we restore people in terms of land sold? How do we restore a people in terms of dignity robbed? Bodies violated? Liberty taken?” Brooks said during a podcast.  

One group that might seek reparations are families who had lived on land Dodgers Stadium occupies, now known as Chavez Ravine. The city of Los Angeles moved out hundreds of families, most of them Latino, during the 1950’s to build the stadium. Now some are fighting to get their land back. 

Other examples could include Native Americans, Mexican American and Chinese Americans  —  who were oppressed at various times in California’s history — as well as undocumented workers, LGBTQ+ community members and women. Newsom created the California Truth & Healing Council, which is expected to report on California’s historic relationship with Native Americans and possibly recommend reparations in 2025.

The task force recommends more than 100 programs or policies that do not involve direct cash payments. (They can be found on pages 19-24 of the interim report.) The policy recommendations generally fall under these categories: justice, voting, education, health, business or housing. 

Some policy recommendations would have a defined cost while others, such as the recommendation that California apologize for slavery and systemic injustices, would not have a budgetary impact. 

Other recommendations to the state:

• Delete language from California’s Constitution permitting involuntary servitude as punishment for crime

• Make it easier to hold law enforcement (including correctional officers) accountable for unlawful harassment and violence

• Consider legislation to prevent the dilution Black votes via redistricting

• Let people with felony convictions serve on juries and prohibit judges and attorneys from excluding jurors for having a criminal record.

• Identify and eliminate anti-Black housing policies and practices.

• Repeal Article 34 of the California Constitution, which requires public votes before “low-rent housing projects” can be developed, constructed, or acquired by public entities.

• Identify and eliminate racial bias in standardized tests, including statewide K-12 proficiency assessments, undergraduate and postgraduate assessments and professional career exams 

The new package of 2025 reparations-adjacent bills come at a time when the Trump administration has been rolling back federal measures aimed at diversity, equity, and inclusion. Members of the Black Caucus have been resolute about going in the opposite direction.

“The President of the United States has spent his first months in office fighting to erase, disempower, and defund federal efforts to improve the conditions of life for Black people,” said Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, vice chair of the caucus and a Democrat from Culver City. “Here in California, we are prepared and willing to stand up and fight back.” 

But it remains to be seen how many of the bills Newsom would sign. The governor in February approved giving $25 million to sue the Trump administration. But that same month he also launched a podcast to try and understand the “Make America Great Again” voter base that elected Trump. He has made statements on the show reversing his prior, more progressive positions on trans athletes and distancing himself from defunding police and use of the gender-neutral ethnic descriptor “Latinx.” The governor’s office said in March he had not taken a position on the caucus’ legislation.

In past years, Newsom signaled caution. “Dealing with the legacy of slavery is about much more than cash payments,” he said in a statement in 2023.

Divisions among reparations advocates may peel support away from the Black Caucus’ slate.

Very few lawmakers publicly expressed support for the preliminary recommendations of the California Reparations Task Force. In CalMatters’ informal email poll of all 120 state legislators, just five not on the task force responded.

Those who expressed support include Assembly members in the Black Caucus — La Mesa Democrat Dr. Akilah Weber, Moreno Valley Democrat Corey Jackson, and Tina McKinnor, a Democrat from Inglewood — and Damon Connolly, a Democrat from San Rafael.

In opposition is Assemblymember James Gallagher, a Republican from Chico, who in a statement asked: “How can we ask new immigrants and low-wage workers to foot the bill for something done 150 years ago, on the other side of the country?” 

Gov. Newsom signaled caution. “Dealing with the legacy of slavery is about much more than cash payments,” he said in a statement.

Bradford, the Gardena senator on the task force, said he’s not surprised by caution from lawmakers. “This is an issue folks still don’t want to deal with head on,” he said, “and here we are in 2023 and not only California, but America wants to bury their head when it comes to addressing America’s original sin — slavery.”

Jones-Sawyer, the Assembly member on the task force, acknowledged: “Not all recommendations may see the light of day, but it is imperative that the ones aimed at undoing racially prejudiced laws are enacted.”

The first state-appointed task force in the nation exploring how a state could make reparations to African Americans hurt by slavery and discrimination. It held close to 200 hours of public hearings and produced hundreds of pages of public documents. 

The 9-member panel did not always agree, but its work likely will be considered historic and could serve as a blueprint for the rest of the nation.

Have a reparations question we didn’t cover? Submit it here — questions may inspire additional cards.