In 2020, the state of California took a dramatic and important step to address persistent racial inequities in its criminal justice system by enacting the Racial Justice Act. It followed Kentucky and North Carolina in passing a law specifically targeting the pervasive problem of racial discrimination in the criminal justice system.

Such legislation was a response to a 1987 Supreme Court decision limiting the use of statistical evidence to prove racial discrimination in capital sentencing. The court held that a defendant must “prove that the decisionmakers in his case acted with discriminatory purpose,” and offer evidence “specific to his own case that would support an inference that racial considerations played a part in his sentence.”

But as the Stanford Center for Racial Justice reports, “Defendants are rarely successful in meeting that standard.”

Enter California’s Racial Justice Act, which expanded the means by which defendants “can show discrimination,” allowing them to “establish racial bias by relying on statistical data showing racial disparities in the charging, conviction, or sentencing process of other defendants who share their race.”

The law makes it illegal for the state to “seek or obtain a criminal conviction or seek, obtain, or impose a sentence on the basis of race, ethnicity, or national origin.”It targets “racially discriminatory language about the defendant’s race, ethnicity, or national origin” and cases where a “defendant was charged or convicted of a more serious offense than defendants of other races who have engaged in similar conduct.”Finally, it prohibits sentences that are “longer or more severe” in one case than in “other similarly situated individuals convicted of the same offense.”

Where violations occur, the Racial Justice Act requires courts to do things like vacating convictions or sentences, and ordering new proceedings consistent with the act. And if race played any role in a capital case, it forbids prosecutors from seeking the death penalty.

The Racial Justice Act went a long way toward sweeping away other barriers and technicalities that have often prevented courts from remedying racial discrimination in criminal cases. One example is the so-called “harmless error” rule that tolerates errors “not damaging enough to the appealing party’s right to a fair trial to justify reversing the judgment.”The Racial Justice Act makes it clear that when it comes to race, no errors are harmless. That signals something important about the ambition of California’s law.

The Golden State’s approach has been widely praised. The Public Policy Institute of California, for instance, says it “goes beyond any other state or federal attempt to ensure equal treatment under the law for all races.”However, in August, the state supreme court severely weakened the law in the case People v. Hazlett by excluding “racially discriminatory use of peremptory challenges” of jurors from the protections that the Racial Justice Act affords criminal defendants.

Justice Kelli Evans dissented from this decision, calling its reasoning “cramped.”“When a prosecutor strikes a juror based on a discriminatory belief,” she wrote, “this is necessarily bias ‘towards the defendant because of the defendant’s race.’”In September, we saw another consequence of the court’s cramped interpretation of the act in the case of Monte Haney. In that case, the California Court of Appeals dismissed a claim of racial discrimination in jury selection, citing the reasoning behind Hazlett.

Judge Jon Streeter, while concurring, took the occasion to argue that “Racial Justice Act’s objective is to eradicate all forms of racial bias in any criminal proceeding in the California courts at every stage from the beginning to the end. … Time will tell,” he continued, “whether, in the view of the Legislature … Hazlett is consistent with the level of judicial commitment to uprooting racial bias in criminal cases that the Legislature has repeatedly stated in legislative findings it wants to see in the application of the [Racial Justice Act].”

While judges can and do debate the meaning of statutory language and the intent of its authors, the last word lies with the legislature. It has already shown itself willing to improve the Racial Justice Act and extend its reach. Four years ago, in 2022, the legislature amended the act to make it retroactive and afford relief to people convicted and sentenced before the law was enacted.

In 2025, reacting to a series of court decisions that “eviscerated” the law, the California legislature observed that, “Like a metastatic cancer, racial bias in one part of a criminal prosecution infects the whole and cannot be remedied by removing a single diseased cell. Remedies must match the gravity of the ills of racial bias and not be so narrow as to minimize the harm or fail to address it in its entirety.”California law already prohibits “using peremptory challenges to remove jurors (in cases involving a civil rights violation and civil commitment of a person) based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, or religious affiliation.”

Now, the legislature has another chance to ensure that the Racial Justice Act applies to bias in jury selection in criminal cases. When it does, it will again make California’s commitment to eradicating racial bias in criminal cases a model for the nation.

Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College.