Assembly Members Voted 72-0 in Favor of the Bill
(Woodland, CA) – May 24, 2022 – On May 23, 2022, Assembly Bill 2778, “Race Blind Charging,” passed through the California Assembly floor on a 72-0 vote. AB 2778 is sponsored by Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig and supported by California Attorney General Rob Bonta.
AB 2778 (https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2778), authored by Assemblymember Kevin McCarty, requires the California Department of Justice to establish a “Race Blind Charging” system that all prosecutors must implement by January 2025. Specifically, the process would require removal of all race data from police reports for any suspect, victim, or witness when a case is initially reviewed for charging.
The bill was modeled after the Yolo County District Attorney’s first-of-a-kind Race Blind Charging program, which was launched in May 2021. The Stanford Computational Policy Lab (SCPL) designed a computer program specifically for DA Reisig’s office that automatically redacts information in police reports that identify an individual’s race. The program follows trends in academia and science where evaluators are “blinded” to certain facts in order to add confidence to outcomes. Attorney General Bonta met with DA Reisig in January 2022 and the pair decided to seek an author in the legislature to take the program to all DAs in the state.
Reisig praised the collaborative work on AB 2778. “The partnership between my office, the Attorney General, District Attorneys’ offices across the state, and the Stanford Computation Lab has been amazing. I am proud of the state of California for being a trailblazer on this issue.” AB 2778 is one of two bills sponsored by DA Reisig that are currently working their way through the legislature. DA Reisig also helped draft AB 2418, in collaboration with the American Civil Liberties Union and a non-profit called Measures for Justice, which seeks to impose transparency of data requirements on all prosecutor offices.
AB 2778 will next be heard in the Senate Public Safety Committee.
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