New legislation asks Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero to sign California’s “Apology for the Perpetration of Gross Human Rights Violations and Crimes Against Humanity, with special consideration for African Slaves and their Descendants.” Other signatories requested by the law — Assembly Bill 3089 — are Governor Gavin Newsom, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, and Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire.
Newsom signed the apology after approving the bill. A Judicial Council spokesperson says the Legislature has not yet contacted the Chief Justice. It’s not known if the Speaker and the President Pro Tem have signed the apology.
AB 3089 — a product of the Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans, with a Special Consideration for African Americans Who are Descendants of Persons Enslaved in the United States (see here) — provides that “California recognizes and accepts responsibility for all of the harms and atrocities committed by the state, its representatives thereof, and entities under its jurisdiction who promoted, facilitated, enforced, and permitted the institution of chattel slavery and the enduring legacy of ongoing badges and incidents from which the systemic structures of discrimination have come to exist.”
Among the bill’s many legislative findings are statements that “[t]he California Supreme Court enforced fugitive slave laws until 1865, stating that the antislavery law in the California Constitution was merely a ‘declaration of a principle’ ” (see In re Perkins (1852) 2 Cal. 424, 456) and that “California courts prevented Black citizens from testifying in legal proceedings against a white person” (see People v. Hall (1854) 4 Cal. 399).