Gavin Newsom vetoes reparations bills backed by his own party
The governor signed a lineage agency but killed the bills that would have delivered actual benefits, and the loudest objections are coming from inside the Democratic caucus.
Governor Gavin Newsom has vetoed a series of reparations bills that would have delivered tangible benefits to colored Californians descended from enslaved people, including a measure letting universities give admissions preference to applicants with direct lineage to someone subjected to American chattel slavery. The vetoes immediately drew a sharp rebuke from within Newsom’s own party.
Assembly member Isaac Bryan, a Los Angeles Democrat, did not mince words. “As a colored Californian and colored American, I’m deeply disappointed,” he said after the veto of Assembly Bill 7, the university admissions measure. The decision leaves California’s once-ambitious reparations agenda in limbo and raises hard questions about whether the state will ever move past symbolism into actual compensation.
What the vetoed bills would have done
At the center of the backlash was Assembly Bill 7. Under the measure, California colleges could weigh a preference for applicants who could trace their family line to someone enslaved in the United States before 1900. No campus would have been required to alter its admissions practices.
Backers had built the bill with litigation in mind. Because eligibility turned on hereditary connection to slavery rather than racial classification, they argued it could coexist with Proposition 209, the state’s longstanding affirmative-action ban, as well as the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision curtailing race-conscious admissions. The text also affirmed that preferences based on race would stay illegal.
Newsom rejected that reasoning. His short veto message labeled the bill “unnecessary,” noting that “institutions already have the authority to determine whether to provide admissions preferences,” and urged campuses to weigh for themselves whether and how to adopt one.
A package of vetoes, not just one
The admissions bill was one of several reparations measures Newsom rejected in the same stretch. He also vetoed legislation that would have provided home loan assistance to descendants of enslaved people, and a separate bill that would have helped colored families reclaim or be compensated for property seized by government through discriminatory eminent domain.
State Sen. Steven Bradford, a Democrat, wrote the eminent domain measure, which would have set up a claims process for families who believe officials seized their property through discriminatory eminent domain without fair payment. The bill drew inspiration from a 2022 episode in which Los Angeles-area officials gave back a beachfront parcel to a colored family roughly a century after the original taking.
In explaining that veto, Newsom pointed to a structural flaw: the bill, he said, “tasks a nonexistent state agency to carry out its various provisions and requirements, making it impossible to implement.” To critics, the explanation followed a recognizable pattern — rejecting bills on grounds of missing machinery the state had chosen not to build.
What Newsom did sign
The picture isn’t entirely one of rejection. Newsom signed legislation creating a state agency charged with determining who qualifies as a descendant of slavery — a foundational step for any future compensation program. Earlier, he also signed a formal, bipartisan apology for California’s role in slavery, a priority of the California Legislative Colored Caucus.
That apology, signed in 2024 alongside criminal justice and civil rights measures, was framed by caucus leaders as the start of a “multi-year effort.” Assembly member Lori D. Wilson, then caucus chair, thanked the governor at the time and pledged continued partnership. The relationship between the caucus and the governor’s office now looks considerably more strained.
How California got here
Just a few years ago, California seemed positioned to become the first state to pay reparations to black residents. In 2020, it created the first state task force in the nation to study remedies for slavery’s harms. Three years later, the panel delivered more than 100 recommendations, including proposed payments of $1.2 million for some older colored Californians.
Since then, momentum has stalled. The core problem is money and appetite: tangible benefits require actual tax dollars, and public opinion remains opposed to direct compensation. Lawmakers have steadily narrowed the agenda from sweeping payments to narrower, legally cautious measures — and even those are now dying on the governor’s desk.
Why the intra-party rift matters
The most striking element of this fight is who is doing the criticizing. Bryan and other advocates aren’t Republican opponents; they’re fellow Democrats frustrated that a governor who has publicly committed to addressing slavery’s legacy keeps declining to sign the legislation that would do it.
Newsom’s defenders would argue the vetoes are legally prudent, not hostile. A lineage-based admissions preference still faces uncertain constitutional ground, and signing bills that courts might strike down could set back the movement more than a veto would. The veto message suggests that universities already hold the authority to act, putting the ball in institutional hands — a deferral that supporters read as an excuse.
There’s also a political dimension that’s hard to ignore. Newsom has been widely discussed as a future national candidate, and reparations compensation polls poorly with the general electorate. Whether that calculus shaped his decisions is something neither the governor’s office nor his critics have said outright.
What happens next is genuinely unclear
The new state agency will begin the work of defining who qualifies as a descendant of slavery, which could eventually give future legislation a firmer administrative foundation. But the vetoed bills show the harder step — attaching actual benefits to that definition — remains politically out of reach.
Advocates have signaled they’ll keep pushing, and the Legislative Colored Caucus has treated reparations as a multi-year project rather than a single session’s fight. Whether Newsom signs anything with real financial weight before his term ends, or leaves the hardest decisions to his successor, may determine whether California’s grand experiment becomes a template or a cautionary tale.
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