Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill Saturday that would have made California the first U.S. state to outlaw caste-based discrimination.
Caste is a division of people related to birth or descent. Those at the lowest strata of the caste system, known as Dalits, have been pushing for legal protections in California and beyond. They say it is necessary to protect them from bias in housing, education and in the tech sector — where they hold key roles.
Earlier this year, Seattle became the first U.S. city to add caste to its anti-discrimination laws. On Sept. 28, Fresno became the second U.S. city and the first in California to prohibit discrimination based on caste by adding caste and indigeneity to its municipal code.
In his message Newsom called the bill “unnecessary,” explaining that 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.”
“Unnecessary”
what
Eh I see why people would have a visceral reaction to the veto but he (probably) has a point: if the existing laws can already be applied to caste discrimination as they are currently written it isn’t technically necessary, having said that I don’t see what it would hurt to add caste discrimination specifically. Any lawyers feel free to chime in on other side of the argument.
“Can be” is not necessarily “will be”. You can bet your ass that next time someone brings a caste discrimination suit up the defendent’s lawyers will point to the explicit lack of laws against caste discrimination to try to get their client off. Whether that has a high chance of success is besides the point - it is much more ambiguous than it would be with a law explicitly addressing the issue. It had gone through the legislature. All he had to do was sign. It’s a big “the fuck” moment.
hmm, I mean, the law does explicitly mention discrimination based on ancestry. the caste system is just a structure of ancestral discrimination. one could argue that caste is interchangeable with ancestry for the purpose of this law. i can see why he wouldn’t want a different law to ban every synonym and foreign language word for a thing that’s already banned.
There will always be a lawyer who will use any ridiculous argument to get their client off, that is literally their function. By the same argument the opposing counsel can point to the governors statement that other laws should be applicable, can’t they?
A governor’s statement isn’t codified in law. It’s just the opinion of an official.
Sure, but I’d love to hear a smart lawyer use a governor’s statement while arguing before a jury.
We have laws that ban harming someone and we also have laws that ban killing someone. Clearly there is overlap between harming and killing yet we have laws for both. Laws must be made to clarify these situations, otherwise as we’ve seen recently the courts can just interpret them however they want based on the judge’s personal views, even if it means completely reversing decades of existing precedent.
Like I said, I don’t see the harm in spelling it out even if it is superfluous, it does make me wonder if he vetoed it for another reason and doesn’t want to say.
The reason is silicon valley, where managers of Indian descent routinely hold back people from lower castes. Seattle were the first to ban caste discrimination, and Amazon and Microsoft were not supportive of that.
In that case the difference is one of severity both of the crime and the punishment. If you’re not making caste discrimination a more serious offense than regular discrimination (which I don’t think we should) then the law is redundant.
I read this as hammering (🔨) and I was like… we have a law specifically for that??
Can the existing laws be applied to caste discrimination? They haven’t been so far.
Do we know that? Is there case law?
No, there has so far been one lawsuit that it still being litigated. There is a legal argument that caste discrimination would be protected by existing law, but that theory hasn’t been tested yet.
Does that mean caste discrimination does not exist in the USA? Or does it mean no one has yet felt like the law would be on their side?
As a American - we don’t really get the need. It’s a law specifically for indians and their culture. Which is problematic because laws shouldn’t be laser targeted to specific cultures or regions.
Rather than push a law, instead push for education. If you’re discriminated against by your boss because you’re of a different caste, you have tools for that.
As an Indian I completely disagree. Caste discrimination should’ve died a long time ago, and it being a socioeconomic + cultural thing makes it difficult to target with discrimination laws.
Just amend the bill to ban any religious based discrimination where someone is considered lesser.
Quitting?
Without being able to prove that your irrelevant “caste” was the cause of unfavorable treatment, your argument is just that they don’t like you. They would have to say that they are discriminating against you because you have “lesser” lineage, which they won’t.
Are they being applied to caste discrimination though?
I don’t know, that’s where we would need a CA lawyer to chime in. Obviously that’s where this issue could go either way.
This is exactly why conservatives said they vetoed enshrining gay marriage in federal law. Instead of owning up to being bigots, they said “oh but the law already covers that”.
I’ve come to learn that “the law already covers that so it’s unnecessary” is a smoke screen and deflective argument.
If there are laws that ban discrimination for any reason, why should there be more laws banning discrimination for specific reasons?
The laws don’t ban discrimination for ‘any reason’, they ban discrimination for a number of reasons with the specification that those reasons should be applied broadly. There is a distinct difference.
Exactly. It would be pretty stupid for a governor to say existing laws already apply when they don’t, but I don’t exactly trust any politician to tell the truth unless it’s politically expedient for them.
It’s one of those things where existing laws could apply, but are less effective than spelling it out when there’s an issue. Law, after all, is not about elegance, it’s about precision.
Someone elsewhere in the thread pointed out the US doesn’t acknowledge caste at all, so maybe that’s why they don’t want to codify caste discrimination as that alone could lend credence to caste even being a thing.
I wonder if that was applied to everybody.
All men are equal, it’s just that some are more equal than others /sarcasm
Well it says “all Men.” Explicitly excluding women and children. Of course one can argue that that the literal text wasn’t what was really intended by the founders. That would be “all White land-owning Men.” 250 years later, that intention is still writ large on American society, even though we like to pretend that “they obviously meant ‘all People.’”
Here’s hoping the California legislature can override that veto.