California would explicitly ban caste discrimination under first-of-its-kind legislation that’s now teed up for an Assembly floor vote after previously passing the state Senate.
The bill (SB 403), which the Assembly’s appropriations committee approved Wednesday, would make California the first state in the US to include caste among the categories protected from workplace, housing, and other discrimination under the state’s civil rights laws. Seattle earlier this year became the first US city to ban caste discrimination.
The Assembly legislation would define bias based on ancestry—which California law already bans—to include caste discrimination. The Senate passed a different version ...