By Harinder Mahil
California has become the first state in the United States to pass a bill banning discrimination based on caste.
Last Tuesday, the State Senate passed a bill by a margin of 31-5, adding caste as a protected ground under State’s civil rights law, as well as education and housing codes. The bill will now go to Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk for his signature to become law.
Seattle became the first US city to ban caste-based discrimination in February 2023. A month later, the Toronto school board passed a motion to make caste a protected category in its anti-discrimination policy.
“I’m proud to stand in solidarity with every person who said they, as a Californian, experienced caste discrimination, and others who say they want it to stop,” Democratic State Senator Aisha Wahab, the bill’s author, said in a news conference on Wednesday.
“We shined a light on a long-hidden form of discrimination thousands of years old, invisible shackles on the wrist of millions of people.”
The bill was supported by many civil rights and social justice organisations and is a significant victory in combatting caste based discrimination in North America.
Dalits activists had argued that cast based discrimination remains prevalent within the South Asian diaspora, taking place in workplaces, classrooms and social settings.
In the last few years California has been a hotbed of anti-caste activities. In 2020, the technology company Cisco was sued by the State after two high-caste Indian managers discriminated against a Dalit engineer, paying him a lower salary. In 2022, California State University became the first university in the US to add caste as a protected category to its anti-discrimination policy.
Before its passage in California’s Senate, the bill had cleared the State Assembly on August 29 with a 55-3 vote, a sign of broad support. Human rights activists are confident that the wide margins by which it passed in the State Senate and Assembly indicate it will be signed into law by the Governor.
I applaud thousands of activists who came together to make California more accessible for all and to combat caste-based discrimination. I thank Democratic State Senator Aisha Wahab for sponsoring the bill and working hard to make sure it passes with such a majority.
Passage of this bill is a significant human rights development in the US. It will protect the rights of hundreds of thousands of Dalits who live and work in California. I hope other US states will proceed with similar legislation and ban caste-based discrimination.
Harinder Mahil is a human rights activist and is president of West Coast Coalition Against Racism (WCCAR).
