ACR Project Notifies Sacramento County and California Department of Social Services of Intent to Sue to Block Racially Exclusive Family First Economic Support Pilot

Once more, a California jurisdiction, underwritten by the state, has announced the pending launch of a racially exclusive basic minimum income program.  Once more, we have warned them that it clearly violates (at least) the U.S. Constitution, the California Constitution, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  You can see our full letter, below.

Sacramento is currently taking applications for its Family First Economic Support Pilot program.  The Program will hand out public (state and local) money to residents.  It will explicitly screen applicants based on race, considering qualified only impoverished Sacramentans living in particular zip codes who are raising “Black/African American or American Indian/Alaska Native” children; disfavored races need not apply and will be systematically rejected if they try.

Clear, long-standing law forbids categorically excluding from participation all impoverished Sacramentans raising children of other races.  More than 30 years ago, the Ninth Circuit already held that the “right to be free from such invidious discrimination” was “so well established and so essential to the preservation of our constitutional order that all public officials must be charged with knowledge of it.”  It is long past the time for government actors to feign ignorance as they intentionally pursue racial discrimination.

Hopefully, Sacramento and the state will listen.  If they don’t, they will not be able to contend later that they were not warned.