ACR Project Challenges Unconstitutional Guaranteed Income Programs, with Suit against CA HHS, SF, SF USD, and UC Affiliates

The ACR Project, for the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation and individual San Francisco taxpayers, has sued California’s Health and Human Services Agency, San Francisco, San Francisco USD, and both UC Berkeley and San Francisco, challenging a set of guarantied income programs, which violate the Constitutions of California and the United States (as well as Title VI).

Both Constitutions include equal protection guarantees.  The California Constitution further prohibits granting “[any] citizen or class of citizens” any “privileges or immunities not granted on the same terms to all citizens.”  These provisions clearly forbid public entities from choosing beneficiaries based on identitarian considerations.  And Title VI does the same for federal funding recipients, barring them from “exclud[ing anyone” from participation in” or denying them “the benefits of” “any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance” — the state, city, school district, and both UC affiliates are federal funding recipients many times over.

Nonetheless, they have together crafted and are using public resources to administer no fewer than four guarantied income programs that have selected their beneficiaries based on race, national origin, sex, and gender identity.  The ACR Project notified the defendants of its clients’ intent to challenge these programs in March.  They failed to respond or to rectify the programs’ deficiencies.

You can read our filed complaint below.