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Newsom vetoes a proposed ban on caste discrimination in California

politico.com

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Re: Newsom vetoes a proposed ban on caste discrimination in California

#51

Post by olliej »

catlover76 wrote: post #30
locofocos wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely. I'm trying to understand the resistance in good faith, but the article didn't explain their position very clearly. "It's already prohibited" - so why the fierce opposition? "Passing a law against discrimination of X will stigmatize X" - Imagine someone was making this argument for an existing federally protected class.

The one good faith argument is that Hindus feel targeted by it because, de facto, this is about higher-caste Hindus discriminating against low-caste Hindus. Whether or not that's particularly convincing or a reason not to pass it is debatable, but I think it's a valid reason that merits consideration. Any reasoning beyond this ends up being gobbledygook.

I mean there are plenty of caste based systems in many religions, perhaps of relevance to the US are Mormonism and Scientology which both have ranking systems that determine options for people in the religion (and who have tried to leave it).

It's also worth noting that if you are born in a specific caste, and convert from your religion, you will still be subjected to caste discrimination from the folk in the original religion.

Obviously under the rules of the current Supreme Court anyone can claim their bigotry is because "religion" and carry on doing it. Don't want to serve someone? claim doing so violates your religious beliefs. Renting a property? ditto. Employment? again.

Re: Newsom vetoes a proposed ban on caste discrimination in California

#52

Post by huytersd »

praveen9920 wrote: post #33

Very unfortunate. I have heard lot of cases from friends in US about how they are discriminated based on caste and they can’t say anything because of backlash they might face. Unfortunately, Unlike other kind of discrimination, caste based discrimination is hard to prove in courts. And on top of that they have to prove that caste based discrimination is illegal too, making it hard to bring justice.

Who even knows someone’s caste in the US. As an Indian living in the US for 20 years, I have never once even heard it come up in any conversation even in passing. How would you even tell? I grew up in India and I can’t tell.

Re: Newsom vetoes a proposed ban on caste discrimination in California

#53

Post by benced »

Caste discrimination is bad but I do worry that passing bills like this will make employers less willing to hire south Asians. America has shown a tendency to burden south Asian populations with the downside effects of its regulations (TSA and affirmative action come to mind) and I worry this would be another case of that.

Re: Newsom vetoes a proposed ban on caste discrimination in California

#54

Post by phpisthebest »

locofocos wrote: post #8
ethanbond wrote: post #2

The large and vocal constituency activated against the bill is good evidence that in fact it is not already accounted for under existing civil rights law.

Precisely. I'm trying to understand the resistance in good faith, but the article didn't explain their position very clearly. "It's already prohibited" - so why the fierce opposition? "Passing a law against discrimination of X will stigmatize X" - Imagine someone was making this argument for an existing federally protected class.

>>so why the fierce opposition?

Because anytime you pass unnecessary laws you open the future up to some judge somewhere, or some prosecutor some where twisting the words to mean something completely different

Happens all the time in society and the fact that people believe it is acceptable to simply duplicate laws is very dangerous

We need a massive curbing of the number of laws in society as it is, personally in think for every law that is passed they should be forced to repel one.

Re: Newsom vetoes a proposed ban on caste discrimination in California

#55

Post by huytersd »

locofocos wrote: post #8
ethanbond wrote: post #2

The large and vocal constituency activated against the bill is good evidence that in fact it is not already accounted for under existing civil rights law.

Precisely. I'm trying to understand the resistance in good faith, but the article didn't explain their position very clearly. "It's already prohibited" - so why the fierce opposition? "Passing a law against discrimination of X will stigmatize X" - Imagine someone was making this argument for an existing federally protected class.

Codifying into law a dying system only prolongs it. Unless you have people from hyper local regions working together, no one can even tell caste. People from different parts of the same state in India can’t even tell apart castes.

Re: Newsom vetoes a proposed ban on caste discrimination in California

#56

Post by catlover76 »

function_seven wrote: post #35
theogravity wrote: post #5

> “not only target and racially profile South Asian Californians, but will put other California residents and businesses at risk and jeopardize our state’s innovative edge.” How? Because south asians can't be caste-ist against others now?

