Guides: 2024 Reparations Priority Bill Package: New California Laws Taking Effect : AB-1815 Discrimination: race: hairstyles.

Bill Summary and Finding Legislative History

AB-1815 Discrimination: race: hairstyles.

AB-1815 was introduced in January 2024 by Assemblymember Dr. Akilah Weber (D-San Diego) and signed into law on September 26, 2024 as 2024 Cal. Stat. ch. 619. The act amends Section 51 of the Cal. Civil Code, Section 212.1 of the Cal. Education Code, and Section 12926 of the Cal. Government Code. You can find the bill text, bill analysis, and other documents relating to this law's legislative history on the California legislature's website.

See our California legislative history guide for information on how these documents all work together as persuasive legal authority in determining the intent behind the law as well as clarifying significant additions or deletions as the bill moved through the legislature.

AB-1815 Bill Summary (via Legislative Counsel's Digest)

Existing law, the Unruh Civil Rights Act, provides that all persons within the jurisdiction of this state are entitled to full and equal accommodations in all business establishments regardless of their sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sexual orientation, citizenship, primary language, or immigration status.
Existing law, the California Fair Employment and Housing Act, makes it unlawful to engage in specified discriminatory employment practices based on certain protected characteristics, including race, unless based on a bona fide occupational qualification or applicable security regulations, and prohibits housing discrimination based on specified personal characteristics, including race.
Existing law states the policy of the State of California to afford all persons in public schools, regardless of their disability, gender, gender identity, gender expression, nationality, race or ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or any other specified characteristic, equal rights and opportunities in the educational institutions of the state, and to prohibit acts that are contrary to that policy and to provide remedies therefor.
Existing law prohibits discrimination because of a perception that a person has one of those protected characteristics or is associated with a person who has, or is perceived to have, any of those characteristics. The California Fair Employment and Housing Act and public school policy define the term race for purposes of those provisions to include traits historically associated with race, including, but not limited to, hair texture and protective hairstyles, as defined.

This bill would remove the term “historically” from the definitions of race, thus defining race to include traits associated with race, including, but not limited to, hair texture and protective hairstyles, as defined, and would add those definitions for “race” and “protective hairstyle” to the Unruh Civil Rights Act.
This bill would declare that its provisions are declaratory of existing law.
This bill would incorporate additional changes to Section 51 of the Civil Code proposed by SB 1137 to be operative only if this bill and SB 1137 are enacted and this bill is enacted last.
This bill would incorporate additional changes to Section 12926 of the Government Code proposed by SB 1022 and SB 1137 to be operative only if this bill and either or both of those bills are enacted and this bill is enacted last.

Related Books and Articles at the LRC

Twisted: the tangled history of Black hair culture by Emma Dabiri
Call Number: LRC Reading Room ; GT2290 .D33 2020
ISBN: 0062966723
Publication Date: 2020
A Kirkus Best Book of the Year Stamped from the Beginning meets You Can't Touch My Hair in this timely and resonant essay collection from Guardian contributor and prominent BBC race correspondent Emma Dabiri, exploring the ways in which black hair has been appropriated and stigmatized throughout history, with ruminations on body politics, race, pop culture, and Dabiri's own journey to loving her hair. Emma Dabiri can tell you the first time she chemically straightened her hair. She can describe the smell, the atmosphere of the salon, and her mix of emotions when she saw her normally kinky tresses fall down her shoulders. For as long as Emma can remember, her hair has been a source of insecurity, shame, and--from strangers and family alike--discrimination. And she is not alone. Despite increasingly liberal world views, black hair continues to be erased, appropriated, and stigmatized to the point of taboo. Through her personal and historical journey, Dabiri gleans insights into the way racism is coded in society's perception of black hair--and how it is often used as an avenue for discrimination. Dabiri takes us from pre-colonial Africa, through the Harlem Renaissance, and into today's Natural Hair Movement, exploring everything from women's solidarity and friendship, to the criminalization of dreadlocks, to the dubious provenance of Kim Kardashian's braids. Through the lens of hair texture, Dabiri leads us on a historical and cultural investigation of the global history of racism--and her own personal journey of self-love and finally, acceptance. Deeply researched and powerfully resonant, Twisted proves that far from being only hair, black hairstyling culture can be understood as an allegory for black oppression and, ultimately, liberation.
Seeing Race in Modern America by Matthew Pratt Guterl
Call Number: LRC Reading Room ; E184.A1 G963 2013
ISBN: 1469626519
Publication Date: 2015
In this fiercely urgent book, Matthew Pratt Guterl focuses on how and why we come to see race in very particular ways. What does it mean to see someone as a color? As racially mixed or ethnically ambiguous? What history makes such things possible? Drawing creatively from advertisements, YouTube videos, and everything in between, Guterl redirects our understanding of racial sight away from the dominant categories of color -- away from brown and yellow and black and white -- and instead insists that we confront the visual practices that make those same categories seem so irrefutably important. Zooming out for the bigger picture, Guterl illuminates the long history of the practice of seeing -- and believing in -- race, and reveals that our troublesome faith in the details discerned by the discriminating glance is widespread and very popular. In so doing, he upends the possibility of a postracial society by revealing how deeply race is embedded in our culture, with implications that are often matters of life and death.

Understanding Colorism and How It Relates to Sport and Physical Education
Latisha Forster-Scott
J. Phys. Educ., Recreation & Dance, Feb. 2011 (Vol. 82 No. 2), at 48.
Abstract: Research has revealed the role that colorism plays in social status, upward mobility, employment status, marital status, criminal sentencing, politics, acculturation, relationship desirability, psychological health, and self-esteem in black, Latino, and Asian communities (Brown, Ward, Lightboum, & Jackson, 1999; Gomez, 2000; McDonald, 2006; Philips, 2004; Sahay, 1997). An increased understanding about biological differences in skin complexion, hair texture, nose width, and other physical characteristics as adaptations necessary to human survival relative to climate and geographical location can go a long way in helping everyone to appreciate the wide array of physical features within the human race.

2024 Reparations Priority Bill Package: New California Laws Taking Effect

Bill Summary and Finding Legislative History

AB-1815 Discrimination: race: hairstyles.

AB-1815 Bill Summary (via Legislative Counsel's Digest)

Related Books and Articles at the LRC

Practice Materials and Guidance