The California Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans released its final report in 2023, with more than 100 policy recommendations aimed at ending discrimination against Black Californians and repairing harm from racist state policies. The plan has become a model for New York, Maryland and Illinois, which are now pursuing their own reparations efforts.

In 2026, the Newsom administration narrowed its focus to public education about the history documented in the report. Half of a $10 million allocation went to the Tides Foundation, a national nonprofit, to launch what it calls the California Reparations Education Initiative. Spokesperson Daryl Hannah said the goal is to give Californians "access to clear, factual and accessible information that deepens public understanding of reparations and its historical context in California and the United States." The program is expected to be operational by early next year.

The other half went to the California State University system under SB 437, a 2025 law that revived a previously contested proposal for a yearslong study of eligibility. The CSU is tasked with developing a system to verify whether someone is descended from an enslaved person and therefore potentially eligible for future reparations programs. Research is underway at Cal State Long Beach, Sacramento State and San Diego State, with a 2029 deadline and annual reports to the Legislature. Some critics view the study as a tactic to delay more direct reparations legislation.

Separately, researchers at UC Berkeley's School of Education are building a California Black Studies Curriculum that turns the task force's historical findings into high school course material. Funded by the California Department of Justice and the Los Angeles-based nonprofit Education Leaders of Color, the curriculum is designed to fulfill the state's ethnic studies requirement. Teachers are being recruited to pilot the material, and the full curriculum is expected to be public by the end of this school year.

"We hope whomever is part of the next administration will be the same," project co-director Travis Bristol, a UC Berkeley professor of teacher education and education policy, said of state support.

In the Legislature, the California Legislative Black Caucus introduced and passed three bills this session that members describe as reparations-related. One was vetoed and two became law.

AB 2186, which would have exempted reparations payments from income tax, passed both houses but was vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, who cited concerns about the impact on state finances. AB 1661 provides one-time cash payments to up to 1,000 Central Los Angeles families whose health has been harmed by living near oil wells within the Baldwin Hills Conservancy; its funding is tied to penalties on oil well owners who fail to close low-producing wells after 2031, so the program will not be operational for years.

The Truth in Disclosure Act, AB 2599, requires large corporations contracting with the state to publicly disclose whether they or their predecessor companies profited from slavery. It also requires the state to create a public database of those disclosures. The bill, the first statewide slavery-disclosure law in the country, was opposed by several insurance industry associations.

"Corporations have never had to account for their role," James Woodson, CEO of the California Black Power Network, said in a statement. "Now they will."

Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, D-Los Angeles, vice-chair of the caucus and author of the disclosure bill, said the measure addresses a gap in public understanding. "We haven't had an honest enough conversation about the private extraction of wealth that is compounded through generations," he said. "Part of the reason we haven't had that conversation is because people don't know who the major companies today are that profited from chattel slavery in previous iterations or which of those companies are still contracting business with the state of California."

The caucus's legislative output has shrunk from nine bills in 2025 — four of which were signed, including SB 518, which created the Bureau for Descendants of American Slavery within the California Civil Rights Department — to three this year. A spokesperson for the Civil Rights Department said nine bureau positions are budgeted, including a deputy director appointed by the governor, but none have been filled; the search for a deputy director is underway.

Bryan rejected the idea that momentum is waning, saying hostility from the federal government is changing how the caucus pursues its goals. "I think the CLBC will always be focused on repair and reparation," he said. "The strategy, the tactics and the visibility of it will ebb and flow based on the conditions and understanding the hostile environment that these kinds of conversations often take place in."

That environment includes a second Trump administration that has aggressively dismantled diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Some academic and nonprofit leaders say private funders have grown more cautious. "The current federal climate increases the perceived risks of this work," said Erika Weissinger, co-founder of the Black Reparations Project, a collaboration between UC Berkeley and Mills College at Northwestern University. "When efforts to address racial inequality face political attacks, many institutions and funders become more cautious about what they support, how they describe it, and how visible they want to be."

Weissinger credited Newsom with opening a door but said much work remains. "Under Newsom, California helped establish that reparations are a legitimate responsibility of state government," she said. "But there is a big difference between acknowledging responsibility and taking action to repair. Newsom's administration has supported research, recognition, and some institutional groundwork, while also limiting proposals that would move more directly toward tangible benefits. I would give him credit for helping open the door, while recognizing how much of the work of repair remains for the next administration."

That next administration will be led by Xavier Becerra, the state's first elected Latino governor, who takes office in January with Democrats holding their largest legislative majority in more than a century and the Legislative Black Caucus welcoming new, more progressive members. Becerra's stance on reparations has been cautious. In a January debate hosted by the Urban League of the Greater San Francisco Bay Area, he raised questions about funding and legislative priorities. In October, on a Los Angeles radio talk show, he said he would not promise "40 acres and a mule," calling such a commitment unrealistic, before pivoting to cash bail reform.

Chris Lodgson, an organizer with the Coalition for a Just and Equitable California, which helped push for the task force's creation, was listening. He said the new governor will have some catching up to do. Over the past year, Lodgson has hosted workshops across the state helping Black Californians trace and document their ancestry.

Nationally, the picture is mixed. Research by Liberation Ventures, a philanthropic organization that funds reparations and racial justice work, found that the number of city or county reparations commissions in the U.S. grew from four in 2020 to 28 in 2025. A 2024 Liberation Ventures poll found more Californians open to comprehensive reparations that include scholarships, healing services and direct payments, and 60% of respondents wanted more education on slavery and its legacies. A 2023 poll found that roughly 40% of Californians had not heard of the state's reparations task force.

The task force's report documented how early state laws funded public schools based only on the number of white students in each county, ensuring schools serving students of color were chronically underfunded; the state's complicity in federal redlining; and the use of racially restrictive covenants that segregated Black Californians into neighborhoods later targeted for disinvestment, environmental degradation and displacement. In 1940, 80% of homes in Los Angeles carried covenants barring Black families. By 2019, Black homeownership rates were lower than any other racial group in the state, and in 2023 Black Californians were twice as likely as white residents to live below the poverty line.

Newsom also vetoed SB 1050 in 2024, which would have created a state process for reviewing claims of racially discriminatory eminent domain use. Between 1949 and 1973, Black Americans nationwide were five times more likely than white people to be displaced by eminent domain, according to the task force report. Newsom said the state lacked the bureaucratic infrastructure for such a claims program.