They would be the only group “exposed” to this law. The vast majority of non-Indian people in California have very little idea how caste works, and how to identify membership, etc. So now there’s this new law that de facto only applies to a specific ethnicity of Californians. I guess you could argue that all Californians—regardless of their ethnicity—are prohibited from discriminating on the basis of caste. But to me…

> I guess you could argue that all Californians—regardless of their ethnicity—are prohibited from discriminating on the basis of caste.

The law would literally prohibit everyone from discriminating on the basis of caste. There's nothing arguable or debatable about that.

As I posted above, I think it's a valid point for Hindus to make that they feel kind of targeted, but the flip side of that is that they feel that way because they are the only major religion where this is a pervasive problem. The rest of us are known for other problems and faults lol...

Re: Newsom vetoes a proposed ban on caste discrimination in California

#57

Post by jfengel »

chmorgan_ wrote: post #49

Do we need laws against every specific thing if another law already covers it? I'd argue no, we don't need to call out special groups as protected, then there is precedent for doing so for every special group. Keep our laws general and comprehensive, with as few special cases as possible, especially when it comes to protecting rights.

"Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't. Nobody ever thought that that's what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws." -- Antonin Scalia

It would be great if we could trust that laws would be interpreted as general and comprehensive. But laws mean what the judges want them to mean, which can be narrow or broad depending on their inclination.

Right now the inclination of the top court is that if a protection isn't spelled out, then you don't have it.

Re: Newsom vetoes a proposed ban on caste discrimination in California

#58

Post by finite_depth »

theogravity wrote: post #10
strangesmells02 wrote: post #7

How populated with Indian people is California if statewide legislation is being written for this?

Wikipedia says "California is about 1.3% Indian, with many living in Orange County and Santa Clara County. Many live in Yuba City, about 15% Indian, which has a significant Sikh community." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_Americans_in_Californi...

The Bay Area is around 6%, on the same order of magnitude as people of Chinese (10%), black (6%), Filipino (5%) or Jewish (4.5%) ancestry in the Bay. Depending on exactly how you group things, they're the 4th (after white non-Hispanic, Hispanic, and Chinese) largest Bay Area ethnic group. (src: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area#/media/...)

Re: Newsom vetoes a proposed ban on caste discrimination in California

#59

Post by huytersd »

olliej wrote: post #43
tekla wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People do not want to import this shit into the US. They left these systems behind, and making a law codifies the system into law, which is kinda fucked up. I myself have seen discrimination in non obvious ways (not Indian but exact same idea where your birth dictates certain societal ideas about you) , and would be absolutely pissed if anyone made a law that protects against that because discrimination is already pr…

What are you talking about? The whole point of caste based discrimination is that people are putting you, as you say, in a bucket and then discriminating on that basis. By having such discrimination be legal you ensure that such discrimination is (a) legal, and (b) gets to be entrenched in the US.

It’s impossible for it to get entrenched because people from India can’t even tell a persons caste unless they are from the same cluster of towns and villages. This is Indian “county specific” knowledge that cannot survive a cosmopolitan society.

Re: Newsom vetoes a proposed ban on caste discrimination in California

#60

Post by ribosometronome »

silenced_trope wrote: post #16

I agree with Newsom, this is covered already. > The veto dealt a blow to state Sen. Aisha Wahab (D-Hayward), a first-term lawmaker who shepherded one of the more controversial bills of the session through the Legislature. It's like when a new VP joins the company you work for and suddenly there's a useless project of some kind. A new initiative or re-org that they are spearheading to justify their position/salary. I…

Would you use the same logic to argue in favor of California updating it's law to remove listing race, sex, color, and ancestry from the list of explicitly defined prohibitions?

The argument in the case of caste is that it's already covered by way of the law presently prohibiting discrimination based on "ancestry". But additionally, the law prohibits discrimination based on "genetic information", which seems like it would cover race, sex, and ancestry. Color, probably, too, unless that's intended to protect clowns and the sun tanned.

Edit: Similarly, would you say California erred back in 2005 when they amended the law to specifically include sexual orientation, as courts were already using the existing law to rule against sexual orientation (on the basis of it being also sex based discrimination, see like Rolon v. Kulwitzky back in 84)?

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