As diversity programs fade and face growing legal challenges nationwide, California lawmakers are tackling challenges head-on. Officials are aiming to advance a controversial bill that would allow state universities to consider whether applicants are descendants of enslaved African Americans.  This move, supporters say, circumvents the state’s affirmative action ban while critics warn it invites legal battles, according to the LA Times. 

Assembly Bill 7, introduced by Assemblymember Isaac G. Bryan (D-Los Angeles), avoids explicit racial terms by focusing on ancestry. 

“Descendants of people who were enslaved could identify in a variety of racial ways,” Bryan told The Times, emphasizing that the bill ties admissions to historical harms rather than race. The approach aims to bypass California’s Proposition 209 (1996) and the Supreme Court’s 2023 affirmative action ban, which barred race-conscious admissions.

The bill is part of a 15-measure reparations package backed by the California Legislative Black Caucus. Though similar efforts stalled last year, supporters like Assemblymember Lori D. Wilson (D-Suisun City) see it as a foundation to build upon.

Legal experts warn the bill’s fate hinges on whether courts view lineage as a racial proxy. Taifha Alexander, a UCLA critical race theory scholar, noted that “if a judge believed it used lineage as a proxy for race, it could be ruled unconstitutionally discriminatory under the 14th Amendment.” A companion bill (SB 518) seeks to preempt this by creating a state agency to verify descendants’ status.This mirrors the 1988 Civil Liberties Act that granted reparations to Japanese-American survivors of illegal incarceration.

Opponents, including Edward Blum of Students for Fair Admissions—who spearheaded the Supreme Court case against affirmative action—called AB 7 “unconstitutional racial discrimination” in disguise. “It takes Herculean stupidity to believe otherwise,” Blum wrote, vowing a “swift and vigorous legal challenge.”

While none of the current bills propose cash reparations (a 2023 poll showed 59% of Californians oppose them), Bryan argues the measures reflect state values. Other bills in the package address housing discrimination and mortgage lending, though a failed proposal sought to ban prison labor, likened by advocates to modern slavery.

With the Supreme Court’s conservative tilt, the bill’s survival is uncertain. But as Alexander noted, there are “other forms of reparations, such as a change to the college admissions process and social programs, are still valid ways to address inequities.”