Honorable Governor Newsom,

I write to you expressing my concerns about Senator Aisha Wahab’s bill SB-403[1], which proposes to add “caste” as a protected category in California and urge you to veto it.

If passed into law, this bill would unfairly target people of South Asian descent or origin, along with other communities of color, subject them to additional scrutiny, leave them vulnerable to bullying in schools, and deprive them of their fundamental civil rights in the workplace or elsewhere. Caste is not a facially neutral category and the South Asian (and particularly, Hindu) communities continue to face the stigma of being associated with "caste" and will more likely be targeted by such a law. Therefore, this bill is unconstitutional on its face and in its implementation and will likely result in the state getting embroiled in expensive litigation via lawsuits.

As a reminder, California textbooks (by law), along with leading dictionaries continue to define and teach caste in terms of Hindu hierarchies and this bill will only cement and further advance racist colonial tropes against Hindu Americans. In addition, the California Civil Rights Department (CRD) has already defined caste as part of Hinduism in it case against Cisco Systems and has shown significant overreach and discrimination against the two accused Indian American engineers (the case against the two engineers has now been dismissed).[2] SB-403 empowers the same CRD to investigate caste discrimination claims - a major concern given their overreach in the Cisco case.

I am dismayed to see the blatant singling out of minority communities based on nothing but unsubstantiated claims.

I strongly condemn all forms of discrimination, including caste-based discrimination, and firmly believe that there is no place for prejudice and mistreatment of anyone in our diverse and pluralistic society. Fortunately, federal and state laws protect against caste discrimination under the existing categories of national origin and ancestry, both of which have been interpreted as inclusive of the various characteristics that might be associated with caste such as ancestry (lineage), birthplace, culture, ethnicity, or language.

I urge your office to further study the issue of alleged caste discrimination in California before rushing into creating a law that will do more harm than good.

Below are some further important reasons why you should VETO this bill.

1. On June 20, 2023, assembly member Evan Low (Chair of the California Asian Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus – AAPILC) and Assembly member Alex Lee (who also sits on the AAPILC), wrote a letter[3] to Assembly Judiciary Chair Brian Maienschein and called for an official study on caste discrimination to reach a reliable and rigorous conclusion on the true extent of caste discrimination in California. I agree with pausing the bill and properly studying the matter further.
2. The bill would have an extremely stigmatizing impact on all South Asians, especially Indian and Hindu Americans. Recognizing this pernicious aspect of this supposedly progressive legislation, the City of Cupertino which has a 70% Asian American population including a significant Indian American community, issued a proclamation signed by the Mayor following a July 18 City Council meeting which calls out the City’s opposition to any law that could contribute, intentionally or unintentionally, to the stigmatization or stereotyping of any group by using “terms with negative connotations”, such as the term "caste."
3. There is no universally recognized definition of “caste” anywhere in the world. Yet, the bill attempts to define the category based on false assumptions pushed by groups and activists known for their bigotry.
4. The definition of caste provided by the bill (section 9(z)) is now so vague that there is no way for a reasonable person to determine what caste actually means. The focus on “inherited social position” is an impossible standard to objectively evaluate.
5. Without a clear and objective definition of caste, the State will be embroiled in endless litigation on just the term and what that means. With no evidence offered of actual caste discrimination, the State will be facing large costs based on frivolous lawsuits trying to get the courts to define a term that the legislature could not.
6. Any action around caste discrimination will come up against strict guidelines set by the Supreme Court for Title VII claims[4], subjecting the state to costly litigation and legal imbroglio. Business groups and other organizations in California have already come out against this bill as unnecessary and likely to drive up the cost of doing business in California.
7. As seen in public appearances by Senator Wahab, the bill is heavily dependent on data supplied by hate groups such as Equality Labs and other groups who are known for their bigotry against the Hindu American community — openly calling for Hinduism to be dismantled and publicly calling millions of Hindus “rapists” simply due to their birth. In March 2020, Equality Labs attacked the extremely popular Hindu festival of Holi by falsely claiming that the festival celebrates the burning of a “low caste” woman and where men advance violence against women, including throwing semen.[5] Such hate should not be mainstreamed by a state as committed to diversity as California is. 
8. Faulty data. There are several well documented problems with the Equality Labs “survey” as laid out in various articles [6]. Indeed, the quality and data of this report were challenged comprehensively back in 2018 [7] when it was first distributed. More recently, a 2020 survey on Indian Americans by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace called out the survey’s flaws in footnote 29, indicating the following(emphasis added):[8] This study relied on a nonrepresentative snowball sampling method to recruit respondents. Furthermore, respondents who did not disclose a caste identity were dropped from the data set. Therefore, it is likely that the sample does not fully represent the South Asian American population and could skew in favor of those who have strong views about caste. While the existence of caste discrimination in India is incontrovertible, its precise extent and intensity in the United States can be contested.

As a result of intense public uproar in opposition, the current version of SB-403 has already removed most if not all of the “findings” in Section 1. While this is an important step, the bill still relies on vague notions of endogamy, perceived social status and other such intangibles to create a problem where none existed before.

As such, I again strongly urge you to veto this bill and not allow any policies or resolutions that advance bigotry, unfairly target the people of South Asian descent or origin, along with other communities of color, subject them to additional scrutiny, leave them vulnerable to bullying in schools, and deprive them of their fundamental civil rights in the workplace or elsewhere.

 

References:

1. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB403&showamends=false

2. https://www.foxrothschild.com/news/engineers-dropped-from-cisco-caste-bias-suit

3. https://twitter.com/CoHNAOfficial/status/1671606062330331137

4. University of Texas Southwestern Medical Ctr. v. Nassar, No. 12-484 (June 24, 2013)

5.https://web.archive.org/web/20200306101500/https://medium.com/@EqualityLabs/why-do-we-say-no-to-holi-a-guide-to-challenge-casteism-ad592d0735cb

6. https://medium.com/@rachelgotham5/equality-labs-caste-report-a-rebuttal-to-a-british-colonial-narrative-replayed-1676068ee2cf

7. https://www.indiaabroad.com/recrimination-or-reconciliation/article_ad5cea31-1739-5105-9254-2d4ff29eece5.html

8. https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/06/09/social-realities-of-indian-americans-results-from-2020-indian-american-attitudes-survey-pub-84667