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.”
Y’all, by banning this, someone who is the victim of caste discrimination has to first prove that caste discrimination even exists.
And every victim will have to prove this every time.
Yeah, it’s a terrible idea. You want such discrimination to be legally responded to using existing non-discrimination law, not something specific to it.
You completely misunderstood.
Because there is nothing specific to caste discrimination in existing law the victims will need to prove discrimination even exists in order to actually use existing non-discrimination law. Without specific protections the burden is on the victim to prove they were victimized at all.
Without specific protections the burden is on the victim to prove they were victimized at all.
I don’t understand. How would the new law have helped people who can’t prove they’re being discriminated against? How would that work?
I wonder how much lobbying came from the tech industry where caste discrimination is definitely a thing
I’m in the tech industry, but not in California and I have never seen cast discrimination. How does this happen in California and gore is it not illegal based on current laws as Newsom is saying?
Here is a fun game: Your job probably has an org chart that lets you see the employee hierarchy. Now, realize that Indian last names almost always denote cast. Understand how to discern cast from names and take a look at your org chart.
I am a white tech worker, so I didn’t think much of cast discrimination since I personally never saw even a hint of it at my job. But then I looked at our org cart and oh boy… I now am firmly in the camp that says cast discrimination should be regulated.
I heard about the bill a few weeks ago on The Daily. Shortly after I was on LinkedIn and noticed that some of the devs from my company and a company that mine contracts with would only list a last initial. It made me wonder if the reason for that was because of caste discrimination.
We had some “prince” or something. He was horrible at his job, lost his temper often. He even yelled “How dare you put your feet up in my presence” once. This was a big company to. He was protected by his fellow caste members. Never fired. He eventually went back home instead because he didn’t like not being treated well in the US. Even those who protected him were glad he left.
“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?
Can the existing laws be applied to caste discrimination? They haven’t been so far.
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.
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.
you have tools for that.
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.
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.
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness
I wonder if that was applied to everybody.
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.
Remember kids, if the law doesn’t specifically mention something, you can’t trust the implication that it should be covered.
But at the same time, what exactly does caste discrimination even look like? Just writing a law against it doesn’t make it not a problem.
I get the feeling that someone who is facing caste discrimination (whatever that looks like) is also unlikely to be able to take legal action against the perpetrators due to the cost.
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.”
Newsom and everybody else standing on this argument is an idiot, look how many categories are in that single sentence alone that didn’t used to be there and had to be added precisely because it was easy to dismiss and ignore discrimination before they were specified.
