Gov. Gavin Newsom has vetoed a bill that would have made California the first state in the nation to outlaw discrimination based on caste.

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.”

  • tabarnaski
    107·
    1 year ago

    If there are laws that ban discrimination for any reason, why should there be more laws banning discrimination for specific reasons?

    • PugJesus@kbin.social
      193·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • AngryHumanoid@reddthat.com
        32·
        1 year ago

        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.

        • PugJesus@kbin.social
          72·
          1 year ago

          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.

          • AngryHumanoid@reddthat.com
            22·
            1 year ago

            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.

    • trailing9@lemmy.ml
      61·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • MelodiousFunk@kbin.social
        33·
        1 year ago

        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.