CURRENT CAMPAIGNS
AB 1071
Sponsors of California’s Assembly Bill 1071 (2025–2026), Assembly member Ash Kalra and a coalition of justice reform groups, refer to the bill as the “Racial Justice Act: Court Procedures”. This name highlights its purpose, which is to amend the 2020 California Racial Justice Act (RJA) to clarify procedures for addressing racial bias in criminal court proceedings.
It tries to remedy the ways in which courts misconstrue the statute to apply procedural barriers or otherwise impose impediments to relief, discordant with the legislative intent of the RJA, and improperly insulate convictions and sentences tainted by racial bias.
This discordance is evident in cases where courts have imposed on RJA petitioners higher burdens than the Legislature intended to meet the thresholds to secure counsel and discovery. The RJA’s threshold to secure counsel is extremely low, and yet courts have denied counsel to litigants raising RJA claims far more than they have appointed counsel. This bill clarifies that the court shall appoint counsel to all indigent postconviction litigants who request counsel, and whenever the State Public Defender requests. The Legislature also intends that individuals must be afforded access to a broad range of relevant discovery to develop and support their potential RJA claims. Otherwise, they are left in the impossible position of having their claims rejected for want of the very data they seek. This is antithetical to the RJA.
The Legislature reasserts the low threshold required to establish a prima facie showing under paragraphs (1) through (4) of subdivision (a) of the RJA. Courts have failed to find a prima facie showing or a violation in cases where individuals involved in the prosecution or investigation have: invoked long-held biases about men of color preying on White women; used dehumanizing and othering language such as “predator,” “monster,” “sociopath,” “terrorist,” “brute,” “thug,” “gangster,” “uncivilized,” “welfare queen,” “superpredator,” or “superhuman”; made racial slurs; elicited or made gratuitous references to gangs, tattoos, nicknames, or neighborhoods; used racially incendiary or coded words such as “ghetto,” “hood,” “baby mama,” or “pimp”; denigrated people who have immigrated to the United States; made gratuitous references to nationality, race, or immigration status; evoked historical and unacknowledged racialized fears that people of color are deceptive, manipulative, crime prone, or a present or future danger; and exaggerated the physical appearance and size of people of color. These examples reflect some of the “many incarnations of racism that have plagued our criminal and juvenile justice systems since their inception.
Watch your legislators like a hawk: Sign up for beta access to My Legislator, your weekly report on what your state legislators said, voted on, introduced and more. Our beta version runs weekly until the regular legislative session adjourns on Sept. 18, and we’d love your feedback on what works, what doesn’t and what you want to see.
Find your state legislators https://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/
amnestycalifornia.org 