On July 1, the Assembly Judiciary Committee voted to pass two reparative justice bills authored by Sen. Akilah Weber-Pierson (D-San Diego): Senate Bill (SB) 437 and SB 518.

SB 518 and SB 437 were each approved by a 9-3 vote. The bills now advance to the Assembly Committee on Appropriations for review. The bills are part of the California Legislative Black Caucus (CLBC) Road to Repair 2025 Priority Bill Package.

“This is a critical responsibility and much-needed delayed step towards addressing enduring harms of slavery and systemic racism right here in California,” Weber-Pierson.

SB 437 addresses the process of determining eligibility for reparations for the descendants of enslaved people in the United States and the decades of discrimination that followed it. It also directs the California State University (CSU) to develop a research-backed methodology for validating lineage and descent.

Designed to implement recommendations from the California Reparations Task Force establishes the Bureau for Descendants of American Slavery within the Department of Justice (DOJ).

Chris Lodgson, lead organizer for the Coalition for a Just and Equitable California (CJEC) who testified in front of the committee, shared his displeasure with both bills.

CJEC is a California-based grassroots organization focused on achieving lineage-based reparations for African Americans.

“Both bills propose competing processes for genealogical verification, one through the DOJ and the other through the CSU,” Lodgson said. “So, which is it? This overlap only guarantees delay, bureaucracy, and confusion.”

During the hearing for the bill, a contentious debate about the rationale for using CSU and the process for determining lineage ensued but it didn’t appear to rattle Weber-Pierson.

“This bill (SB 518) established the infrastructure needed to move from recommendations to real implementation, ensuring that California leads with both accountability and action,” Weber-Pierson said.

Bo Tefu, CBM contributed to this report.